Long Time No See

In front of the other children, you took A Ruan's hand and told everyone that she was your best friend. This act prompted the other children to begin accepting A Ruan.

At eight, you received word that A Ruan's family was leaving this place for somewhere very far away. A Ruan told you they were heading into deep space to conduct research in the life sciences. It was Aunt Mei and Uncle Ruan's work. You told your parents and said you wanted to go with them, but they firmly refused your request.

So, on the day before A Ruan left, you gave her a Ruan Lyre you had made yourself, carved with plum blossoms.

At nine, after A Ruan was gone, you always felt an emptiness in your heart. At the same time, you set yourself a goal—to become a life scientist, so that one day you might have the chance to work with A Ruan again.

At ten, you worked toward your goal while asking your parents for news of A Ruan.

At eleven, you graduated first in your class from the private school. A swordsman took a liking to your talent with the sword and hoped you would train under him. You had wanted to refuse, but he tricked you into going with him by claiming his home held countless books, and that if you studied swordsmanship with him, he could find someone to guide your research into the life sciences.

At twelve, your swordsmanship improved by leaps and bounds under his guidance.

At thirteen, you defeated your fellow disciples and became a young prodigy renowned far and wide. Your master gave you an ancient sword, which you named "Nameless."

At fourteen, through your master's recommendation, you enlisted in the army to temper your character in its ranks.

Before then, your life had been smooth sailing all the way.

But everything changed when you turned fifteen.

At fifteen, a Stellaron descended upon this land. Soon after, the Antimatter Legion arrived on this planet in force and began slaughtering all living beings without distinction. Your mother was killed by the Legion in the disaster, while your father lost an arm to the Legion amid the riots.

After the initial chaos and turmoil ended, the army began organizing resistance. Your father sold off all the wealth he had earned through business over the years and donated it to refugees in the disaster zone and the resisting army. Then, despite your objections, he joined a spontaneously formed resistance force.

At sixteen, the war between the two sides dragged on endlessly. Yet the Antimatter Legion was like an endless swarm of insects that could never be stamped out, relentlessly battering humanity's remaining territory.

One day, you saw your father's name on the casualty list from the front lines. His resistance force had been made up entirely of local volunteers. During a battle to defend a border city, they all died holding out until reinforcements arrived.

At seventeen, you found the source of the disaster—the Stellaron. The master who had led you onto the path of the sword was entrusted with the task of destroying it in a moment of crisis. But when you saw him again, you discovered that he had already been beguiled by the Stellaron and had become someone else.

Many of your fellow disciples traveling with you were slain by your master's own hand. Standing before him and looking at the severed limbs scattered across the ground, you remembered the past, and your heart felt as though it were being cut by knives. As his personal disciple, you knew his swordsmanship and understood his techniques. It was only right that you be the one to end all of this.

Even though you had created your own sword style and stood unrivaled among your generation, you were still only a young prodigy. Facing the foremost swordsman of the age, you had no power to resist. Only two choices remained before you. Either avoid his edge, at the cost of not knowing how many people your master would kill in the meantime. Or fight to the very end, though the likely result would be your own death, a hero dying before his time.

You had very little time to choose. In the end, you followed your emotions and chose the latter.

The setting sun was red as blood. Though you knew every one of your master's moves, your lack of experience still led to defeat.

A longsword pierced your chest. The intense suffocation and stabbing pain nearly numbed your nerves, yet you still gripped that sword, trying to delay him for even one more second.

At the final moment of your life, blood continuously dripped down the blade that had long since been stained red.

In your daze, you stood in the void as the Amber Lord of Preservation cast a glance upon you.

Golden energy spared you from feeling the pain of your body being pierced for a brief moment. You coughed up a mouthful of blood and, with the last of your strength, raised Nameless above your head and slashed forward...

Atop a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, piled from the wreckage of the Antimatter Legion and the bodies of former comrades and fellow disciples, Bai Heng knelt on one knee. His vision was completely obscured by blood, blurred beyond recognition.

Both hands clenched tightly around the longsword embedded in the ground, his body trembled without cease. With every breath, blood surged from his internal organs.

Bai Heng knew the state of his body, so he did not pull out the sharp sword lodged in his chest. He merely waited silently for death to arrive.

Looking back on the past three years, he had lost his parents, his friends, his comrades, and even all those closest to him. In the end... he had personally killed his own master.

In the end, only he remained.

Gradually, Bai Heng began to feel tired. His eyelids grew heavy, and he could no longer open his eyes.

His thoughts began to drift, and it was as though he had returned to his childhood.

Inside the warm little house, snow had piled up in the courtyard. Incense burners were lit in the corridor, and plates of delicate pastries sat inside wooden boxes.

Bai Heng would shake the plum blossoms in the courtyard, while his father chased after his disobedient son with a broom.

He would dive into his mother's embrace beneath the corridor, making faces at his father behind him and sticking out his tongue. Nyah, nyah, nyah.

When his father stopped even giving his mother any face, Bai Heng would clutch the plum blossoms he had just picked from the tree, run to A Ruan's home, and tuck them into A Ruan's long hair.

He also remembered that bastard of a master who had fooled him by saying his house contained many scriptures, when in truth he could not read a single word and his home was filled with nothing but comic books.

And those fellow disciples who always liked dragging him along to raid bird nests, practicing swordsmanship for five minutes before lazing around for two hours.

In the flashes before death, Bai Heng seemed to return to those carefree days.

Until the soft, elegant notes of a Ruan Lyre rang beside his ears.

Bai Heng opened his heavy eyelids. His body was still weak, and a stabbing pain still came from his chest.

His gaze rested on the bed canopy above him, unfocused and drifting.

"I... didn't die?"

"Where is this?"

He covered the bandages around his chest, braced one hand against the edge of the bed, and barely managed to sit up.

After looking around the room, he realized that he appeared to be in a woman's bedchamber.

The Ruan Lyre outside was still playing.

Bai Heng endured the pain and walked forward, pushing open the door.

In the courtyard directly before the doorway, a young woman was gently playing a Ruan Lyre.

She wore green robes, her beautiful hair held up by two jade hairpins. Her temperament was gentle and ethereal. Her delicate hands lightly caressed the strings, while her eyes, as deep and clear as jade, were clearly looking at the fallen plum blossoms in the courtyard, yet seemed distant and otherworldly.

As though noticing Bai Heng opening the door, the young woman came back to herself. A faint smile appeared on her exquisite face, as if untouched by the mortal world.

"Long time no see."