They all looked up, gazing from afar at this girl who blazed with golden light.
As the power of time washed over them, the purple mist receded from their eyes, and their gazes cleared, returning to normal.
Now they could see her clearly for the first time.
That's right—just like the Abandoned Object of Nightmares, the Abandoned Object of Time could create a Nibelungen, an anti-city Noble Phantasm. But the greatest side effect of this ability was that it consumed the user's lifespan.
The greater the scope, the faster the life was drained.
Just like the humans in Death Note who kept trading with shinigami, Chloe had staked her own resolve.
Inside the hidden chamber of Thunder Peak Pagoda, Lucas, now utterly spent, rose to his feet. He reached out and gripped that ugly little moon puppet. With an eerie childlike smile, his form stuttered—and dissolved into a stream of data in the air.
It was over. Everything was over.
But Chloe couldn't move. Her time power's energy was completely depleted. She didn't know how long she could remain suspended above the city.
"Chloe, I'm here, I'm right here! Come down!" I sprinted toward the spot beneath her. I finally understood what Chloe had meant by "after everything is over."
She had known all along. Including this ending. She had known everything.
Her Abandoned Object was Time!
She knew, and still she chose this fate.
"I'm sorry. Looks like we'll have to save that mountain climb for our next life." Chloe looked down at me, her smile as radiant as a flower in bloom.
"I understand... I understand!" The currents of time roiled beneath Chloe's feet. Golden radiance surged up the spire of Thunder Peak Pagoda, and Chloe's entire body was illuminated so brightly she seemed almost transparent. That near-transparency terrified me.
Chloe asked, "What do you understand?"
Me: "I understand that you loved me. I shouldn't have been so stubborn about not going to Japan. I was wrong. It was all my fault. I've always been a selfish coward. I couldn't face myself. I've worked all this time and can't even put together a proper presentation. I have no money. I was afraid that if I followed you to Japan, you'd look down on me. I regret it now. Please don't go. Don't go!"
Chloe smiled—a gentle, crystalline smile—and spoke with quiet clarity:
"I'll be waiting for you at every exit of time."
The shield of light that had kept her aloft was devoured by the temporal maelstrom. Chloe began to fall slowly, drifting down like a solitary feather into the churning, surging river of time—and then she was swallowed whole, shattered, and gone.
"CHLOE—"
---
Twenty
"I'm sorry. Even though you mean well, I can't accept this kind of one-sided relationship. Let's break up."
I stared at that WeChat message for a few seconds. Without saying much, I finished the rat dissection experiment, made an excuse to my advisor, went to the bathroom, and cried quietly for a little while.
The first time I met the lunar people, I remember it was a full moon night.
After finishing a day's work, I went for my usual walk by West Lake to clear my head, only to see a strangely shaped spacecraft descend from the sky.
As a biology PhD student, I was actually quite adaptable to the idea of aliens existing on Earth.
But when I saw what they looked like, I was still a bit startled.
They looked essentially human. Apart from their deep blue pupils, their facial features, limbs, and height were nearly identical to ours, and they spoke fluent Mandarin.
"This is quite normal. We are former Earthlings—we lived during the ancient Egyptian era. Later, for certain reasons, we relocated to the moon, but we do occasionally return to visit our homeland. For instance, I'm a certified Earth expert. Not to brag, but where I come from, a guy who speaks authentic Earth-ese like me is about as prestigious as an Earthling who speaks fluent British English. Pretty impressive, right?" The lunar liaison assigned to me was clearly well-suited for this job, because by Earth standards, he was basically a motormouth.
"We established a base on the moon, so that one day all of us—Earthlings and lunar citizens alike—could truly set sail for the stars. We even set up defense systems on Mars farther out. Ninety-nine percent of potentially threatening asteroids and external incursions are filtered out in advance. We even managed to keep you alive through several apocalyptic floods and wars—and in ways you'd never notice. You've seen for yourselves—we look no different from you. A pair of colored contacts and we blend right in. Or rather, the saying should be 'fish blending with pearls,' since we're the superior humans... you understand, right?"
"As hard as it is to accept, Earth is reaching the end of its lifespan. As former compatriots, we still hope to carry as many Earthlings as possible with us to distant shores."
"But interstellar travel is incredibly long—far longer than a human lifespan relative to the vastness of the cosmos. If everyone stayed awake, we'd never survive long enough to discover a new home."
"So we developed the Holy Grail Plan. With the current capacity of one lunar vessel—100,000 people per ship—we need two clear-minded, unwaveringly resolute captains. Like Adam and Eve, they would take shifts caring for a million sleeping infants. In interstellar travel, where all manner of unexpected crises can arise at any moment, such strong and disciplined captains are essential."
"It may sound shocking at first, but think about it calmly—isn't that magnificent? In the boundless universe, hundreds of captains commanding hundreds of starships, carrying the shared hope of humanity and lunar citizens alike, sailing toward an unknown future. Our future won't end here. Perhaps ages from now, our descendants will live peacefully in the constellation of Orion."
"No offense intended, but based on our long observation, Earthlings are far too prone to infighting... If we randomly selected someone who happened to have strong ideological biases or anti-social tendencies, they could bring catastrophe to a million innocent lives aboard their ship at any time. They might even spark conflicts with other vessels in deep space. We must prevent such weak-minded captains from steering us toward ruin."
"That's why we've been conducting selections across Earth on a massive scale, under the name Holy Grail War. We need captains with powerful minds and unwavering will—people who, even in the most desperate solitude, will always make the right choice."
"Oh, why are you crying? Did I accidentally offend your Earth-human pride? If so, I apologize. Sorry about that—that's our arrogance showing..."
I looked up. "It's fine, it's nothing to do with you... But speaking of candidates, I actually have an excellent recommendation for you."
"He's the most strong-willed man I've ever known."
And that was how I dragged my ex-boyfriend into the whirlpool of the Holy Grail War, while I myself was given the ability of time reversal.
After countless time travels, I summarized the following rules:
1. Travel can only go into the past.
2. The traveler must return to their exact point and time of departure.
3. Bringing a past version of anyone back to the present is impossible.
4. Actions in the past cannot change the present.
Whenever I encountered danger, I just needed to snap my fingers and I could slip through the currents of time. Master time, and anything becomes possible.
I visited every moment in the river of history. It was a wondrous experience—if you ever had the chance to ride on the neck of a brontosaurus and watch a mosasaur breach the ocean surface, or share a cup of black tea with a gentleman at a medieval Parisian café, you'd understand what I mean.
So when I first learned that I would die in this Holy Grail War saving my boyfriend, I was very much against it.
I remember the first time. I even used my time reversal ability to go back three days before my death, trying to escape it.
But I soon understood the fatal flaw of time reversal. It was like adding an extra guest to a hotel with infinite rooms—I was the extra person in the hotel of time, and the world, as the landlord, would try every possible means to evict me.
I lived on borrowed time. Perhaps we all do. But the difference was that I knew exactly when and where my debt would come due.
As long as I stopped jumping backward through time, the Holy Grail War would continue, and I would die. This was certain—a price already marked by fate.
Sometimes Marcus was useless and got himself killed in Beijing right away. A glass-wielding colleague of his and his landlady would come to Hangzhou for the finals, and I'd have to ally with Lancer to eliminate that little snake before rewinding time again.
More often, the landlady and Marcus would come to Hangzhou together. As humiliating as it was to admit, the landlady actually won most of the time. Even Marcus and I together couldn't beat her—after all, the ability to control water was no joke. The most extreme time, that monster literally picked up the entire West Lake and hurled it at us. I only escaped by snapping my fingers a split second before the tidal wave swallowed me.
I kept a small notebook recording the number of Holy Grail War cycles. The total was 425.
Across more than 400 loops, I only encountered Auntie Mae once. She was a tough, car-controlling businesswoman, and surprisingly easy to get along with. I once teamed up with her—we froze time and launched an entire street's worth of cars at Lancer, who'd been bullying Marcus, crushing him into a pancake.
In countless rewinds, I tried to find a timeline where both Marcus and I survived until the end. But no matter how hard I tried, I always died.
It was always too late. For me, and for the future.
My traces had already been recorded in the flowing water. Everything I did now had no consequences. No meaning.
No matter what I did, it made no difference—none at all. With the ending already decided, every effort I made in the past dissolved into foam. Different storylines all converged on the same endpoint.
It was like knowing the bell would ring at the end of class, and all my efforts—every mark I left on the chalkboard—would be wiped clean in the noise of the hallway at the five-minute mark.
So this time, I chose to face my fate. The fate that was always meant to be mine.
In the vast universe, across infinite time, if I ceased to exist—
At least I wanted Marcus to live.