The golden cornfield stretched endlessly, stalks rustling gently in a wind that shouldn't exist. Ye Lin stood at its center, her fingers brushing the corn's golden kernels, which whispered like voices when touched.
Beside her, her sister now just a woman with long hair and eyes no longer pitch black sat weakly, her breath shallow and trembling.
"You... succeeded," she whispered, her voice cracking. "But he won't stop."
Ye Lin turned toward the edge of the field, where the man with the golden mask had vanished."Who is he, really?"
Her sister shook her head."We called him the Collector. He's the one who gathers the broken shards of failed Guardians."
Suddenly, the ground beneath them trembled. The golden corn began to wither, disintegrating into dust before their eyes.
In the real world
The Poison Leaf Sect had fallen. Cultivators' corpses lay scattered, their bodies like insect-hollowed husks. Amid the wreckage, a small hand emerged from the soil a bark-skinned infant, dead before it could become whole.
But something stirred beneath it.
Back in the cornfield
The blue sky above them cracked. Through the fractures, black droplets fell, searing every golden stalk they touched.
"He's coming," her sister hissed, eyes wide with terror. "He knows we're still alive."
Ye Lin raised her hand, reaching for her world's power but instead of black blood or roots, golden light shimmered forth, like sunlight trapped in glass.
"You're not the same anymore," whispered the small shadow at her chest, now fully fused into her. "You are the true Guardian now."
The man with the golden mask appeared again, this time closer. His mask began to crack, revealing—
Ye Lin's own aged face, but with hollow eyes, like a lifeless doll.
"At last," he said, his voice echoing, "we can end this game."
From behind him, dozens of shadows crept forward each with Ye Lin's face, but with different expressions: some angry, some afraid, some empty.
"Your lost fragments," her sister said, trembling. "He gathered them."
Ye Lin felt a pull within her, as if invisible threads were being plucked one by one.
"You think you've won?" the man laughed. "You've only started the next chapter."
The cornfield caught fire.
And in the middle of the flames, Ye Lin heard her small shadow's final whisper:
"Remember, Lin'er… this corn was the seed of life."
Then everything went dark.