The sky above the golden cornfield cracked loudly as shards of light scattered like a rain of tiny meteors. Ye Lin felt the ground trembling beneath his feet. Every corn kernel around him shriveled and turned to dust before his eyes.
"Lin'er..."
The voice came from every direction—from the whispering wind between corn stalks, from the ground under his feet, even from within himself. Ye Lin looked ahead. The figure of the Collector now stood maskless. His face was a terrifying collage of all lost memories:
His left eye was Ye Lin's own from when he was seven, still full of fear.
His right cheek bore the scar from his first battle with the Venom Leaf Sect.
His mouth moved with the voice of his long-dead mother.
"You think destroying the womb of the world is enough?"
Ye Lin's legs suddenly felt heavy. He looked down. His calves were turning transparent, cracking like splintered glass. The memory of sword training with his father tore away from his mind, leaving an aching void.
The Collector raised his hand. From beneath his robe woven from strands of human hair dozens, no, hundreds of shadows began to crawl out. All of them were him. The version of himself who fell into a well at age five. The fifteen-year-old who made his first kill. The twenty-year-old who died at the edge of a cliff.
"We are the parts of you that were lost," they said in unison, their voices echoing inside Ye Lin's bones and ears.
From the crowd of shadows, a small child stepped forward. His face was still untainted, unmarked by bloodshed."Why did you leave me in that well?" he asked, his clear voice breaking the heart. "I screamed for three days and nights..."
Ye Lin felt something wet on his cheek. Tears? No. Blood. Blood flowing from his eyes.
With a swift motion, he clawed at his chest, tearing skin and flesh to pull out the last three things he had left:
A single warm corn kernel
His mother's dull bone knife
A peeling iron butterfly tattoo on his arm
"Choose one," hissed the Collector, his mouth stretching to his ears. "Destroy one, and the other two are mine."
Suddenly
A cold stab in his back.
Ye Lin coughed, seeing the tip of the bone knife jutting out from his chest. Behind him stood his brother, eyes filled with tears.
"Forgive me," he whispered, embracing Ye Lin from behind—tight, like when they were children. But the embrace felt wrong. Too cold."He promised he'd bring our mother back..."
From his brother's eyes, golden worms began to crawl out.
The Collector laughed. The sound buzzed like a thousand bees."The eightieth fragment!"
The cornfield spun. Stalks snapped and flew into a vortex. Ye Lin watched his own body unravel into particles of light, drawn toward the Collector—who was now transforming.
Becoming their mother.
But her mouth was too wide, her teeth too sharp, and her eyes as empty as an old well.
"My child..." her voice echoed as her too-long arms reached toward Ye Lin.
In that final moment, the corn kernel in Ye Lin's hand suddenly opened. A tiny sprout emerged, embedding golden roots into his palm.
And from the wound in his chest, a small shadow leapt out.
"We do not die today," it whispered in a voice suddenly grown wise.
The world exploded in white light.
When Ye Lin's vision returned, he stood in the middle of a newly sprouting cornfield. In his hand, the bone knife still dripped with fresh blood.
And in the distance, beyond the morning fog, someone was watching him.
Someone with iron wings who looked very much like him.
The cornfield shook violently as the iron-winged shadow landed before Ye Lin. The morning mist parted, revealing his own aged face wrinkles lining the same weary eyes, white hair threaded with metal thorns, and a scar on his neck shaped like the Guardian's sigil.
"Look closely."
The Future Self raised his hand. Seventy-nine shattered mirrors appeared in a wide circle around them, each reflecting:
Ye Lin crowned in bone, seated on a throne made of the Venom Leaf Sect's corpses
Faceless Ye Lin, fused with the Collector in a grotesque embrace
Ye Lin forever trapped, inside a family photo hanging in a wooden shack
"These are all the paths we've taken."
Suddenly, an eightieth mirror appeared still blank.
Blood from Ye Lin's bone knife dripped onto the ground, forming a strange diagram:
The Guardian's sigil at the center
Seventy-nine droplets of blood circling around it
A single golden dot, pulsing where Ye Lin stood
"The final choice," whispered a small shadow that appeared on his shoulder."Not to follow a path... but to create the eightieth."
The Future Self revealed a bell forged from living iron.
"Decide now:Kill me and take my place as the Eternal GuardianDestroy this bell and end the cycle foreverOr..."
His eyes narrowed."...create a fourth path by consuming your last corn kernel."
Ye Lin felt the kernel pulse in his pocket.
Memories surged:
His mother, smiling as she fed him corn soup
His brother, shielding him from heavy rain
His younger self, still believing in goodness
"I choose..."
His hands moved swiftly:
Crushing the corn kernel until it burst
Plunging the bone knife into his own abdomen
Pouring his golden blood into the eightieth mirror
A burst of light.
When vision returned, Ye Lin stood inside:
The wooden shack of his childhood, its walls now lined with seventy-nine portraits, each a different version of himself
The cornfield outside the window flourished, though its fruits now resembled tiny human hearts
The family photo on the table showed three figures: himself, his mother, and... the smiling shadow child
At the doorway, his Future Self gave a slow nod — then transformed into:
A giant iron butterfly, ascending skyward and leaving a trail of blue fire.
"Congratulations... true Guardian."
The cornfield outside the hut whispered softly as the morning breeze brushed against the stalks. Ye Lin stood on the threshold, eyes watching the golden pulses hanging between green leaves. They looked like tiny hearts, each one glowing faintly casting strange shadows on the ground.
Sometimes, the shadows looked like her.
Sometimes like her mother.
And sometimes… like the brother who had long disappeared.
"You can't stay here forever."
The voice came from inside the hut.
Ye Lin turned.
A small shadow—about the size of a five-year-old child—sat on the wooden table, its transparent legs swinging back and forth. In its hand, it held a bone knife, cracked and ancient.
"I know," Ye Lin whispered.
But her steps were always heavy.
Each time she tried to leave the hut, golden roots would crawl up from the ground, wrapping around her ankles like pleading hands.
On the damp wooden walls, seventy-nine paintings of her own face suddenly changed expression.
All of them… crying.
In the Real World:
Amid the ruins of the Venomous Leaf Sect, Ye Lin's body lay cold and lifeless.
But from her chest, glass flowers had begun to bloom.
A small child—the only one brave enough to approach—reached out to touch one of them.
Crack.
Its petals shattered. But what came out was not shards alone.
"Don't trust memories that are too beautiful."
It was a voice.
The child screamed. But it was too late.
The flower had pierced into his hand, like a thorn injecting something into his veins.
Instantly, his eyes changed—
Now, a golden light gleamed in his pupils.
Back in the Inner World:
Ye Lin raised her hand, attempting to summon her new power.
But what emerged was not black blood or roots
It was words.
They floated in the air like living smoke:
"Loneliness."
"Regret."
"Longing."
The small shadow leapt off the table, grabbed one of the words—"Longing"—and devoured it.
"Tasty," it murmured, eyes glinting.
"Now I understand why they want to eat us."
Ye Lin wanted to protest, to ask who they were. But suddenly—
The hut's door creaked open.
Outside, the cornfield had changed.
Its stalks were now made of bone, and its fruits were no longer corn, but miniature skulls.
At the end of the dirt path stood a familiar figure:
A woman in a red kebaya.
Her mother. Or so it seemed.
But the smile was far too wide. And her eyes… didn't blink.
"Lin'er," she called sweetly.
"Mother made you some soup."
In her hands was a bowl—
Inside it, a black liquid roiled on its own, as if alive.
The small shadow grabbed Ye Lin's arm tightly.
"Don't look! That's not her!"
But Ye Lin had already stepped forward.
Because behind the red kebaya,
She saw a single strand of white hair...
Exactly like her mother's once was.
Ye Lin stepped forward. The wind in the bone field hissed, carrying the scent of dry earth… and something rotting. Her crimson eyes locked onto the figure in the red kebaya.
She knew it wasn't her mother.
The small shadow clinging to her chest trembled, gripping tighter.
"Lin'er," the voice called again, like a broken melody from a song once beloved.
In the figure's hands, the bowl gleamed with thick black light.
The liquid inside writhed—like tortured life.
"You're not my mother," Ye Lin said, her voice hoarse but steady—holding a new kind of strength.
The figure laughed.
What once sounded sweet now cracked into the chirping of a thousand insects.
The red kebaya fluttered, revealing black roots coiled around the figure's body like restraints.
The white hair Ye Lin had seen… was now nothing but writhing black silk threads.
"Of course I am your mother," the figure hissed, stepping closer.
"Your mother who waited for you through every death, through every rebirth. In every cycle, Lin'er."
The butterfly tattoo on Ye Lin's arm burned—hot, like forged iron.
"IT'S A LIE! DON'T TOUCH HER!"
The whisper came sharper than ever before.
Ye Lin didn't answer. Her gaze locked onto the figure's eyes.
They weren't her mother's.
They were mirrors—of the seventy-nine weeping faces on her hut wall.
Eyes filled with Loneliness, Regret, and Longing.
"You gave me false memories," she said, pain curling tight around her chest.
Not just heartbreak—this was a wound filled with lies.
"You tried to trap me in the past."
The false "mother" extended the bowl.
"This is the warmth you've longed for.
The embrace you've missed.
Drink it, and we can stay here forever.
Free from the cycle.
Free from suffering."
Ye Lin looked down at the bowl.
Inside it, she saw a vision—her mother's smiling face, feeding her warm corn soup, laughing softly.
Her hand trembled… slowly reaching out.
"No!"
The small shadow screamed—leaping from Ye Lin's chest.
Mid-air, it transformed into a single golden corn kernel, shining like the last light of a dying sun.
It shot forward
and pierced the black liquid in the bowl.
The bowl screamed.
The liquid inside began to boil, vomiting golden worms, each one shrieking in pain as they evaporated into smoke.
The false "mother" staggered back.
Her face began to crack, like parched earth before a storm.
"You can't destroy my memory!"
Her voice fractured—splitting into a thousand others.
Ye Lin raised her right hand.
In it, the golden corn kernel—the small shadow—now shone with pure light.
She aimed the glow at the cracking figure.
"This isn't memory," Ye Lin said, her voice now like tempered steel.
"It's poison. And I will purify it."
The golden light surged
blasting through the fractures in the red-kebaya figure's face.
The thing screamed
no longer sweet, no longer insectile
but a howl of raw, aching torment.
The cry of thousands of souls, consumed by memory.