Fifty-seven years after Rrakavasha's death.
Ms. Durand passed away peacefully of old age, her memories intact until the very end.
Black Swan, in the role of a daughter and under the name Clarice, saw her mother off dignifiedly. After that, she left her homeland and traversed the universe, collecting the memories of thousands of people.
From time to time, she would return to Rrakavasha's bamboo house to stay for a short while and let her weary soul come to rest.
Only on his death anniversary, year after year, she would return on time without fail, never missing it even once.
...
Two hundred and three years after Rrakavasha's death.
The components of the puppet he had left behind began to age and malfunction, time finally catching up to even his masterful craftsmanship.
For many years, that mechanical puppet had been repeating certain fixed tasks with unwavering dedication.
At specific seasons, it would cultivate and mound the plum grove, harvest plum blossoms to brew wine, and send it to wherever Ruan Mei was, following centuries-old instructions
It would regularly clean Ruan Mei's home and reinforce the bamboo house with special materials.
And the path leading to Ruan Mei's residence, the vegetation on both sides never managed to grow lush, constantly being trimmed back.
Yu Qingtu watched all of it unfold. Not only did she not stop it, but when she saw the puppet malfunction, she even felt the urge to repair it herself.
But when she realized the puppet could maintain itself and even manufacture replacement components from stored materials, her feelings inevitably grew complicated.
She felt it wasn't worth it for Rrakavasha, all this effort for someone who didn't even know. Yet she also knew she not only couldn't interfere, but she also had to ensure it continued.
The reason was simple. In plain terms: everything Rrakavasha did was, without anyone realizing, stacking devotion on top of devotion.
Devotion strong enough to pierce the heart of someone who cared, and make them collapse entirely when the truth finally emerged.
...
Two hundred and seventy-six years after Rrakavasha's death.
Many major events occurred across the universe, reshaping the balance of power.
In recent years, multiple Denizens of Abundance had clashed repeatedly with the Xianzhou fleets, and the flames of war only grew fiercer with each engagement.
Many forces across the galaxy speculated that sooner or later, a blood-soaked war that would shake the cosmos was inevitable.
Even worse... perhaps another Xianzhou ship would fall, just as one had centuries before.
Most people didn't favor the Xianzhou fleets in this conflict. This rising power was too young, too inexperienced.
Even if the level of Yashi's "blessing" they had received was considered high, they were originally ordinary human primates, their combat strength questionable at best.
If they couldn't hold onto the miracles granted by Yaoshi, then in the eyes of other powerful individuals blessed by the abundance, they were nothing but fat meat waiting to be cooked.
Against the Xianzhou Alliance, various Denizens of Abundance led by Wingweavers and Borisin held the advantage in most engagements, their victories mounting.
A turning point came with the Descent of the Aeon of the Hunt.
After Lan, the Hunt, manifested before the Xianzhou many times, the Denizens of Abundance finally realized that rashly attacking the Xianzhou's main ships might cost them dearly in blood, more than they were willing to pay.
Not long after, the Foxians, who had also suffered under their attacks, and the Vidyadhara, whose homeland could no longer endure the constant warfare, joined the Xianzhou fleets one after another. The three formally formed an alliance bound by a shared purpose.
From then on, the Hunt became the unquestioned orthodox faith of the Xianzhou Alliance, surpassing even the Preservation in devotion.
Lan opened the Path's power to the entire alliance. Seven powerful successors emerged in response, honored as the Seven Arbiter-Generals, legends in their own right.
From that day, the alliance gained the strength to confront the Abundance head-on, no longer losing most battles.
However, even with new power flowing through their ranks, the Xianzhou Alliance still couldn't crush the Denizens of Abundance entirely.
Their foundation was still shallow; they needed time to grow, to solidify what they'd built.
Their primary fighting force, the Cloud Knights, were originally merely mortals, or Foxians who had received the gift of long life.
Compared to the Denizens of Abundance, who inherently possessed special abilities from birth, the gap in raw combat strength was obvious and difficult to bridge.
As for the Vidyadhara, though their bodies were strong and their combat power outstanding thanks to rebirth, they couldn't reproduce; they were an irreplaceable resource that dwindled with every loss.
Unless it was a matter of survival, the alliance would never deploy the Vidyadhara on a large scale to frontline battlefields. They were too precious to waste.
In Star Calendar Year 4274, the Xianzhou Cangcheng annihilated a large army of Denizens of Abundance and won that bloody war through sacrifice and determination.
The reigning Cangcheng general suffered permanent psychological trauma and was unfit to fight again, so they abdicated in favor of a worthy successor.
Two years later, the retired general married a Cloud Knight vanguard commander from the Xianzhou Luofu who had come to reinforce Cangcheng during the darkest hours.
It was said that this vanguard was named Qi Chengyou, and after the war, he settled in Cangcheng, making it his permanent home.
He led an elite squad of fewer than a hundred, holding the entrance to a refuge grotto-heaven through the fires of war, sparing over a hundred million ordinary people their deaths.
His deeds spread throughout the Xianzhou Alliance like wildfire. The union of a retired general and a heroic vanguard became a celebrated tale passed down through later generations, a story of love born from war.
...
Four hundred and eighty-eight years after Rrakavasha's death.
In a remote corner of the universe, in a land with no people and no witnesses.
On a planet with no civilization, an apocalyptic earthquake erupted without warning.
When the disaster finally subsided, the planet's ecosystem, which had rapidly evolved due to outside influence, ceased to exist, wiped clean as though it had never been.
The entire world seemed to have been affected, except for Ruan Mei's manor and the underground laboratory beneath it, untouched islands in a sea of destruction.
The long-sealed laboratory doors slowly opened with a hiss of released pressure.
A woman with hair like a cascading waterfall and a gentle, refined presence walked out, her expression unchanged.
The destruction of the planet's ecosystem didn't stir even the slightest ripple in Ruan Mei's emotions. It was simply another variable, another data point.
Her long-running research had once again reached a halt, and this time it had lasted longer than any before, decades of stagnation.
To get the next stage, something was always missing... some crucial element she couldn't identify.
To cross that threshold, she hadn't stepped outside the laboratory doors for over thirty years, yet still couldn't achieve what she wanted. Progress remained frustratingly out of reach.
Returning to the manor, Ruan Mei saw ten jars of plum blossom wine piled in the designated spot, the puppet not yet having moved them to the underground lab.
That was this year's allotment, each jar enough for her to drink for over a month.
This was also the only special contact she had with Vash each year, proof that the bond between teacher and student hadn't been completely severed despite centuries of silence.
Ruan Mei subconsciously calculated the time it had been, since the day Rrakavasha left her tutelage..
"Exactly six hundred years, huh."
She hadn't expected that, without noticing, so much time had already passed. Time moved differently when you were immortal and consumed by work.
With the research still making no progress, perhaps she should go and see Vash...
Having made up her mind, Ruan Mei was just about to contact Rrakavasha when she realized the earthquake had destroyed the planet's interstellar signal relay stations completely, shattered beyond immediate repair.
This planet had only ever been able to contact the outside world one-way through those stations, and now even that was impossible.
Fine.
A vast rift opened in the earth, and a spacecraft rose from within like a mechanical phoenix.
Only as Ruan Mei piloted the ship into the starry sky did she remember something else, a detail she'd overlooked entirely.
After centuries, she didn't actually know where Rrakavasha was. She'd never bothered to track down his location beyond the wine deliveries.
She returned to the manor, found the shipping address used for the plum blossom wine, and only then obtained a precise destination.
The name of that planet felt familiar... as if she had been there at some point in time, though her memory was hazy.
Not until she entered its orbital path and saw it with her own eyes did Ruan Mei's memory, long out of sync with the era due to her immersion in research, finally recall certain things.
Long ago, after her parents died in an accident, she had used special means to move her house, already broken beyond repair. She had brought it here...
After that, she had lived on this planet only briefly before departing into the galaxy to seek suitable research specimens for her work.
Rrakavasha's homeworld had been the first, the beginning of everything.
Afterward, she picked up Rrakavasha and brought him back to live here for a few years while he recovered.
Once he recovered, they left together for the next planet, an uninhabited land, and in a blink, centuries passed like water running through your fingers.
Over time, she had actually set this matter aside, forgetting it for a while, just another detail lost to the endless passing of the years.
Vash... why would he return here?