Zhang Renxing. Everyone else calls him Old Zhang. He looks like a young man of twenty-four, with a relaxed expression. Sitting down beside a tea table, he is utterly indistinguishable from an ordinary person tending flowers and plants in an alley.
No one can say how long he has lived. No one can even be sure that “Zhang Renxing” is his real name. All they know is that he already existed in the chaos before all things first took shape. He does not stand at the peak of the laws, but at a level beyond their reach. Before him, none of the rules governing the myriad worlds, none of the writings chronicling their rise and fall, and none of the predetermined paths of their narratives can stir the slightest ripple.
He has passed through a thousand lifetimes and reincarnations. He has been an emperor ruling mountains and rivers, a mercenary traveling among the stars, and even a cleaner sweeping fallen leaves beneath a magic tower. No one knows what he sought through those thousand lives. They only know that when he awoke in the servant quarters of the cultivation world in his final life, he raised a hand and erased a calamity that should have destroyed an entire world.
Later, he founded the Epoch Guild. Some say he intends to preserve the balance of the multiverse; others say he is waiting for a promise even he can no longer remember. No one has ever seen him truly act. They only know that whenever he lifts his eyes, even the folds of spacetime quietly smooth themselves out.
He always smiles and says that no one is born a hero. But no one knows that he has long stood outside every hero's story.
