There was no light in the underground city. But in that abandoned waiting room, An Muqing served porridge in a clean enamel bowl, heated soup on a tin stove, and saved the last clean strips of cloth to bandage his wounds. She didn't have any special skills. She simply sat there, and the whole room felt warmer. Whenever Lin Qi returned over rust and rubble, he could always see that little glow of golden warmth from the sequence.
He couldn't explain what he was guarding: her, or the warmth of that bowl of porridge.
Later, Ye Xiaoman huddled deep inside a pipeline, clutching his coat. Shen Tinglan pressed a silver pocket watch and a battered notebook into his hands. Xia Yubing lifted her chin and said, "If one of us dies, we all die together." The people who reached out to him in the darkness changed his goal from "survive" to "make sure they survive too," and then to "make sure more people can see this light."
The void was devouring the world. Spiritual power was running dry. The blade of the Scarlet Flame hung over their heads. The Shepherd used illusions to fabricate "peace," while he had to fight back with the truth. The sequence was the world's source code. He could read it and rewrite it, but every time he wove it, he lost a little of his humanity.
But he would never go back on the promises he'd made: take An Muqing to see the sea, establish a research institute for Shen Tinglan, wait for Ye Xiaoman to grow up, and help Xia Yubing carve out a way to survive in this rotten world.
So he had to live. He had to grow stronger. He had to lead every last person waiting beyond the gates of Morningstar into a sunlit tomorrow.
