Nine-Thousand-Year-Old Hero: Poplar's End-of-the-World Inferno

The world has become an endless sea of sand. Only the ancient Poplar tree veins sustain its last spark of life, yet they are being ravaged by Sun-Eroding Black Mists and extreme weather. Ye Zhen, the ninth-generation Guardian, was born bearing the "Tree-Ring Curse": every time she uses her power, another inch of her arm turns to petrified deadwood. When the ninth ring is complete, she will become a stump.

Three years ago, a sandstorm struck without warning. Her mentor was petrified, the entire guard was wiped out, and her younger sister Ye Ling was corrupted by the Black Mist, becoming the "Sandstorm Witch" who slaughters the surviving refugees. Now she shoulders the burden alone. Her left hand is already hard as stone, while her right grips a camel-bone dagger made from the spine of the previous Guardian. She crawls over scorching sands beneath a blazing sun and fights off clawed sand wolves on soul-freezing nights, all to repair the tree veins and find her sister.

In her darkest hour, she awakens inherited memories and uses the wisdom of her predecessors to strike back at the Black Mist creatures, but at the cost of accelerating her petrification. The twin silver bells conceal the key to breaking the deadlock, yet even their echoes carry the pain of sisters turning against each other. As the Black Mist from the Abyss of Sun-Erosion rolls toward the last oasis, she stands on the razor's edge between "saving her sister" and "saving the world." This time, she will not accept another sacrifice in a nine-thousand-year cycle of reincarnation. With her body of deadwood, she will burn a path to new life.