The Hero’s End

Prologue: The Fall of a Hero

Gentle sunlight filtered through the gaps between the leaves, scattering over the lush grass.

A soft breeze swept across the lake, making ripples glimmer under the light.

A young boy was sleeping beside the lake, and when the light shone on his delicate face, his eyelids twitched involuntarily.

But soon, the boy lost his peaceful expression, his face twisting into pain as if he were having a nightmare.

“Ah!”

Suddenly, it was as if the boy had dreamed of his greatest sorrow. With a loud cry, he jolted upright like a carp leaping out of water.

He gasped heavily, touching his forehead to find it covered in cold sweat.

Almost out of instinct, he began to recall his identity.

His name was Ye Lan, 124 years old, a General, and the commander of the Human Alliance’s Second Fleet—the “Argos” Fleet.

He had extensive combat experience and command skills, having personally led the “Aldington Defense,” the “Weiyang Protectorate War,” and the “Gnotis Grand Battle”—all crucial campaigns for the survival of human civilization.

But…

Ye Lan lowered his head and looked at his hands.

There wasn’t a single callus or wound on them.

Yet Ye Lan had fought all his life; how could he possibly have such perfect, unscarred hands?

It was utterly impossible!!!

“Gugu~” A bird with golden feathers tipped in purple landed on Ye Lan’s shoulder and chirped cheerfully.

Ye Lan froze for a moment, then reached out to tap the bird’s beak with his finger.

“Xiao Ke?”

The little creature, startled by Ye Lan’s movement, flapped its wings a few times before biting his finger like it was a worm.

“Yikes! You little brat!” Ye Lan yelped, quickly retracting his finger. The bird didn’t care at all, and the two red marks on his finger nearly drew blood.

Before Ye Lan could grab it, the bird flew to a treetop, looking down at him with what seemed like mockery.

Ye Lan felt helpless. Humans couldn’t fly; if the bird didn’t come to him, he couldn’t catch it. He looked around, trying to understand his surroundings.

The environment felt both unfamiliar and familiar to Ye Lan.

Unfamiliar, because he had spent a century fighting across the stars, never seeing natural scenery;

Familiar, because it stirred memories from the deepest corners of his mind…

As his consciousness touched the oldest of memories, Ye Lan’s voice trembled:

“This is… Xin Laines! Xin Laines? Am I dreaming?”

Xin Laines, a planet developed under the Human Alliance’s new policy, had started later than others but was gradually approaching prosperity—though that would take decades.

Before Xin Laines was fully terraformed, its surface was covered with natural forests and grasslands, making tourism and wellness its main sources of income.

Yes, this was exactly where Ye Lan was most familiar—Xin Laines, the place he had grown up.

And the splendor of this lake had been the secret base he shared with her.

“Right… what about her…” Ye Lan suddenly realized. But almost immediately, a sharp pain shot through his mind, making him cry out, “Ah! This is…”

…

In a daze, Ye Lan seemed to find himself standing on the bridge of a warship.

The bridge, meant to command the ship, was now strewn with wreckage and the corpses of alien insects.

The transparent viewports for observation were shattered, and the thick armor that separated the interior from space was riddled with holes, showing the ship had long been destroyed.

Through these gaps, Ye Lan could even see alien insects drifting outside the vessel.

The only living being on the bridge seemed to be an elderly human still sitting in the captain’s chair—the ship’s commander.

The old man wore a uniform, his chest adorned with medals that testified to his military achievements.

Yet now, he had lost all his dignity and warmth.

Blood ran from his forehead, his cap had fallen off, revealing graying hair.

[Warning! Warning! Severe hull damage! All turrets offline! Power systems destroyed! Life support offline! Warning! Warning! Hull integrity 95%! …]

The ship’s AI was still functional, projecting warnings across the bridge, but the old man sat motionless, seemingly resigned to his fate.

No matter his status or achievements, now he was just a dying man.

Upon seeing the old man, Ye Lan immediately recognized him—this old man was himself.

This was Ye Lan’s final mission: to use the “Argos” ship’s singularity energy to destroy the alien wormhole.

Ye Lan tried to speak, but he couldn’t even open his mouth.

Everything before him was his own past self; he had no power to interfere.

Amid the red glow of alarms, the old man reached into his chest with a withered hand and pulled out a worn photograph.

In the radiation-filled vastness of space, organic polymer materials rarely survived intact, and this photo was already covered in countless scratches.

For humans, photographs carry images of the past, memories of what has been, and even form part of the essence of human memory.

But now, on this photograph, only the faint outline of a young girl could barely be made out, her features unrecognizable.

This was the old man’s final obsession, his sole unwillingness before death.

A hundred years had blurred the old man’s memory, leaving him at the end of his life to sigh in frustration: “Where are you?”

Before the ship’s gravity system completely failed, a single old tear fell onto the photograph, dampening the already blurry image.

In the old man’s eyes, the photograph was tattered and incomplete, the memory vague.

But at this moment, in Ye Lan’s eyes, the image on the photograph began to reconstruct itself, gradually restoring.

Eventually, in the photograph appeared a young girl with long black hair.

She wore a neat school uniform and responded to the camera with a radiant smile, a smile filled with pure happiness.

“Su Lixiao!” Ye Lan recalled, all at once remembering everything.

The girl in the photograph was named Su Lixiao, Ye Lan’s childhood friend, his lover, and a human alliance-certified S-class psychic.

But Su Lixiao’s age remained frozen at twenty.

…

The scene before Ye Lan shifted, drawn from the depths of his memory.

This time, the backdrop was not the interior of a ship, but a ruined city.

Among the broken walls and scattered debris of buildings, people ran in all directions.

Warships kept crashing from the sky, and wherever they fell, fire engulfed the streets.

Causing all this was the crimson wormhole opened in the sky.

Monstrous, massive creatures crawled out of the wormhole, rampaging, trampling, destroying, and devouring everything in the city they could see.

Cries for help, collapsing buildings, and the roars of the beasts all blended together, forming a living hell on earth.

This planet was Gnotis.

Gnotis, once meant to be the most prosperous, beautiful, and fertile planet in its star region, was on this day filled with alarms echoing across the stars, the city collapsing under the alien assault.

And unfortunately, on that day, Ye Lan and Su Lixiao were on Gnotis.

At the entrance of the last rescue ship, the girl said to the boy: “Ye Lan, I must stay behind.”

The boy asked: “Can’t we go together?”

But the girl only shook her head gently.

She looked at the anxious boy and smiled: “Don’t worry. I am a psychic. I’m not as fragile as you.”

She gave him one last loving glance, then resolutely turned away.

The light purple hem of her skirt fluttered in the wind, and facing the monstrous beasts that rose like mountains, the petite girl wielded her long sword.

Even when her skirt was stained red and her sword broke, she did not step back.

Everything she did was to cover the escape of the one she loved.

That day, Gnotis’s capital fell, and Ye Lan lost Su Lixiao.

…

And this tragedy, Ye Lan could only watch, powerless to act.

In this era where nearly everyone had psychic abilities, Ye Lan had none.

No abilities meant falling behind in any challenge.

Ye Lan had tried, but the harsh reality made him realize that no matter how hard he worked, it was futile.

So he came to believe that even if the sky fell, someone else would bear it.

Thus, he stopped striving, stopped resisting fate.

But he overlooked one thing: the people he cherished most, and who cherished him, would leave to protect him.

Even as Ye Lan later worked tirelessly, became commander of the Human Alliance’s Second Fleet, repelled the alien insects, and even reclaimed Gnotis, what was lost could never return…

Ye Lan regretted his past inaction and hated his powerless self.

Back on Gnotis, he felt Su Lixiao stayed behind partly because she was disappointed in him.

In truth, lacking psychic abilities did not mean one could do nothing.

Effort might not guarantee results, but giving up would guarantee failure.

Yet by the time Ye Lan understood this, it was far too late.

Perhaps still clinging to hope, he stubbornly refused to accept Su Lixiao’s sacrifice.

He insisted she was not dead, that she was merely missing, that one day they would meet again—until fate’s final end descended upon him.

At some point, the scene before Ye Lan returned to the shattered bridge.

The ship, battered and sliced by the alien creatures, seemed on the verge of collapse.

Ye Lan looked at the old man in the captain’s chair—himself—but saw that the old man had already stopped breathing.

The photograph of Su Lixiao slipped from his hand and floated into the air due to weightlessness.

Ye Lan instinctively reached for the photograph, but suddenly, a brilliant light surged before him.

A suffocating force struck him, making his vision black, and then he fell back into reality.

…

“Ha—ha—” Back in reality, Ye Lan’s survival instincts made him gasp, drawing in deep breaths of the surrounding air.

The world around him remained filled with birdsong and fragrant flowers, as if nothing had changed.

As oxygen filled his lungs, his mind gradually calmed.

These fragments of memory seemed to tell Ye Lan one thing—he was already dead.

Yet, why was he here on Xin Laines?

Why was he still alive?