Xu Yang couldn’t help himself — he had come looking for Rong Qian again.

Ever since they had parted ways in Hong Kong and gone their separate directions, Xu Yang found himself constantly unable to stop thinking about her. So today, with nothing pressing on his schedule, he drove over to find her.

But the moment he pulled up to the precinct entrance, he saw Rong Qian getting into a car with a man.

He had arrived at an inopportune moment and hadn’t gotten a proper look at the man’s face. All he could tell was that the man was tall and slender, with the build of a model and an air about him that radiated wealth and privilege — clearly no ordinary person.

Xu Yang stared. Who was that?

Inside the car, Rong Qian sat holding Shen Yi’s hand as though she would never let go. Her eyes were fixed entirely on him, so absorbed that she hadn’t noticed what kind of car she’d gotten into or who was driving.

It was Shen Shuhuai’s voice from the driver’s seat that finally broke through: “Miss Rong, you must be shocked. I was speechless myself when I first saw him.”

The sight of Shen Shuhuai snapped Rong Qian back to reality. “You — you already knew Shen Yi was back?”

It was a question that didn’t quite make sense given the circumstances, but that Rong Qian was this composed at all was already remarkable.

Shen Shuhuai smiled. “He came back at two in the morning. I thought I was dreaming.”

“Shen Yi — what exactly happened?” Rong Qian finally remembered to ask.

She had looked him over carefully. There was no doubt — this was the Shen Yi she had been longing for, unmistakably him.

And at this point in time, he would be thirty-two years old. The gravity and maturity between his brows were clearly visible.

Shen Yi held her hand. Under Rong Qian’s questioning gaze, he spoke quietly: “A’Qian, I’ve been by your side all along.”

“Hmm?” Rong Qian didn’t understand. What did he mean, by her side all along?

Shen Yi spoke gently. “Do you remember what you once told me? When you were small, you sometimes did strange things, and your family once took you to have your fortune read. The fortune teller said there was a guardian spirit beside you.”

“I remember!” Of course she remembered — but that was from her childhood. Why was he bringing it up now?

“That was me,” Shen Yi told her.

“You?” Rong Qian was stunned.

Shen Yi nodded. “A’Qian, you may not have known — but from the moment you were born, I was already there beside you.”

“Are… are you being serious?” Rong Qian stared at him, astonished. Could something like that really happen?

Shen Yi continued, unruffled. “A’Qian, do you remember the photograph you brought me?”

“The photograph — could it be—!” The realization struck her like lightning.

Shen Yi nodded, confirming what she had already guessed. “Yes. Like you, when I fell into the sea, I still had that photograph clutched in my hand. As I sank to the bottom and my consciousness was slipping away, the photograph before my eyes… turned to ash.”

“And then?” Rong Qian pressed, unable to wait.

Shen Yi continued calmly. “When I next opened my eyes, I found myself trapped in a chaotic void — something like a rift between time and space.”

The more Rong Qian heard, the more impossible it all seemed. In other words, unlike her — who had opened her eyes and simply found herself transported to another era — Shen Yi had been trapped.

“Because of the temporal paradox.” Shen Yi offered a slight smile and explained: “You could travel into my time because it was already history — something that had already occurred. But I would be traveling into the future, and at that point, the future had yet to unfold.”

“So you had to wait — wait for the moment in time when I took that photograph to finally arrive, until the future existed as fact, before you could emerge from that rift?” Rong Qian worked it out carefully.

The faint smile at the corner of Shen Yi’s mouth confirmed she was right.

“I was trapped for nearly thirty-odd years. In the beginning, there was nothing but darkness all around me. Then — when you were born — I heard the cry of an infant. A light appeared before me, and I could see you.”

Rong Qian’s eyes went wide. “You mean — from the moment I was born, you were already watching me?”

“Yes. Though I still don’t fully understand why it happened that way. But I could indeed see you. When you were two years old, I tried calling out to you — and you seemed to hear me. You even seemed to see me. You laughed and waved at me.” Shen Yi’s expression softened at the memory.

She didn’t know how endearingly small she had been then. Though even now, she still had her moments of adorable charm.

Rong Qian was utterly incredulous. Shen Yi had watched her grow up.

“It wasn’t until you took on Xu Mo’s case and came across that photograph of the two of us that I was finally able to step out of the rift.”

“You came out back then?” Rong Qian asked, surprised.

“Not quite — not in any real sense. I could only appear for very brief stretches of time — a few minutes at most before I was pulled back.” Shen Yi paused, then met her eyes with an expression of quiet tenderness. “The night you walked downstairs and found the television playing footage of me — that was me. I turned it on for you to see.”

Rong Qian blinked. That detail had puzzled her for so long. Now, finally, it made sense.

“Afterward, I appeared again a few more times, late at night, in scattered intervals. But you always seemed to take seeing me as part of a dream.” Shen Yi reached out and gently touched the top of her head as he said it.

Rong Qian thought back — and realized it was exactly true.

So that time she had jumped into the sea and seen Shen Yi appear — that hadn’t been a hallucination either?

Shen Yi smiled. “That was really me. Not a hallucination.”

Every question that had lingered unanswered finally received its explanation, all at once.

“How is something like this even possible? It’s absolutely unbelievable!” The more Rong Qian thought about it, the more surreal it felt — even more surreal than her own journey through time.

But what Shen Yi said next stunned her even further. “A’Qian, I actually met Shen Yi once.”

“What?” Rong Qian didn’t follow for a moment.

Shen Yi smiled. “Don’t be puzzled — I mean the past version of me. You might remember — didn’t I once tell you that after I became ill, it seemed as though I had traveled into your world and met you there?”

“I remember that!” The incident had left a vivid impression on Rong Qian — Shen Yi had even coughed up blood.

Shen Yi reflected on it with quiet wonder. “I was surprised myself at the time — to come face to face with my younger self, the Shen Yi in his twenties. That younger Shen Yi was equally startled to see the version of me standing before him. I passed on a few things for him to remember, but it seems that after he returned, he forgot most of it.”

But eventually, the memory came back to him.

He remembered that he would not die — that instead, he would be trapped in a rift between time and space. And so, without hesitation, he had boarded that ship.

Then the fall into the sea. And history returned to the path it was always meant to take.

And so came the Shen Yi of now — who had waited for over thirty years and crossed the span of an entire era to bring himself into a world where she existed.

And in that world left behind, Shen Yi had vanished completely…