After I died, they cried in the live studio

Chapter 197 Filming in the Desert 2
Sang Shuwan turned on the projector and played unreleased footage they had shot in Iceland: as Sang Jiyue spun, Sang Shuwan's blurry figure running with a reflector appeared in the frame, overlapping with the scene in the 1907 film, forming a montage that transcends time and space.

“In 1907, my great-grandfather recorded the legend of the Twin Stars with a hand-cranked camera; in 2025, we reconstructed this story with an 8K camera.” Sang Shuwan’s voice gradually became firm. “All the starlight in film history is the flame left behind by our predecessors who burned themselves out. And we—” She turned to look at Sang Jiyue, whose eyes reflected the star trails on the screen, more dazzling than any special effect, “are the ones who catch the flame, and the ones who make it burn again.”

Applause suddenly erupted from the audience. It was the renowned European director who had criticized Eastern sentimentality years ago. He walked onto the stage and placed his Palme d'Or trophy in their clasped hands: "True cinematic art is never about replicating stars, but about learning how to resonate with starlight." Half an hour later, the trending topic reversed, with #TwinFlowersCentennialStarTrajectoryRelay# trending globally. Netizens discovered that the "meteorite" in the 1907 film was actually a rubbing of a Tang Dynasty star map from the Dunhuang Academy—and the same setting in Sang Shuwan's script originated from her notes taken at the Cannes Film Festival.

Back at the old house late at night, they placed the two rolls of film under the starry sky for comparison. Sang Jiyue leaned against Sang Shuwan's chest, watching the star charts of the two eras overlap in the beams of light, when she suddenly noticed a very faint scratch at the end of the 1907 film: "Before we met in the Milky Way, we had already reincarnated countless times in time." Sang Shuwan's lips touched the top of her hair, carrying the scent of cedar and gunpowder: "In the next life, I still want to be your director, filming our countlessth encounter."

Moonlight streamed through the skylight, weaving star trails across their clasped hands. Sang Jiyue touched the engravings on the inside of the film canister and suddenly smiled—the string of numbers was the date of their first meeting. It turned out that some destinies had their endings written a hundred years ago, in the instant the shutter clicked.

The next day, the sisters received a mysterious invitation. The envelope was printed with the same star pattern as the film canister. Upon opening it, they discovered it was from a reclusive film collector who claimed to know more secrets about the 1907 film "Star Trails" and invited them to his mountain film archive to explore it.

Without hesitation, the two embarked on their journey. Ancient pines whispered along the mountain path, as if telling untold stories. Upon arrival, a sprightly old man with white hair had been waiting for them for some time, leading them into a room filled with antique projectors and precious film reels.

“Star Trails is not an ordinary silent film,” the old man said slowly. “It is an image captured by Mr. Sang using special optical principles to capture the moment when different times and spaces intersect.”

He took out a yellowed diary, which recorded the strange phenomena during filming—when moonlight shone on the lens, figures that did not belong to the present appeared in the frame, namely Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue from different times and spaces. The last page read: "I do not know what their fate will be, but I believe that this bond that transcends time will eventually reignite the flame of cinema."

After leaving the film library, the two stood atop the mountain, gazing at the world shrouded in mist. Sunlight pierced through the clouds, bathing them in warmth. Sang Shuwan held her sister's hand tightly: "It turns out our story was already orchestrated by fate, and what we must do is continue writing our own chapter."

Sang Jiyue leaned on her sister's shoulder, smiled and nodded: "For our next movie, we'll film this story so that more people will believe that true love and dreams can transcend time and space."

A gentle breeze carries vows into the distance. In every corner of the city, people are still discussing "Star Trails," a cinematic legend spanning a century, which shines like the brightest star in the night sky, illuminating countless people's aspirations for film, love, and destiny.

A week later, the cast and crew of "Star Trails" presented restored footage at the Cannes Film Festival's "Classic Restorations" section. As the two sisters walked hand in hand down the red carpet, global cameras focused on the red string silver rings on their wrists—#TwinsCannesLoveTokens# instantly topped the trending charts, and fashion brands launched the "Star Trails Series" jewelry overnight, replicating the cross-shaped star pattern from the film.

At the film festival premiere, a montage of restored film and modern footage stunned the audience. When the image of Sang Jiyue running in Iceland in 1907, with the great-grandfather of the Sang family holding a reflector, overlapped with the scene of Sang Jiyue, a French New Wave director sitting in the front row suddenly stood up and applauded, stating that he saw "quantum entanglement in the DNA of film." Even more astonishingly, the Dunhuang Academy followed up by announcing a collaboration with the film crew to launch a "Tang Dynasty Star Chart Digital Film Exhibition," using AR technology to recreate the original meteorite prop from the film—the mysterious patterns of which have been identified as fragments of the star chart from the *Kaiyuan Zhanjing*.

The entertainment industry's winds shifted rapidly. Marketing accounts that had previously questioned whether the "twin flowers" were merely a result of capital hype began digging into their records from their time at the Beijing Film Academy ten years prior: Sang Shuwan's graduation short film, "Stardust," edited in her dorm during her sophomore year, featured a hand-cranked camera shake at the end, identical to that of a 1907 film reel; Sang Jiyue's prepared script for her art exams turned out to be a fragment from her great-grandfather's diary, titled "Love Letters of Light and Shadow." Paparazzi-taken CCTV footage from their old house showed the two frequently rehearsing lines under a film projector under a starry sky; on one occasion, when Sang Shuwan pinned a brooch on Sang Jiyue, the reflection in the mirror perfectly mirrored the posture of a woman adjusting a tripod in the film reel.

Streaming platforms with a keen sense of capital immediately extended olive branches. Netflix offered an eight-figure sum to the two for the English-language documentary "Star Trails: A Century of Film Experimentation Across Time"; domestic video platforms launched the "Twin Universe" concept, announcing the development of a prequel series to "Star Trails," with Sang Shuwan as the director and Sang Jiyue playing the film's female lead a century ago. As soon as the casting news broke, a short video of "Sang Jiyue in a Republic-era look," created using AI face-swapping technology, garnered over 100 million likes on Douyin, and even Hollywood talent scouts tweeted: "This isn't casting, it's genes talking to the camera."

However, the controversy did not completely subside. A prominent film critic published an article on his public WeChat account titled "When Reincarnation Becomes a Marketing Tool: Beware of the Mysticization of the Film Industry," questioning whether the production team was using "past lives and present lives" hype to cover up narrative flaws. That evening, Sang Shuwan posted storyboard manuscripts on Weibo—in the 2018 version of the script for *Star Trails*, the meteorite setting was marked with "Needs verification from Dunhuang documents" in red pen, while in the 2023 revised version, the prop was officially renamed "Fragment of a Star Map from the Kaiyuan Era," with a copy of an academic report from the research institute pasted in the annotation column. "It's never been mysticism, it's filmmakers' obsession with details," she wrote, accompanied by a photo of two people looking at ancient books in the Dunhuang Library, sunlight weaving starlight through the window lattice onto the manuscript paper.

Amidst the hustle and bustle of the entertainment industry, the twin stars maintained their own rhythm. They turned down twenty-seven commercial endorsements, but accepted the invitation from the National Astronomical Observatories to become "Science Ambassadors for China's Lunar Exploration Program." At the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, Sang Jiyue held a miniature camera to record the moment the rocket lifted off, while Sang Shuwan adjusted the camera position beside her. Their shadows overlapped to form a cross beneath the launch pad—a perfect analogy for their tacit collaboration on set. This footage was edited into a CCTV News special, "Science and Art," with narration featuring the Palme d'Or award citation from a renowned European director: "When filmmakers learn to measure the universe with their lenses, art gains weight that transcends time and space."

At the closing ceremony of the Beijing International Film Festival in late autumn, *Star Trails* won both Best Director and Best Actress awards. When Sang Shu went on stage to accept the award, she deliberately hung her great-grandfather's pocket watch inside her dress; the words "To My Yao Guang" flashed as the watch case opened and closed. When Sang Jiyue held her trophy and gave her thanks, she suddenly pointed to the back row of the audience—where sat two elderly people with white hair, the very same desert guide who had jokingly said in Dunhuang that "the Milky Way is in their eyes." As the camera panned across the audience, the director gave a close-up of their clasped hands: between the red string and silver ring, a commemorative badge engraved with "SSW+SJY 1907-2025" had appeared.

As the event ended, reporters pressed them for their next project. Sang Shuwan, watching the ginkgo leaves fall from the sky, suddenly recalled the old film reels in the cellar of their old house—a previously unreleased scene still lingered there: on a sand dune in 1907, her great-grandfather and the female lead sat side-by-side, drawing star maps in the sand with charcoal, while in the distance, the sound of camel bells faintly echoed the clapperboard of a modern film set. "Next project," she said, turning to Sang Jiyue, whose eyes reflected the neon lights outside the venue, much like the stars in the Dunhuang night sky. "We want to make a film about the 'present'—the love and dreams of ordinary people unfolding under the starry sky of a century ago."

On the phone handed to her by her assistant, Weibo's trending topics were refreshing again: under the hashtag #TwinFlowersNextStopStarTrails#, netizens were posting "starlight photos" of themselves with their loved ones and friends. Some drew crosses with latte art, some created star trail patterns on the snow, and some programmers even coded dynamic starlight effects. Sang Jiyue smiled as she took the phone and replied to the topic with a candid shot from the set: Sang Shuwan was squatting on the sand adjusting the camera position, holding a reflector and standing against the light, their shadows converging in front of the lens to form a dancing starlight.

“Film is the art of creating dreams,” Sang Shuwan said, gently smoothing her wind-blown hair as fireworks burst in the night sky in the distance. “But the best dream is always the one that is happening right now.”

The following spring, Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue officially launched their "Ordinary People's Star Trail Project." They took a small film crew deep into the streets and alleys of the city, focusing their cameras on an elderly couple sharing a bowl of wontons at a breakfast stall, interns sharing headphones in an office building, and best friends touching up each other's makeup at a night market. On the steep steps of Chongqing's mountain city, Sang Jiyue used a stabilizer to film a couple running to deliver food, while Sang Shuwan crouched at a corner to record with her phone the moment a boy shielded a girl from an oncoming motorcycle and scraped his knee—this footage was later edited into a short film, "Mountain City Stardust," which garnered 30 million views on Bilibili. The top comment was: "So the Milky Way isn't in the sky; it's in the way his hands trembled as he applied medicine to my wound."

A wave of "de-superficial" creative works has swept through the entertainment industry, with popular stars turning down roles in period dramas at film studios to experience real life alongside the cast of "Twin Flowers." Top actor Lin Yanzhi spent three months learning to stretch noodles at a Lanzhou noodle shop, all to bring his portrayal of a young man from Northwest China in "Star Trails 2" to life. Actress Zhou Manshu turned down international fashion weeks to learn pottery from artisans in Jingdezhen for six months, all for her three lines in the film about "the female ceramicist and the starry sky." Sang Shuwan's director's notes were adapted into the industry documentary "When the Lens Points Down," where in one episode she squats in a cramped stairwell in an urban village adjusting the lighting, saying to the camera: "When you learn to use a 35mm lens to capture the everyday life of a vegetable market, you'll never again feel that tears under the spotlight are so precious."

Amidst controversy, the Twin Flowers Cinema universe quietly took shape. While filming *Rainforest Star Trails* on the Yunnan border, they unexpectedly discovered star charts drawn on the ground by local left-behind children using twigs. They improvised a script change, having the children naturally portray the scene of "writing star language with fireflies." This spirited performance moved the Cannes jury, ultimately awarding the film the "Caméra d'Or Special Mention." On the awards stage, Sang Jiyue held a little Hani girl, thanking her in somewhat broken local dialect. Behind them, on a large screen, the child's crooked starlight drawings gradually overlapped with a star chart from a 1907 film, creating a dialogue of childlike innocence across a century.

Capital is starting to pursue them in new ways. A tech giant announced the establishment of "Star Trails Pictures," promising to invest in five "non-genre films" annually, with Sang Shuwan serving as art director; the international luxury brand LV launched the "Star Artisan" series, inviting Sang Jiyue to film a short film, but she insisted on casting a clock restorer from the Palace Museum as the lead, only making a cameo appearance as a "lighting assistant" at the end. Most surprisingly, they rejected an offer from Marvel for a superhero movie, but accepted a commission from National Geographic to film a twelve-episode nature documentary, "Stories of the Chinese Starry Sky," from the Dunhuang star map to the FAST telescope, presenting the ancients' romantic "gazing at the universe" with cinematic visuals.

The paparazzi could no longer capture their "dirt," but they could always catch heartwarming details: when Sang Shuwan was giving a speech to the cast by Qinghai Lake, Sang Jiyue quietly handed everyone hand warmers; "Xinggui," the stray dog ​​the two adopted on the XJ set, would often squat by the monitor watching playback, wagging its tail and circling when the director yelled "cut." Once, during a late-night location change, Sang Jiyue fell asleep leaning against the RV seat, and Sang Shuwan used her storyboard as a pillow for her, while she herself revised the script by the dim light of her phone. The screen's brightness reflected on her face, just like how she looked ten years ago when she stayed up all night editing films in the Beijing Film Academy dormitory.

In 2027, the final chapter of the Star Trails series, "Starlight at This Moment," premiered globally in Dunhuang. Outside the screening room, in the desert, the crew used thousands of solar-powered lights to create a star trail pattern reminiscent of a century ago. As the audience entered, each received a "starlight badge" engraved with their initials. When the end credits rolled, Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue walked onto the stage with their "Star Trails" dog. The giant screen behind them suddenly switched to a real-time starry sky—the Milky Way in Dunhuang was clearly visible. At the moment a shooting star streaked across the sky, the entire audience simultaneously raised their phones, the flashes weaving new star trails across the desert.

After the screening, a fan found a note on the sand dunes, handwritten by Sang Shuwan: "My great-grandfather in 1907 probably didn't know that he was not only photographing star trails, but also a belief—a belief that the camera can capture fragments of time, a belief that love will repeatedly reunite in different times and spaces." Under the starry sky ceiling of the old house, the latest film canisters contain their selfies from the set: Sang Shuwan holding the clapperboard, Sang Jiyue making a peace sign, and next to the "SJY+SSW" markings in the background, a new line of small characters has been engraved—"2027, continue chasing the next star." The clamor of the entertainment industry has never ceased, but the story of these two stars has long transcended the realm of mere popularity. They have used ten years to prove that true stardom isn't found on the trending topics list, but in every moment of earnestly recording life and believing in beauty. When Sang Shuwan posted a group photo of the crew at the end of filming on Weibo, the smiles of the extras in the photo were more dazzling than any star's. She captioned it: "In the next decade, we will film the dust in the Milky Way, and film how every person who lives earnestly becomes their own universe."

The comment section was instantly flooded with messages like "I want to be my own star too!" Some posted their recently completed teaching diaries, others shared stories of recovering from business failures, and many more tagged their closest friends: "Next time we meet, let's go see the real starry sky. Just like Director Sang said, every star has its own trajectory." Meanwhile, in the Dunhuang desert, the night wind gently caressed the solar-powered star trails, and in the distance, the sound of camel bells could be heard from some film crew clapping their clappers—the spark of cinema continues to burn eternally in the lenses of generation after generation.

Three years later, Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue led the crew of "Cosmic Dust" to Antarctica. This was the first science fiction film in their "Ordinary People's Universe" series, telling the story of a group of Antarctic research station staff who discovered the "star refraction phenomenon" in the polar night and ultimately illuminated the entire ice field with courage and bonds. In the freezing wind of minus thirty degrees Celsius, Sang Jiyue, wearing heavy winter clothing, played a female physicist with ice crystals on her eyelashes, but insisted on not using a stunt double to complete the scene of setting up instruments in front of an ice crevasse; Sang Shuwan, wrapped in a military green coat, squatted beside a sled adjusting the focus, the lens reflecting the frozen red of her nose, when the aurora behind her suddenly burst, the green and purple light bands reflecting the star-shaped hair clip in her hair, captured by the team photographer and featured on the cover of National Geographic, with the caption "Searching for the shape of light at the end of the world".

A trend of "hardcore romance" has swept through the entertainment industry. Top actresses are no longer fixated on ancient costume dramas and fantasy films, but instead vie for "anti-cliché" roles such as scientific expedition members and deep-sea researchers. At fashion week, designers incorporated aurora colors and ice crystal textures into haute couture, with one brand even using holographic projection to simulate the polar night sky, and the runway beneath the models' feet was designed with glacier cracks. Sang Shuwan was invited to serve as a jury member for the "Cinema and Science" section at Cannes, and a comparative video she played at the jury meeting sparked heated discussion: a camel caravan star map on film from 1907, AR star trails from the 2025 film "Star Trails," and quantum light effects from the 2030 film "Cosmic Dust"—three different eras of "starry skies" conversing in a montage, much like the evolution of film technology and human imagination.

Controversy has never been far off, but the twin stars have learned to dance with skepticism. When a science blogger pointed out the scientific flaws in the "autumn navigation" in *Cosmic Dust*, Sang Shuwan edited a behind-the-scenes featurette overnight, showing how the crew collaborated with the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to design a "quantum prism" model, and even recreated three failed aurora simulation experiments. "We never claim perfection," she said at the end of the featurette, "but the responsibility of filmmakers is to let science fiction become the first ray of light shining into reality—even if that light carries the shadow of trial and error." This video was included in the "Science Fiction and Science" permanent exhibition at the China Science and Technology Museum, next to which is displayed the "virtual star map calculator" prop used by Sang Jiyue in the film, with a piece of real Antarctic ice stuck in the gap between the buttons.

Capital is extending its reach into broader fields. Star Trails Pictures has partnered with SpaceX to produce the first "live-action space film" based on Sang Shuwan's new script, *Lunar Letters*. Sang Jiyue will be the first non-professional astronaut to participate in the filming, completing some scenes on the International Space Station. On the day the news was announced, NASA tweeted: "When filmmakers begin to think about the distance to the stars, humanity's cosmic dream gains warmth." Meanwhile, in the mountainous regions of Yunnan, the "Starlight Project," a public welfare initiative launched by Twin Flowers, has built thirty rural planetariums. Each planetarium features a "Time and Star Wall," with a starry sky drawn by local children on the left, a restored clip from 1907 film on the right, and LED lights in the middle spelling out "We see the same star."

Even through the paparazzi's lens, their lives remained vibrant and full of life. Sang Shuwan learned to bake penguin-shaped cookies at the Antarctic research station and often filled Sang Jiyue's thermos with hand warmers; Sang Jiyue, in turn, learned from geologists how to use ice cores to determine climate change. During breaks, the two would build miniature versions of a camel caravan in Dunhuang and a movie clapperboard out of snow. During a break from filming in the polar night, they wrapped themselves in the same blanket and watched a film projection from a century ago. Sang Shuwan suddenly pointed to her great-grandfather's sleeve in the image and chuckled, "Look, the camel hair he rubbed against back then, and the penguin down we have on our winter clothes today, might both be cosmic dust."

In 2032, "Letters from the Moon" premiered globally at the Kennedy Space Center. When Sang Jiyue, floating in space, uttered the line, "So it turns out that Earth's star trails are our gazes as we look at each other," the audience in the ground theater collectively looked up as the dome screen simultaneously played live footage of Earth—a point of light suddenly moved, revealing the International Space Station passing over North America. During the curtain call, Sang Shuwan pushed a special wheelchair onto the stage, upon which sat the desert guide grandmother he had met in Dunhuang years before. Pointing to the Earth on the large screen, she exclaimed, "Back then, I thought you saw the Milky Way in your eyes; now I know, the Milky Way has long resided in your hearts."

After the screening, film fans worldwide launched a "Write a Letter to the Universe" campaign. Some wrote star messages in the sand on the beach, some made wishes upon shooting stars, and many more folded their thoughts into paper boats and released them into streams—these scenes were edited by Sang Shuwan into a short film, "Cosmic Post Office," as an Easter egg in "Lunar Letters." At the end of the short film, Sang Jiyue throws a "starry drifting bottle" outside the space station. Inside the bottle are origami cranes from Earth and a miniature copy of a 1907 film. The camera zooms out, and the drifting bottle, though just a speck of dust in the vast starry sky, shimmers with a warm light unique to humanity.

The story of the entertainment industry continues, but the twin flowers have long become a symbol. In twenty years, they have transformed from "the twin flowers who were questioned" into "the pioneers who defined new film aesthetics," proving that popularity may fade, but curiosity and love for the world will remain forever young. When Sang Shuwan wrote in her autobiography "Star Trails in the Lens" that "everyone who earnestly records life is a director of time," new film reels were rolling under the starry sky of their old house in Dunhuang—their latest documentary, "Starlight Inheritance." The camera focused on a group of young people teaching children filmmaking in a rural primary school. They all wore starlight bracelets engraved with "SSW+SJY" on their wrists, much like the first clapperboard badges that two girls pinned to each other in their dormitory at the Beijing Film Academy twenty years ago.

On an ordinary weekend evening, Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue sat on the terrace of their old house, watching the city's neon lights intertwine with the lingering starlight on the horizon. Sang Jiyue suddenly pointed to the horizon and laughed, "Look, doesn't that cloud look like the aurora we filmed in Iceland?" Sang Shuwan handed them a cup of hot cocoa, the rim reflecting the fine lines at the corners of their eyes. "Next time, let's film the clouds—how they drift from the desert to Antarctica, then turn into rain and fall back into the cellar where we first met." A gentle breeze blew by, carrying the distant sound of clapperboards from the film academy. They smiled at each other, knowing that in the star trails of time, new starlight always awaits to be captured, and they, forever, are the chasers of that light.

Ten years later, Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue's names are etched into the annals of film history. Their "Star Trail Film Commune" has branches in 37 countries worldwide, nurturing emerging directors. Some have used AI-generated technology to recreate ten minutes of lost footage from a 1907 film, others have taken drones deep into the Mariana Trench to film bioluminescence, and still others have completed the first fully virtual science fiction film, *Red Star*, at a Mars simulation base. The twins themselves have retreated behind the scenes, establishing a film restoration and innovation laboratory in Dunhuang. The glass dome of the roof is year-round aligned with the pulsar that appeared in their great-grandfather's film. In the "Time Difference of Light and Shadow" exhibition on the walls, a 1907 hand-cranked camera is displayed alongside the latest 8K holographic camera, with a 3D-printed model of a Tang Dynasty star map meteorite in the center.

The entertainment industry has undergone a complete transformation. The era of internet traffic has ended, replaced by a "creator economy"—audiences are more willing to pay for directors' storyboards and actors' experiential diaries. Video platforms no longer feature trending celebrities on their homepages, but rather unique and independent short films. At the "Global Youth Film Project," where Sang Shuwan served as a judge, a video titled "Cattle Herd Star Trails," filmed with a mobile phone by a girl from an African tribe, moved the entire audience. She chased the dust kicked up by her herd of cattle against the backdrop of the Sahara Desert's starry sky. The end credits read: "Grandpa said that every cow has a star hidden in its eye." Sang Shuwan's comment was: "When you learn to focus with passion, any device becomes a star catcher."

Sang Jiyue became an advocate for "cinematic anthropology." She and her team visited over two hundred indigenous tribes worldwide, documenting oral traditions on the verge of extinction. Her film *Plumed Serpent's Star Trails*, shot in the Amazon rainforest in collaboration with indigenous elders, employed a unique tribal "circular narrative," breaking away from the linear structure of traditional cinema. When it was nominated for the Venice Film Festival's "Horizons" section, the jury praised it for "redefining the possibilities of film as a cultural container." During filming in Papua New Guinea, she stumbled upon a striking resemblance between the local shaman's star totem and a symbol found on a 1907 film reel. This discovery led to a collaborative project between Star Trails Lab and Cambridge University—deciphering the cosmic codes of ancient civilizations through film.

Controversy has long since become a footnote. When AI began generating film scripts on a large scale, Sang Shuwan published a column in The New York Times titled "Humanity's Shaking Light," pointing out that "the preciousness of 1907 film is not due to its technology, but because of the unique grain of sand that my great-grandfather had on his fingertip when he pressed the shutter in the sandstorm." In her latest storyboard, every page retains coffee stains, pencil marks, and even a piece of dried lavender—that Sang Jiyue had tucked in while filming a documentary in Provence. This act sparked a global wave of filmmakers sharing "handwritten manuscripts with warmth," and the hashtag #TheImperfectLight# on social media was filled with crumpled scripts, incorrectly drawn scene sketches, and even out-of-focus shots from the first take.

Capital is returning to its original purpose in a completely new form. Star Trails Pictures launched the "One Percent Project," pledging to donate 1% of its annual profits to support filmmakers without borders. The first beneficiary was a young director in war-torn Syria, who used the grant money to buy a second-hand camera to film refugee camp children using bullet holes as frames for their "starry plein air sketches." In his acceptance speech for the Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award, Sang Jiyue specifically mentioned this young man: "When we talk about the power of film, we shouldn't just think about the red carpet and trophies, but also about those eyes that search for light in the ruins—they are the reason for the existence of film."

The paparazzi have disappeared, but the legend of the twins has never ceased. Some saw them walking their elderly "Star Trail" dog in the Dunhuang desert, their silver hair dyed golden by the sunset, resembling silhouettes in a film from a century ago; others encountered them in a café on the Left Bank of Paris, where Sang Shuwan was teaching Sang Jiyue how to use a smartphone to photograph the starburst effect of latte art, and in the notebook on the table, a new film project titled "The Moment is Eternity - On the Melting Speed ​​of Ice Cream and Cinematic Aesthetics" was written; the most touching rumor came from astronauts on the International Space Station, who said that during a spacewalk, they saw two overlapping beams of light flashing at the edge of Earth's shadow, resembling a clapperboard projected on a cosmic scale.

In 2045, the Star Orbit Laboratory celebrates its centennial. Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue, seated in wheelchairs, watch a holographic projection recreate every highlight of their careers: the camel caravans of Dunhuang, the aurora borealis of Antarctica, the message in a bottle in space, the fireflies of the rainforest… When the scene shifts to the inscriptions in the cellar of their old house, the camera suddenly zooms out, revealing that the entire laboratory's architecture is designed according to the starburst pattern of "SJY+SSW". Finally, the projection disappears, and the real starry sky shines through the dome. Sang Jiyue points to a star and says, "Look, it seems especially bright today." Sang Shuwan holds her hand; the silver ring and red string on her ring finger are worn smooth and warm: "Because it knows that there were two fools on Earth who spent their entire lives writing 'us' as 'star orbit'."

As applause erupted, the audience included not only filmmakers, but also rural teachers they had sponsored, research team members, and even the crew members who had handed them reflectors on set. Sang Shuwan rose shakily and took a special film canister from her assistant—containing their latest work, and their final film: *To All Those Who Are Shining*. This film, without a script or lead actors, was pieced together from footage captured by film fans worldwide, each clip recording a "starlight moment" in an ordinary person's life: a baby's first smile, an elderly couple's golden wedding anniversary, a programmer fixing a bug at sunrise, the look in a mountain child's eyes when receiving their first picture book…

“The film is not our story, it is yours.” Sang Jiyue’s voice flowed under the starry sky. “A hundred years ago, my great-grandfather used film to record the stars; today, we use your eyes to redefine what the stars look like.” When the first shot lit up, thousands of points of light suddenly bloomed in the desert outside the laboratory—those were Kongming lanterns released simultaneously by film fans around the world. Each lantern was inscribed with its own moment of starlight. They slowly rose into the sky, reflecting the real Milky Way, as if the entire universe was responding to this century-old rendezvous of light and shadow.

In the final moments of their lives, the twins refused all medical privileges, insisting on returning to their old dormitory at the Beijing Film Academy to spend their twilight years. One late spring evening, Sang Shuwan pointed to the cherry blossom trees outside the window and said to Sang Jiyue, who was organizing film, "Remember? We were editing films here in our sophomore year, and you said you wanted to make a movie where stars fall from the sky." Sang Jiyue smiled and nodded, then suddenly grasped her hand and placed it against her heart: "Listen, the stars keep falling—falling into every moment we've filmed, falling into the eyes of everyone who believes in the light."

A spring breeze swept across the windowsill, ruffling the clapperboard on the table, the word "cut" bathed in the golden light of the setting sun. In the distance, on the campus, young students hurried by, cameras in hand, discussing their next shooting plan. And in their clasped hands, time had already etched their two names into eternal star trails—not twin flowers, but the ever-burning flame of film itself.

As time flows into 2100, the story of Sang Shuwan and Sang Jiyue has long been a legendary footnote in film history, yet new narrative possibilities have emerged amidst the iterations of technology and civilization. The dome glass of the Star Track Laboratory has been replaced with quantum crystals that can automatically track celestial phenomena. When the holographic projection system is activated, virtual images of the two elderly people emerge from the starlight patterns, telling visitors from different planets about their past of "chasing starlight over a century."

At the "Interstellar Film Festival" in New Chicago, Mars, Chinese-American director Hsing-Ho Lin brought her entry, *Quantum Twins*, to the festival. Filmed using neural linking technology, the film allows viewers to simultaneously experience the lives of two female protagonists in parallel universes—inspired by the legend of the Sang sisters' old cellar. After the screening, Lin presented a precious AI-reconstructed video at the directors' forum: on the night of the 2045 celebration, Sang Shuwan's last words to the camera were: "Perhaps one day, film will evolve to the point where it doesn't need lenses, but humanity's instinct to seek light will never change." This sentence is engraved on the quantum stone monument in the festival's main venue, each word composed of real stardust particles.

Young engineers at Europa's research station discovered a well-preserved film canister beneath the ice. Carbon-14 dating revealed it originated from the film crew of "Cosmic Dust," which Sang Jiyue participated in shooting in 2030. Embedded in the starburst patterns on the inside of the canister's lid was half a dried lavender leaf—a keepsake left by Sang Shuwan in her storyboard. This discovery sparked a "starburst archaeology" craze across the solar system, with "time capsules" related to twin flowers being unearthed in various locations: construction debris from a lunar base contained a hand warmer bag Sang Shuwan used in Antarctica; a recording crystal containing Sang Jiyue's recordings of an indigenous language was found buried near a methane lake on Titan; and even in data from Proxima Centauri b, artificial intelligence identified a montage rhythm similar to their usual style.

In the "Cinema Era" exhibition hall of the Museum of Earth Civilization, the most popular interactive installation is the "Star Trail Weaving Machine." Visitors simply need to wear a brain-computer interface to generate their own short films using fragments of their memories and classic scenes from the Sang sisters. Some combined their grandmother's paper-cutting skills with the firefly scenes in "Rainforest Star Trails," while others superimposed their marriage proposal scenes with the starry sky of Dunhuang. The most touching work comes from a blind painter whose starlight, "seen" by a sound wave sensor, resonates perfectly with the quantum light effects designed by Sang Shuwan in "Lunar Letters."

Film critics in the antimatter energy era have raised questions: When humans can directly experience any emotion through neural chips, is traditional cinema dead? This question is answered in Sang Shuwan's virtual imagery. She "steps" out of the holographic projection, her fingertips tracing the old film reels in the display case: "In 1907, my great-grandfather didn't know what quantum computing was. He only knew that wind and sand could blur the lens, but couldn't blur the heart that wanted to record beauty. You today might be able to generate stars with algorithms, but you can never replicate them—" She suddenly turns, her gaze passing through the exhibition hall's floor-to-ceiling windows to the real night sky, "On some late night, when you shed tears for a certain line of dialogue, that unique tear trembling on your eyelashes."