The Last Sentinel

The golden sun had completely dimmed, and countless phantoms of the Sanxingdui tribe had vanished from the vast Sanxingdui ruins, with death and gloom filling the enormous underground caverns.

Peng——

A crisp metallic sound broke the silence.

At the location of the collapsed bronze tree's crown, withered branches and fallen leaves trembled, and a transparent figure wearing a bronze mask struggled to crawl out of the ruins.

This bronze mask is not much different from the masks worn by the Sanxing people; the eyes, nose, and mouth are all the same.

Unlike ordinary bronze, this bronze mask was not inanimate but alive. Its surface wasn't the coldness of ordinary bronze; it possessed the texture of human skin and could make various expressions. Its pair of black, hollow eyes were filled with despair, and it muttered to itself, "Is this the kind of awareness a three-year-old should have? What three-year-old would self-harm, commit suicide, or drag their opponent down with them? Such extreme thoughts are simply unthinkable for the Three Star Clan! Unless it's the bloodline of those planetary natives at work!"

"It must be! It must be the bloodline of the Earthlings at work!"

"Damn it, those two Earth liars said they'd strip this kid of his humanity and turn him into a pure Three-Star Clan member!"

"But...but this child has been gone for three years, and when he comes back, he looks like a human from Earth! He doesn't resemble a single member of the Three Star Clan at all!"

At this point, the transparent figure wiped the bronze mask off its cheek and stood up.

But just then, the transparent figure sensed something was wrong and suddenly turned around.

Behind him, a three-year-old boy sat on a branch of a bronze tree, his legs crossed, one hand supporting his chin, the other hand raising his middle finger and waving it gently, emitting a merciless mockery and provocation!

The boy's clothes were tattered, and although his wounds had miraculously healed, his face was still frighteningly pale.

The bronze-clad, transparent figure stared intently at the three-year-old child behind him. His pupils, visible through his bronze mask, widened in astonishment, and his bronze mouth trembled uncontrollably as he backed away, exclaiming, "No, impossible! How could he have healed so quickly! Even a true pure-blooded three-star clansman couldn't recover this fast!"

"You wouldn't understand even if I explained! This is a healing technique from the advanced martial art of 'Mindful Martial Arts,' called 'Mindful Martial Arts - Divine Assistance.' As long as you believe you are a blessed chosen one, you will receive divine assistance and heavenly protection! It's a complementary technique to 'Mindful Sword Path - A Decisive Battle!' Before, I thought I wouldn't need this recovery technique, since I practically have unlimited health and mana. I never expected to actually use it after returning!"

The bronze-clad, transparent figure seemed to realize something and abruptly retreated. "This body doesn't contain the soul of a three-year-old child at all!!"

"But the members of the Samsung race cannot be possessed! Not even a half-blood can be possessed!"

"The aura you exude is completely different from that of the Samsung clan!"

"Come back, come back..."

"I understand!" The transparent man in the bronze mask took a sudden step forward, pointing at Ye Feng, and said, "You're a time traveler! A time traveler who came from the future to the present!"

Ye Feng shook his head and said, "That's not right. Strictly speaking, I went back to the past from the present, not from the future to the present."

The transparent figure in the bronze mask seemed to have thought of something. He stepped forward a few paces. "You've come from the future. Tell me, what is the future like? Has the Sabite invasion occurred?"

Ye Feng didn't answer the question, but stared at the bronze-masked man and said, "Could you tell me first, who are you?"

The bronze-masked man looked at Ye Feng with a strange expression. "You...you're from the future. You don't know who I am?"

Ye Feng shook his head, "I never saw you in the future!"

"Bullshit!" the bronze-masked man exclaimed. "How could you not have seen me before! What are you talking about! If I'm gone, you're dead too!"

Bar--

A crisp slap.

Ye Feng regretted it the moment he slapped her.

My hand hurts!

This bronze mask is genuine bronze, and my body, lacking martial arts skills, is truly weak.

The bronze-clad, transparent being said, "Every member of the Three-Star Clan is born with a Three-Star Clan token—the Star Mask, which is me! The Star Mask and the Three-Star Clan are bound by life and death; it is also the Three-Star Clan's protector. We are interdependent. If the host is in danger, the protector will definitely appear; if the host dies, I, as the protector, will disappear!"

Ye Feng frowned and asked, "You mean, if I'm in danger, you'll save me?"

The bronze-clad, transparent human said, "Otherwise what? I am the Star Mask you are bound to, I am your protector. Otherwise, do you think I would stay here as the sun, guarding a dead three-star ruin day after day until I die alone? Wasn't I waiting for you to come back and get me? But you come back and tell me that I never appeared in the future. How is that possible! If I died, you should have died too, instead of traveling from the future to the present!"

"Think carefully again, have you seen me before?"

"You must have seen me before!"

"I must have appeared in the future!"

Ye Feng waved his hand and said, "Wait, let me think about it."

It will appear when I am in danger.

Did I encounter any danger in the future?

The time the 100-ton truck hit me was indeed dangerous, but thankfully I escaped unharmed.

During the time I was delivering packages, it was like a battle in a mountain village, very dangerous. I was almost killed, but Brother Long saved me.

However, Brother Long himself eventually saw through him. He was just an ordinary human with some martial arts talent, and he couldn't compare to this unfathomable bronze-masked protector at all!

Therefore, if you want to find the source of this bronze-masked protector, you need to search among the local characters that you can't understand but have encountered.

Soon, Ye Feng's pupils widened suddenly, and a figure appeared in his memory.

That is—a fake!

Yes! A fake!

The identity of the imposter has always been uncertain.

Before Ye Feng left Earth, the pseudo-human claimed to be a Trisolaran.

After Ye Feng left Orion to fight in the Milky Way, he saw the Trisolarans, but the pseudo-human remained silent about his Trisolaran identity.

Further on, Ye Feng left the Dark Matter Universe and went to the Desolate Universe. He then returned to Blue Star with the investment of the Ming Empire. The fake man appeared and gave him a long, nonsensical prophecy, such as that time travelers never leave their homeland and that the leading sentinel will eventually lose its way.

Ye Feng looked at the bronze, transparent figure in front of him. "Can you transform into any shape?"

The transparent man in the bronze mask snapped his fingers, and the next moment his transparent figure emerged with rays of light. Under Ye Feng's gaze, a three-year-old boy named "Ye Feng," with a pale face and looking exactly like him, appeared vividly before his eyes!

"Ye Feng" said to Ye Feng, "These are just petty tricks!"

Ye Feng slapped his thigh and roared, "Damn you! It was you! You almost killed me in the future era!"

As they were talking, Ye Feng grabbed "Ye Feng" by the neck, and the two three-year-old boys rolled around and clawed at each other on the ground, exchanging foul stench.

"Let go! I haven't done anything to you, why are you hitting me!"

"If you bully me in the future! Shouldn't I hit you now?"

"How could I possibly bully you in the future? How could I possibly bully my own host! You're kidding! I'm a rule-abiding protector; the Three Star Civilization implanted the most loyal rules into me!"

"It's true, I was protecting someone when you shot me 28 times with an AK! Damn it!"

"Is it possible that the one you were protecting was a demon, a villain, and I came to save you! And you were bewitched by the demon, so I had no choice but to shoot you twenty-eight times, trying to awaken you!"

"fart!"

"Think about it carefully, am I talking nonsense?! A guardian would never harm their host! Besides, if I wanted to kill you, with a human firearm, I could take you down with a single shot from 800 miles away! I wouldn't need to use some kind of 'out-of-the-box' marksmanship for twenty-eight shots; that kind of marksmanship is blasphemous and humiliating to me!"

"..."

The two fought for an unknown amount of time.

The little "Ye Feng" imposter was panting, lying sprawled out.

Ye Feng sat down on the ground, panting heavily.

Ye Feng pondered the words of the fake man, recalling the process of his battle of wits with the fake man. If what the fake man said was true, and he was protecting me and awakening me, then why didn't the fake man appear when I rescued my father, who was the Demon Lord of Wuji, and my mother, who was the most affectionate person in Hongmeng?

The false man only appeared when I was saving the younger brother of that sixteenth-realm martial artist.

Doesn't this mean that the Sixteenth Realm Martial Artist and the Primordial Demon Lord of Profound Affection are not the same kind of people?

Or perhaps, the warrior is the traitor who killed Sentinel Lin Qilin!

So, the traitor in the chat group wasn't just a medical saint, but also a martial artist at the sixteenth realm!