The path Jin Mu led Lian Yu through wound between jagged cliffs and towering ridges. Morning mist clung low to the earth, curling around their ankles like tendrils of memory. Every step forward brought Lian Yu farther from the temple, yet deeper into the questions it had awakened within him.
Neither spoke for a time. Lian Yu preferred the silence—it gave him space to feel the subtle change in the world around him. His senses had sharpened since the altar's awakening. He could feel the energy that flowed through the land: a pulse, faint but rhythmic, like the breath of a slumbering beast beneath the soil.
As they passed through a narrow crevice, Lian Yu halted.
"Wait," he said.
Jin Mu turned back. "Something wrong?"
Lian Yu reached out, brushing his hand against the stone wall. Ancient glyphs lay hidden in the moss, visible now only through the subtle shimmer of energy they emitted. His eyes narrowed.
"These are not natural formations."
Jin Mu stepped closer and squinted. "I've never noticed anything there before."
"That's because they're concealed," Lian Yu murmured.
As he traced the glyphs, a quiet vibration surged through his palm. For a moment, a vision sparked before his eyes—not a memory, but an echo. A towering tree stretching into the sky, its roots coiled like serpents beneath the ground. At its base, a gate of light. Then—gone.
He drew his hand back, breath steady.
"It's a marker," he said, "for someone attuned."
"To what?" Jin Mu asked, eyes wide.
Lian Yu didn't answer. Not yet.
They resumed their journey. The landscape gradually changed from craggy stone to rolling hills marked by ancient, gnarled trees. Insects hummed in the undergrowth, and distant bird cries echoed between the cliffs. As they crested a hill, the Nine Rivers Sect came into view.
Nestled in the valley below, the sect's architecture was both elegant and stern—pagodas with curved jade-tiled roofs, stone bridges crossing crystalline streams, and towering statues of long-forgotten cultivators standing as silent sentinels.
Jin Mu exhaled. "Home."
But Lian Yu's gaze wasn't on the sect—it was on the sky.
Above the highest peak, a faint swirling rift shimmered. No one else seemed to notice it, but to him, it pulsed with familiar energy. Like the altar. Like the seal.
He clenched his fists.
Inside the sect, introductions were brief. Jin Mu brought him before an elder named Xuan Qian, who examined Lian Yu with narrowed eyes and a quiet, almost fearful respect.
"You came from the Temple of the Erased?" the elder asked, his voice hoarse with age.
Lian Yu nodded.
"And survived?"
"More than that," Lian Yu replied. "I remembered something."
The elder went silent.
"Then the seal weakens," Xuan Qian finally said, almost to himself. "And the world must prepare."
Lian Yu stepped forward. "You knew about it?"
"I knew… stories. Nothing more. But if what you say is true—then we must begin again."
"Begin what?"
Xuan Qian turned toward the training grounds beyond the hall.
"Your cultivation."
That evening, Lian Yu stood alone on the training platform. He closed his eyes as the wind brushed past him, his thoughts swirling with questions—but one thing had become clear: cultivation wasn't just about strength. For him, it was about recovery.
About reclaiming identity.
Xuan Qian's voice echoed in his memory:
> "The path of cultivation begins with Qi Pulse, where one awakens the essence within. From there, it progresses to Vein Opening, forging channels that let energy flow freely. Then comes the Earth Soul realm—where the soul begins to take shape and root itself in the laws of nature. You've skipped ahead. That should be impossible."
But it wasn't. Not for Lian Yu.
In the altar chamber, something within him had resonated and pushed him beyond the first two stages. He now stood within the Earth Soul realm, a level that took others years of dedicated training.
And yet—it felt incomplete.
"I didn't cultivate to reach this realm," he whispered to himself. "I remembered it."
But if that was true… what had his previous cultivation looked like? And what realms lay beyond Earth Soul?
The world around him was vast, yet it felt like a shallow reflection of what he had once seen—flashes of stars, bridges of light, energies shaped like dragons and phoenixes. Realms that hadn't been spoken of by anyone yet.
He opened his palm.
The pendant he wore, the one now fused slightly into his chest after the altar's glow, emitted a faint warmth. With a thought, a small sliver of light emerged from it—a fragment of the relic.
A shard, glowing with ethereal blue.
It wasn't the relic itself—but a guide. A compass.
As he focused, it projected a faint illusion—a map, but not of geography. A map of energy.
Three points flared into view, across distant lands. Three relics. Three paths.
And beneath it all, a strange line of text appeared:
> "To ascend, one must remember. To remember, one must reclaim. To reclaim… one must defy."
His eyes narrowed.
So it had truly begun.
---
Back in the sect, Jin Mu approached quietly, holding two steaming bowls of soup.
"You've been out here for hours," he said. "Eat something."
Lian Yu accepted the bowl with a small nod. "Thank you."
As they ate, Jin Mu asked, "What was your cultivation path before this?"
Lian Yu chuckled dryly. "Would you believe me if I said I don't know?"
Jin Mu paused. "I might. You don't feel like someone who's learning—you feel like someone who's… remembering."
Lian Yu glanced at him, curious. "You're sharper than you seem."
"I'm just observant," Jin Mu shrugged. "Also, I was told to watch you closely."
"And report?"
"No," Jin Mu said. "To protect."
That surprised Lian Yu. "Protect me?"
Jin Mu nodded. "Elder Xuan said the world won't be kind to someone like you once they learn what you're trying to become again."
Lian Yu looked down at the bowl in his hands. "And what is that?"
Jin Mu hesitated. Then quietly, "A name Heaven itself tried to erase."
The wind stirred.
Lian Yu looked out toward the stars just beginning to pierce the twilight sky.
In the darkness, he saw her again—Yan Xi. Her voice echoed faintly in memory.
> "Because I promised you…"
Who had she been to him? Why did her presence linger like an unspoken vow?
A slow determination welled up in his chest.
If Heaven feared him, then so be it.
He would rise again—through relics, through memories, through cultivation realms even this world had forgotten.
And when the time came… he would make the skies remember his name.