Path of the Forgotten.

Mist clawed at Lin Feng's robes as he stood before the buried black gate. His breath fogged before him, yet the air wasn't cold. The stone was smooth, ancient, cracked in a spiral that pulsed faintly when he approached. No inscription, no carvings. Just a single marking at the top — one he had never seen before, but feel familiar.

It wasn't in any known script but he understood it.

> "Remnant." His hand reached out by instinct — the way one recognizes their own heartbeat and the gate responded. The spiral in the stone rotated a fraction of a turn — so slight it barely moved — and then the world shifted.

---

Elsewhere in the Vale

Disciples were already screaming in terror.

One vanished beneath the mist, eyes wide with fear — not dragged away, not killed — just gone. Not a trace. Not even his name lingered in the memory of those who'd stood beside him seconds earlier. Another saw his own reflection staring at him from the mist — only it smiled and walked forward while he could not.

The vale consumed more than flesh. It consumed presence.

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Lin Feng – Inside the Gate

He didn't remember walking through it. But now he stood beneath a sky of inverted light— as if day bled upward and night coiled beneath his feet. The earth was smooth glass. Above him, stone monoliths floated slowly through the sky, each marked with symbols that pulsed with memory. And in the center of it all was....Him.

No — not him. A version of him.

Clad in black armor, holding no weapon, face half-obscured by shadow. He stood still, facing away, as if carved from stillness itself. And then it spoke — not aloud, but into Lin Feng's very bones.

> "You have taken a path that was never meant for you." Lin Feng tried to move. He couldn't.

> "Do you wish to remember?" His heart slammed in his chest.

> "Remember what?"

> "What they buried. What they broke. What you were before you were Lin Feng." The world trembled. The mist beyond the gate churned and rumbled. And suddenly — he did remember…

A battlefield.

A choice.

A gate shattered by his own hands — not to break through it….But to seal what lay beyond.

> "No," Lin Feng whispered. "Not yet."

> "Then survive. And I will wait again," the figure said, fading.

And Lin Feng was flung back — into the vale, into himself — just as a beast of silent bones lunged from the side, jaws wide.

---

His foot slid. His broken sword rose instinctively — glowing not with light, but silence. He struck.

The creature crumpled mid-air, soundlessly, turning to dust the moment it touched his blade. All around him — the mist receded for a breath and then a familiar voice called from afar.

> "Lin Feng!"....It was Han Yu. He shouldn't be here. But here he was — pale, trembling, eyes wide.

> "What did you just touch?! That gate — it's older than the sect — older than the continent!"

Lin Feng staggered upright. > "I don't know," he said.

But they both knew that was no longer true.

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