Path of the Forgotten.

The world had not returned to normal. Not after the what happened. Now, every breath inside the Spiritbone Vale felt borrowed.

Han Yu and Lin Feng moved quietly through the shifting fog. They did not speak of what had happened. Not yet. But the silence between them was loud. Han Yu's star-threaded eyes never left the distance, scanning for fractures in space, fate, and time.

> "It's not just a trial," he finally muttered. "It's a tomb. And we're not the first ones buried in it."

---

They emerged into a glade filled with shattered stone tablets, each half-submerged in the soil.

Names. Hundreds of them. Some scratched out. Others melted. Some with no writing at all — blank, erased.

Lin Feng knelt near one of them. > "These aren't gravestones."

> "No," Han Yu said quietly. "They're memory seals."

He tapped one with his finger. A cold flash struck his spirit — and he stumbled back, clutching his chest.

> "These are the names of disciples that never existed."

> "How is that possible?"

Han Yu turned slowly to Lin Feng.

> "When the Heavens fear what cannot be killed… they erase it."

---

Deeper – Beneath the Vale

They found a chasm — narrow and twisting — filled with bones that glowed faintly under the mist. Spirit beast bones. Most of them long dead, long drained. But at the center of it all was a stone cradle, grown over with crystal vines. And in that cradle....> An egg.

The size of a curled child. Wrapped in pulsing vines that resisted Qi. It did not glow. It breathed like a living thing — like something dreaming beneath the world.

Lin Feng didn't know why he stepped toward it. But his steps matched the heartbeat pulsing inside it.

> Thump... Thump... Thump.....Han Yu's face darkened. > "That… is not a beast." he said.

> "Then what is it?"

> "A relic of war none of us remember."

The vines began to pull back on their own and the mist shuddered around them — as if sensing what Lin Feng was about to touch.

Then—....> A whisper. From the egg.

> "You again…"

---

Elsewhere – Watching Eyes

Far above the vale, far beyond the veil of normal perception, Lan Xueyin opened her eyes mid-meditation, eyes wide with sudden chill.

> "He's touching it," she whispered. Behind her, her master appeared, voice calm but grave.

> "If he awakens it too early—"

> "He won't," Lan Xueyin interrupted. "But if it awakens him…"

Neither of them spoke again. Because the moon turned red. Just for a second.

---

Back in the Vale

Lin Feng's hand hovered over the egg. > "Do I take it?"

> "No," Han Yu said. "You can't. Not yet."

> "Why?"

Han Yu's voice was soft. "Because if you do, you won't come back as Lin Feng."

Lin Feng closed his fist and stepped back. But something had already changed. The egg no longer pulsed instead It beat with his rhythm. Bounded.

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