"There are people, who, when they were by my side, I didn't remember.
It was only when I lost them in the void that I knew... I could never forget them in this lifetime."
A sound like a shattering bronze bell resonated.
The space of Oblivion Valley fractured.
Lin Mo stood silently amidst the fragments of memory, each Dao script flowing into his body, but his heart was shaken by a blurry white figure appearing before him.
It wasn't the red-clad woman who had just vanished.
It was... her.
Her white robes billowed, her eyes carrying a strange emotion – not quite gentle, nor entirely cold.
No name. No identity. She left not a single greeting.
But when she appeared, all other sounds in Oblivion Valley vanished.
Lin Mo looked at her.
His heart pounded erratically – not from emotion.
But because... among all the figures that had passed through his memories, only she – did not come from any memory fragment at all.
"Who are you?"
She didn't answer.
She only extended her hand, gently touching his forehead.
At that very moment, an abnormal wave of blood energy surged from Lin Mo's body, tearing through space, creating a violent vortex of light.
BOOM!!!
Space twisted. The scenery changed.
He was swept into a new place – as dark as an abyss, yet in the center was a collapsed stone altar, surrounded by hundreds of nameless gravestones.
The Grand Burial Spirit Altar.
An ancient legend once mentioned in fragmented scriptures – a place that buried the will of great cultivators who failed in their attempt to defy heaven and become saints.
Not a single cry. Not a single eulogy.
Only ashes mingled with broken stones.
Lin Mo ascended the stone steps, one by one.
With each step, a fragment of his own memory was peeled away, as if this stone altar was forcing him to abandon his past if he wished to move forward.
First step – the image of his father when he was alive.
Second step – the scene of his identity being stripped by the Lin family.
Third step – the moment he personally buried a sworn brother who had saved his life.
By the ninth step, the blood in his body boiled.
A memory deeply locked within his soul surged out – the scene of him holding a white-clad woman in his arms, her blood soaking his chest, her eyes still fixed on him until her last breath.
"Lin Mo... even if the Dao I cultivate does not belong to this heaven and earth...
But in the next life... if there is one... I will walk with you again."
Lin Mo trembled.
He couldn't remember who she was. But his heart remembered.
And the Grand Burial Spirit Altar – was the place that forced him to choose:
Abandon painful memories to move forward...
Or... die with them.
The voice of the white-clad woman resonated in his mind again, light as wind:
"When you find yourself, I will appear again.
Don't look for me... find yourself."
He gritted his teeth, blood seeping from the soles of his feet, stomping through the illusions with each step, overcoming the stone altar – without abandoning any memories.
Because...
"I don't need to forget the past to live on.
Precisely because I remember... I am still me."
The moment he stepped past the last stone step, an ash-colored halo erupted from the top of the altar.
A massive ancient character appeared in the sky:
"Life."
—
That was not survival – but "Life Decree" – the next stage in the Primordial Dao of Life inheritance.
—
"Memories are not shackles.
But a guiding flame... for one who dies and lives again."