In a cave sealed by silence Gu and surrounded by thought-path moss, a nameless cultivator sat cross-legged.
They had no token.
They had no name.
They had only an intent, woven into the marrow of their will — not a message to send, but a question to be cut free.
The ritual began.
A line of silk, black as starless sky, unwound itself from the folds of memory. It wrapped around the cultivator's forehead, spiraling down their arms like a dream's noose. Blood seeped from old scars, evaporating into letters that did not yet exist.
From the outside, it looked like madness.
From the inside, it felt like history being unlearned.
Yellow Heaven opened.
It was not a place. Not anymore.
It was a drifting thought-realm, constructed from shattered declarations, half-dreamt deals, and whispers passed down without names.
The cultivator's consciousness fell through visions:
A star that wept flame into the Sea of Blood.
A clone who severed his own thread to escape Fang Yuan's will.
A version of Ren Zu walking backward through time, plucking Gu from unborn souls.
At last, the sky stabilized. A ring of twelve thrones emerged, only three occupied.
One wore a cloak of living riddles. One glowed with the hue of unspoken regret. The last was wrapped in Final Step silk, face obscured, voice sharpened into nullity.
"Speak your forgetting," said the riddle-cloak.
The cultivator opened their mouth. But the words did not come from them.
They came from a Gu, birthed from the memory they had erased to enter.
"I am from the line of Fairy Zi Wei. I defect. I remember too much."
Silence.
The figure in Final Step silk shifted, then whispered.
"You do not defect from fate. You are only returned to yourself."
"What do you seek?"
The cultivator trembled. "I seek the echo that calls itself leader."
"There is no leader. Only threads. Some longer. Some frayed."
"And the one who sews them?"
A pause.
Then:
"There was once a clone who walked backward. He severed Fang Yuan's name from himself and learned to lie without Gu. He does not command. He guides thought through forgetting. Perhaps you will meet him. If you forget enough."
The thrones vanished.
The sky folded.
The ritual ended with a single phrase burned behind the cultivator's eyes:
"Not all paths lead forward. Some must be unwalked."
Outside, the cave collapsed.
Fang Yuan's shadow clone, stationed three regions away, looked up from a thought-path compass that had begun spinning.
"Yellow Heaven has moved again," it muttered.
And somewhere far above, in a false sky made of forgotten letters, a clone that no longer answered to any name smiled.