"Not all the memories within me… are truly mine.And not every emotion I've ever felt… was born from my own heart."
—
Cold.
That was the first sensation Lâm Mạc felt as he awakened.
He wasn't lying down, nor was he standing. His body drifted in a twisted, dark realm—where fragments of shattered memory floated like falling stars, each reflecting scenes of lives unfamiliar… yet hauntingly familiar.
Where am I?
A flash of memory streaked before his eyes.
A maiden in crimson robes knelt amidst a rain of blood, her cries echoing with despair:
"You promised you would return… Why did you forget me!?"
Before her stood a man mid-transcendence, his form dissolving into the void.His eyes—those once filled with devotion—now stared at her blankly, like a stranger who had never once known her name.
It wasn't his memory.And yet… why did his chest ache so deeply?
Another scene surfaced.
An old man with white hair, his body impaled and bound atop a mountain of blood.Below him knelt countless descendants—none wept, none called his name.
Only the wind carried his final words, full of anguish:
"Was it I who lived wrongly… or Heaven that erred first?"
Lâm Mạc's brows furrowed.
These memories were not his…And yet they invaded his mind, seeped into his blood, etched themselves into the meridians of his soul.
What is this place?
Suddenly, a distant voice echoed in his mind—soft, female, as though whispered across the span of lifetimes:
"You have stepped into the Abyss of Forgotten Sentiment.""This is where memories of betrayal are buried, where forsaken affections linger, where promises broken cry without answer."
"If you can endure this place… you will come to understand: even a Dao devoid of emotion… is a kind of sin."
His body felt weightless, like mist.But the deeper he sank, the heavier his heart grew.With each memory that passed, more foreign emotions flooded his soul—sorrow, longing, rage, despair.
Then—sharp pain.
In that instant, he saw himself: a thin, frail youth kneeling before the ancestral hall of the Lâm Clan, blood spilling across the stone floor.
Beside him stood a woman in white—She had once walked beside him, had once held his hand when he first fell.
He could not recall her name, nor her face.
But somewhere deep within his soul, a gentle light shimmered, refusing to fade.
A streak of silver-gray light flashed across the void.
That ethereal voice echoed once more:
"Mind-Sealed Path Guidance – First Layer… activated."
A line of script, like burnt ash, emerged from memory and pierced into his chest.
The memory fused with his blood.
Just then, a woman in red robes appeared from afar, stepping slowly toward him.
Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears, yet her face was as still and cold as stone.
She gazed directly at Lâm Mạc.
"You… bearer of the Heretical Bloodline.""If you wish to leave this place, answer me one question."
"If you once loved someone… and they forgot you—would you kill them?"
Lâm Mạc remained silent for a long time.
Memories circled him.Emotions not his own battered his soul.
He had never truly loved anyone—Or perhaps… he once had.
Someone… still stood behind him in the shadows, never turning back.
"I do not know who I once loved…""But I do know this—The one who forgets me… may live.But the one who forces me to forget… must die."