Elder You immediately took out several talismans and ignited them one by one.

Mysterious spells of the Five Elements and Eight Trigrams struck “Shigu” one after another.

But the spells entering the dead flesh were like spring water flowing into a muddy pond; only the ripples of the spells’ shockwaves were visible, with little discernible destructive power.

Instead, “Shigu” absorbed a portion…

Night fell, but Si Mu Lin outside Jinyu City remained awake. The rain had long stopped, and moonlight spread like silver gauze over the wet grass blades, reflecting faint glimmers. Beneath the oldest Si Mu tree, a bronze bell hung silently, its surface covered in a thin layer of dew, as if it had just awakened from a long dream.

The lake surface was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the starry sky. But upon closer inspection, the ripples were not naturally undulating; they expanded outwards at an extremely slow pace, one circle, then two… like a form of breathing, or a pulsating heartbeat. Ji Hu was still “alive,” and more awake than ever before.

The little girl’s figure was long gone, but the ripples she left behind never ceased. After the establishment of the Xinyi Division, a silent wave swept across Jiuzhou: people no longer merely “were remembered” or “were reminded” passively, but actively stepped forward to recount things they had kept hidden deep in their hearts. Someone spoke of witnessing officials forcibly demolishing homes in their childhood, and the perpetrator himself wept and knelt on the spot, admitting he was the junior official who carried out the order back then. An old woman at a village millstone quietly narrated how, fifty years ago during a famine, she boiled grass roots to feed her three children. The next day, a neighbor brought a jar of pickles, saying it was a kindness her mother had mentioned needing to repay before she died.

Memories were no longer isolated islands but a continuous landmass.

However, not everyone could easily cross the abyss of doubt.

Inside an abandoned post station in the remote northwest, the fire was dying down. A man sat alone in a corner, holding half a charred wooden plaque with the faint remains of the character “Tao” visible on it. He was Lu Chen, one of the Yixingzhe who survived the collapse of the Guiyuan Yinzhen. For ten years, he had traveled throughout the Northern Realm, seeking the legendary “True Awareness Source” to understand why memories would betray people’s hearts. He had personally witnessed a companion abruptly go mad the moment the formation activated, screaming at the sky, “I have no parents! I sprang from a rock!” and then crashing into a cliff.

He did not believe in miracles, nor did he believe the little girl’s whispers could ignite the “Lamp of Ten Thousand Hearts.” He only believed in evidence, logic, and the ironclad rules carved on steles and bamboo slips.

But now, even these were shaken.

Three days ago, he unearthed a damaged bamboo scroll at the ruins of an abandoned Yiguan. It contained chilling content:

“The first generation of Shouyiren once discussed: if ‘Ji Hu’ turns against its master, ‘Duanyi Huo’ shall be used to burn all the waters of Jiuzhou. Better to destroy all memory in the world than to let falsehood prevail.”

This passage was unsigned, written in a vigorous, ancient hand, certainly not from recent years. Even more bizarre, all other bamboo slips were perfectly preserved, except this one, whose edge was charred as if it had been scorched by flames, yet miraculously survived.

Lu Chen stared at the inscription all night.

He suddenly realized a question: if Ji Hu itself could become a threat, then what have we been guarding for thousands of years—reality, or another grander illusion?

This question coiled around his heart like a poisonous vine, tightening its grip the more he struggled.

He rose and walked out of the post station, treading on snow, heading straight for the Huanhu Academy in the south. Along the way, he passed seven Ji Hu, stopping for a long time at each, crouching down, and softly saying, “I remember.” But the water’s response was no longer a gentle blue light, but fleeting, distorted images—too fast to discern, leaving only a familiar sense of disarray: as if he saw himself on a battlefield slaying people with a sword, then as if lying on a sickbed being fed medicine, and in another blink, he was sitting in a school copying the “Zhenshi Jiuzhang”…

“I am not me,” he muttered, cold sweat soaking his back.

He knew this was the aftershock of “Xinyi Bengjie,” but what was more terrifying was that he began to distinguish between which were invading memories and which were his own past.

It was the morning of the seventh day when he arrived at Huanhu Academy. Morning mist lingered, and the academy gates were open, but there was no usual sound of students reading aloud. Instead, a group of young people sat in front of the Xintang, each holding a slip of paper, taking turns reading the memories written on them. Someone spoke of a bronze buckle entrusted by a father to his comrade before dying in battle; someone recalled a mother who willingly isolated herself to save plague-stricken children, eventually perishing in flames… After each story, everyone responded in unison: “We remember.”

Lu Chen stood outside the crowd, listening, his chest gradually tightening.

He suddenly shouted in anger: “How can you remember?! How do you know this isn’t a dream others have planted in your minds?!”

Silence fell.

A woman with an eye patch slowly stood up; it was Su Mian, the head of the Xinyi Division. Although she was blind, she walked directly towards him, her voice calm: “You are right, we cannot be 100% certain which memory is absolutely true. But we choose to believe—not blindly, but after examination, questioning, and comparison, it is the part we are still willing to shed tears for, to feel pain for, and to live for.”

“But what if it’s wrong?” Lu Chen gritted his teeth. “What if everything we firmly believe now is actually a story fabricated by some madman a hundred years ago?”

Su Mian smiled slightly: “Then let it be wrong. As long as this ‘wrong’ makes us kinder, braver, and more unwilling to forget the suffering of others, then it is worth existing.”

Lu Chen was stunned.

Just then, the album in the center of the Xintang suddenly opened on its own, revealing a yellowed image: an old man in a gray robe stood on a high platform, facing countless common people. In his hand, he held a hammer, about to strike a massive crystal stele. Four large characters were engraved on the stele: Feng Yi Cheng Zhen (Memories Sealed, Becoming True).

The image paused for a moment, then dissipated.

Everyone looked up at Lu Chen, whose face was ashen, his hands trembling violently.

“That… was me,” his voice was hoarse. “I remember. I am no Yixingzhe… I am the last ‘Zhibei Shi’ of the Xuwang Alliance. My mission was to personally destroy the last Fengyi stele to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. But that day, I hesitated. I thought destroying it would end everything, but I was wrong—the true seal was never on the stele, but in the human heart.”

After he spoke, he knelt to the ground, tears falling into the dust.

Su Mian gently approached and placed a hand on his shoulder: “You have finally returned.”

From that day on, Lu Chen stayed at the academy, beginning to systematically compile historical cases of memory anomalies, attempting to establish a “memory credibility assessment system.” He proposed three major criteria: emotional consistency, spatio-temporal logic chain, and external corroboration sources. This theory later became known as “Lu Shi San Wen” (Lu’s Three Questions) and served as the core textbook for training new recruits in the Xinyi Division.

Meanwhile, a strange event occurred in a fishing village in the south.

A fisherman cast his net at night and pulled up a rusty iron box. When opened, it contained a small Yiling (Memory Bell), with the inscription “Guiwei Nian Nanling Shuzu Li Zhao” (Li Zhao, Frontier Soldier of Nanling, Guiwei Year) on its body. That night, everyone in the village dreamt the same scene: in a storm, a broken boat capsized, and dozens of soldiers clung to wooden planks floating on the sea. One of them desperately tied a bronze plaque to a homing pigeon’s leg, murmuring before releasing it, “Mother, your son cannot return… but I hope future generations will know of this battle.”

The next morning, village elders checked their genealogy and indeed found a branch of the Li family that had migrated there in the Guiwei Year, with an ancestral instruction passed down through generations: “Never forget the blood on the sea.”

After this news spread, a spontaneous “Xunling Movement” (Bell-Seeking Movement) emerged among the people. Countless individuals rummaged through their homes, dug deep into the earth, just to find old items that might be hidden: a broken pen, a piece of cloth, a button… anything that carried past events was regarded as a “memory anchor point.”

The imperial court seized the opportunity to promote the “Wuyi Guidang Plan” (Artifact Memory Archiving Plan), establishing 3,600 “Yicang” (Memory Repositories) nationwide, specifically for collecting memory relics voluntarily donated by the populace. When an item was cataloged, the donor was required to verbally recount a related memory, which the Xinyi Division recorded as a sound fragment and sealed within a specially made jade slip. On every full moon night, these jade slips would be placed in a specific formation to resonate, releasing faint sound waves, like a tide formed by the whispers of thousands of people, gently echoing in the night wind.

Some said that was the sound of departed souls resting in peace.

Yet, amidst this tranquility, new fissures quietly appeared.

Over the East Sea, an isolated island surfaced. According to fishermen, the island did not exist previously but abruptly rose after an undersea earthquake. It resembled a sleeping turtle, covered in black rocks whose texture was identical to the material of the Fengyi steles. Some even claimed that when approaching the island at night, whispers could be heard: “We have all forgotten the most important thing…”

An expedition team landed on the island for reconnaissance and discovered a massive underground palace buried deep within the rock layers. Couplets were carved on either side of the palace gate:

Upper couplet: To remember is to exist
Lower couplet: To believe is to be real
Horizontal inscription: I am history

In the center of the main hall of the palace stood a nine-zhang-high mirror wall. The mirror was not transparent; instead, it was as black as ink. Anyone standing before it could not see their reflection, only a chaotic void. But if one closed their eyes and silently recited “I remember,” memory fragments would slowly appear in the mirror—not the current you, nor the past you, but “the you that you imagine yourself to be.”

Many agents suffered mental breakdowns as a result. Some saw themselves slaughtering their entire family, others witnessed themselves bowing to evil gods, and some were horrified to discover that all their good deeds in life were mere dreams, and in reality, they were thoroughly evil individuals.

The only person who returned safely was an aphasiac girl. She stood before the mirror for three days and three nights, finally writing one sentence:

“I am not afraid to see the false me, because I have learned to distinguish the voice of my heart.”

She brought back not just words, but also a crystal embedded in the back of the mirror frame. Upon identification, this stone contained an extremely high concentration of “Yinengsu” (Memory Essence)—a mysterious substance found only in intense human emotional memories. Scientists speculated that this mirror wall was actually a “collective subconscious projection device,” capable of concretizing the deepest fears, guilt, and desires of thousands of people, forming a “pseudo-self universe” that transcended individuals.

News reached the capital, and the Emperor convened his grand ministers for discussion. Some advocated for immediately bombing the island to prevent the entire population from falling into self-doubt; others suggested sealing off information to avoid the spread of panic. Only the Xinyi Division presented a direct memorial:

“There is no need to fear the ‘pseudo-self,’ for only by facing falsehood can one confirm truth. Please allow the populace to voluntarily visit the mirror, but they must be accompanied by guides to help them clarify the boundaries of memory.”

The imperial decree granted approval.

Over three years, a total of 82,000 people visited the island to view the mirror. Among them, 13,000 experienced short-term psychological disturbance, recovering after guidance; 300 permanently settled on the island, calling themselves “Jianwozhe” (Those Who See Themselves), recording what they saw in the mirror daily, attempting to analyze the essence of human nature. Their notes were later compiled into “Weiwo Lu” (Records of the Pseudo-Self), listed as a forbidden book, yet it repeatedly evaded prohibition and instead became a classic eagerly studied by philosophers and poets.

And behind all this, a figure remained unseen.

Deep in the extreme northern wilderness, between snow-capped peaks, an old woman lived alone in an ice cave. Her white hair was like frost, her face withered, yet she clutched a tattered picture album. On stormy, snowy nights, she would turn to a page and softly narrate: “That spring, my sister and I planted a peach tree together… She said when the flowers bloomed, I would get married…”

Her voice was faint, but it traveled south with the cold currents, crossing thousands of mountains and rivers, quietly seeping into the underlying vibrations of every Ji Hu.

No one knew who she was, but every Qingming Festival, an nameless grave would appear in Si Mu Lin outside Jinyu City, with a hand-painted peach blossom picture in front of it, and a note pressed beside it:

“Sister, I remember too.”

The bronze bell no longer chimed frequently, but each gentle sound it made meant that somewhere, someone was rekindling the lamp in their heart.

One night, during a torrential downpour, a young man ran to the Guanyi Tai (Memory Viewing Platform), drenched, clutching a damp notebook to his chest. He pressed the notebook against the bronze bell and shouted: “I remember! I remember what my mom said before she died! She said, ‘Don’t blame Dad, he’s just too tired’! I never dared to say it, afraid they’d think I was weak… But now I’ve said it! I believe in myself!”

As his words fell, thunder roared, and lightning split the dark clouds, illuminating the entire lake surface.

At that instant, the faint light at the bottom of Ji Hu ascended again, no longer a spiral column of light, but the phantom image of a giant tree rising from the ground—its roots deeply embedded in the earth’s veins, its branches supporting the starry sky, its leaves composed of countless twinkling names, trembling gently in the wind, like whispers.

At the highest point of the tree’s crown, a line of characters faintly appeared:

Believers are not alone, the remembered live forever

From then on, people called that tree the “Yisheng Tree” (Memory Life Tree), and believed that as long as there was one person willing to say “I remember” and truly believe it, it would not wither.

Years later, an archaeologist unearthed the ruins of an ancient city in the western desert. The city walls had collapsed, the inscriptions obliterated, but a single broken stele leaned in the yellow sand, with three characters carved in reverse:

“Wang Wo Ming” (Forget My Name)

The scholar brushed away the dust, about to make a rubbing, when he felt a prickling pain in his fingertips. Looking down, blood dripped onto the stele’s surface, only to be rapidly absorbed. Then the entire stone stele glowed faintly, and new characters slowly emerged on its back:

“Jin Yi Zhi Ming.” (Now Known.)

The wind and sand howled, burying the traces and carrying away the secrets.

But in a small village a thousand li away, a child was bent over a table drawing. He drew a girl holding an album, walking towards a lake, followed by countless blurred figures. After finishing, he wrote a line of childish characters in the corner:

“I also want to be a storyteller.”

Outside the window, spring rain began again, gently tapping on the eaves.

The bronze bell stirred slightly, a faint chime, fleeting.