“Shù Gǔ Zhòu Shù… Kūnguǒ Suǒ Dìng…”

In the tall, empty, and resplendent temple of the Wūzhù, the large tiger “guarded” Mò Huà, who was seated on a high throne. Its big head rested by Mò Huà’s hand, eyes closed, resting peacefully. Mò Huà, with an indifferent expression, slowly began to…

The spring rain dripped, falling between the Sī Mù trees outside Jìn Yú Chéng, like fine needles pricking a lake, creating silent ripples. Beneath the oldest Sī Mù tree, the copper bell still hung from its branch, its wet clapper gently trembling in the wind, but without a sound. It no longer needed sound to transmit memories.

Jì Hú was no longer unique.

Across the land of Jiǔ Zhōu, from the misty miasma of Nán Lǐng to the solitary sands of Běi Mò, from the fishing villages of Dōng Hǎi to the snow-capped peaks of Xī Chuí, wherever there were people, there was a form of “Jì Hú.” It could be a deep pool, a shallow pond, or even an abandoned water jar in front of a house; as long as someone was willing to crouch down and say, “I remember,” to the water’s surface, that was a shrine of memory.

However, beneath the calm, undercurrents still surged.

That night, as the hour of Zǐ Shí approached, although the ice platform in the center of Jì Hú had melted years ago, the faint blue light at the bottom of the lake had not extinguished. Suddenly, a dark shadow sped from the extremely northern wilderness, leaving no tracks in the snow, its robes fluttering like falling withered leaves. He stood by the lake, his face hidden beneath a hood, revealing only a pair of hollow eyes—not blind, but completely devoid of spirit, as if all emotion and past had been carved out from the depths of his pupils.

He slowly raised his hand, his palm holding a fragment of a damaged stele, on which three small characters were inscribed in reverse: “Wàng Wǒ Míng” (Forget My Name).

This was one of the core components of the “Fēng Yì Bēi” (Memory Sealing Stele) and the last relic of the Xū Wàng Méng (Alliance of Delusion).

“You won,” he whispered, his voice dry like rubbing sand. “But you forgot the most important thing: memory is not just light.”

As his words fell, the lake water suddenly became still.

The originally warm, flowing blue light began to twist and stretch, transforming into countless thread-like dark shadows, swimming and weaving through the water, like long-dormant venomous snakes finally opening their eyes.

At the same time, a thousand li away at Huán Hú Shū Yuàn, a student who was reading aloud suddenly clutched his forehead and screamed.

“No… I am not me!” He trembled, crawling towards the window, looking at himself in the mirror. “My name… my home… all… gone!”

Immediately after, a second person, then a third, collapsed, murmuring the same phrase: “Who am I?”

Their memories had not vanished; instead, they had been stirred and misplaced by some force. Some thought they were generals who had died in battle three hundred years ago, others believed they had personally burned down an entire Yì Guǎn (Memory Hall), and one girl shrieked, clutching her head, “I killed my mother! I killed her!” In reality, her mother had sent a letter home just yesterday, asking when she would return to visit.

This was not the É Xīn Gǔ (Heart-Eating Gu) nor the power of the Fēng Yì Bēi.

This was a new form of self-doubt that eroded memory.

When the news reached Jì Hú, the elders of the Shǒu Yì (Memory Guardians) looked grim. The old man who had stopped everyone ten years ago now had hair as white as frost, and the hand holding his staff trembled slightly.

“We were too naive,” he said, looking at the center of the lake. “We thought that as long as everyone remembered, the truth would not be obliterated. But what if memory itself begins to deceive its owner? If a person cannot distinguish between what is real and what is a dream, how can they guard the past?”

Just then, a new line of characters appeared on the lake surface:

Xìn Yì Bēng Jiě (Collapse of Memory Trust)

The four characters were like blood dripping into water, spreading layers of crimson ripples.

No one knew if the “Wú Yì Zhě” (Memoryless One) from the north was still controlling all of this, or if this chaos had long since escaped the control of any individual. When human memory becomes a battlefield, when every memory can be altered, grafted, or fabricated, then the concept of “I” itself becomes the most vulnerable existence.

Three days later, Huán Hú Shū Yuàn was closed, and all students were sent back to their hometowns. The imperial court once again summoned the Yì Xíng Zhě (Memory Traversers), intending to restart the “Guī Yuán Yìn” (Return to Origin Seal) formation to suppress the anomaly with the power of collective memory. But this time, even the ceramic jars no longer existed; what would they use as an引 (guiding object)?

Just as everyone was at a loss, a little girl appeared before the Guān Yì Tái (Memory Viewing Platform).

She was about seven or eight years old, dressed in coarse cloth and wearing a pair of patched straw sandals. She held a worn-out picture book, the very one Mò Yán had seen when she manifested years ago. She walked to the copper bell and gently pushed it.

The bell rang.

Clear, lingering, piercing through the clouds and reaching the heavens.

In an instant, Jì Hú boiled.

The blue light from the bottom of the lake shot up into the sky, no longer a soft glow, but a spiral column of light that spanned heaven and earth. Thousands of images appeared within the light: ancient cities ravaged by war, weeping mothers, youths gripping their vows, old people smiling in their final moments… These images did not flash randomly, but were arranged according to some pattern—everyone was saying the same thing:

“I believe I remember.”

This was not a simple statement, but a confirmation, a firm belief in one’s own existence.

The little girl closed her eyes, her lips moving slightly as if whispering. Her voice was extremely soft, yet it spread with the bell’s sound to all directions. Everyone who heard this sound, whether or not they had been affected by memory erosion, felt a shock in their hearts at that moment, as if a mist had cleared, allowing them to see their true selves again.

An old soldier, who had been tearing at his hair in a frenzy, suddenly fell to his knees, weeping bitterly: “I remember… That day, she sewed clothes for me, saying we’d marry after the war… I forgot it all… I forgot it all…”

A young man who insisted he was a reincarnated emperor sat blankly on the ground, murmuring, “I’m just a blacksmith’s son… Dad praised my steady hands when he taught me to forge my first hoe…”

They had not recovered all their memories, but they had regained trust—trust in their own memories.

The old Shǒu Yì elder tottered forward, looking at the little girl. “Who are you?”

The girl opened her eyes, clear as lake water reflecting the moon.

“I am not Mò Yán,” she said, “but I remember her.”

Everyone was shocked.

Mò Yán had already stated that she was merely a manifestation of the collective memories of thousands of people, not a physical entity, nor did she have any lineage. But why could this child before them summon such power?

The elder pondered for a long time, then suddenly recalled an almost forgotten sentence from the “Zhēn Shí Jiǔ Zhāng” (Nine Chapters of True Consciousness):

“Memory lives on eternally, existing through belief; if belief is severed, then all thoughts turn to ashes.”

So that was it.

For the past hundred years, people had focused on “remembering,” but overlooked “believing.” When the outside world constantly questioned the authenticity of memory, when lies entered textbooks in the name of history, when eyewitness testimonies were dismissed as “emotional narratives,” people’s hearts quietly wavered. It wasn’t that memory disappeared, but that people’s confidence in it collapsed.

And this little girl was merely the first person who truly believed she remembered.

Days later, she began to travel across Jiǔ Zhōu.

She had no magic power, could not form arrays, nor did she understand spells. She simply walked, carrying that picture book, entering villages, towns, ruins, and academies. She stopped before every Jì Hú, turning page after page of drawings, recounting fragments of lives that were not her own. Some scoffed at her as a liar, some said she was mad, but whenever she spoke, a few people would always have tears welling up in their eyes, blurting out, “I’ve seen scenes like this too… That was a story my grandfather told…”

Slowly, more and more people began to respond to her.

They dug a small pond in front of their homes, filled it with clear water, and said to it, “I remember.”

They no longer relied on memory bells, no longer waited for miracles, but chose to actively confirm their own memories.

A silent awakening had begun.

In a certain village in the south, an old man leaned on his cane and came to the old huái tree at the village entrance. He had been afflicted by the “É Xīn Gǔ,” forgetting the appearance of his son. Now, after hearing the little girl recount a story of a father and son tilling fields together, he suddenly knelt down and wept bitterly: “Dòu’er… Father is sorry… You said you wanted to marry and let me hold my grandchild, but I never saw that day…”

In the northwest frontier, in the ruins of an abandoned Yì Guǎn, several young people sat around a bonfire. One of them pulled out a half-burnt diary and, trembling, read its contents: “On the seventeenth day of the first month, mother fell gravely ill, I went to gather herbs and encountered an avalanche… My companion saved me, burying himself… I never dared to speak of it, fearing being called a coward…” Before he finished, the others were already in tears—they were descendants of the avalanche survivors, and their ancestors’ oral accounts had never mentioned anyone else sacrificing themselves.

Fragments of memory were being reassembled through the bridge of “belief.”

A year later, the imperial court established the “Xìn Yì Sī” (Memory Trust Bureau), specifically tasked with distinguishing the authenticity of memories, but its purpose was not censorship, but to help people sort through confused thoughts and rebuild confidence in their own experiences. The head of the bureau was a blind woman named Sū Mián, who had closed her heart and remained silent for ten years after witnessing a family tragedy in her childhood. It wasn’t until she heard the little girl tell a story about a “silent witness” that she spoke for the first time. She said, “I’m not afraid to remember anymore, because now I know that those pains are worth being heard.”

Three more years passed, and news came from the extremely northern wilderness: an exploration team discovered an underground altar with walls carved with erased historical events. In the deepest stone chamber, dozens of skeletons sat in a cross-legged position, all wearing Xū Wàng Méng uniforms. They held pens in their hands, with blank bamboo slips spread before them, the last line of handwriting crooked but clear:

“We finally remembered our mistake.”

No one knew how they had awakened. Perhaps one late night, someone accidentally dreamed of a mother’s smiling face; perhaps in the wind and snow, a distant bell’s sound pierced through the ice in their hearts. But they ultimately chose to repent, using their lives to record the destroyed truth.

When the news spread, the whole nation was shaken.

People then understood that true victory was never about defeating the enemy, but about making the enemy willingly turn back.

A hundred years flowed by, and the little girl’s figure gradually faded. Some said she returned to Jì Hú, transforming into a wisp of water vapor merging into the lake’s heart; others said she was still on her journey, just under a different name, with a different appearance, continuing to tell stories that were almost forgotten.

Only that picture book was passed down.

It was enshrined in the “Xìn Táng” (Hall of Trust) at the highest point of Huán Hú Shū Yuàn, accessible to anyone. Strangely, everyone saw different images. Some saw lovers embracing in the flames of war, dying together; some saw a mother pushing her child out from under a collapsing eaves; others saw an old teacher writing his last lesson in a classroom: “History never dies, only the believers see it.”

Until one day, a young boy opened the picture book and saw only blank pages.

He was about to close it when he felt a slight warmth on his fingertips. Looking again, a line of small characters slowly appeared on the paper:

“Now it’s your turn. Write down what you fear most to forget, then tell the world.”

The boy remained silent for a long time, then picked up his pen and wrote:

“That winter, my little sister starved to death. I held her in my arms until spring. I dared not cry, because tears would freeze her face. I wanted her to leave a little warmer.”

After writing, he walked out of the academy, went to the nearest Jì Hú, folded the note into a small boat, and placed it in the water.

The boat did not sink; instead, it was lifted by an invisible force, slowly rising into the air, transforming into specks of starlight, scattering into the distance.

That night, all fifty-three thousand six hundred and twenty-one Jì Hú across the country simultaneously glowed faintly.

Regardless of their size or depth, each water surface reflected different images—these were the most cherished memories of countless ordinary people, now illuminating each other through a resonance that transcended time and space.

And on the Guān Yì Tái in Jìn Yú Chéng, the copper bell rang on its own for the third time.

This time, the sound was different from before; no longer mournful, nor impassioned, but like a spring breeze caressing a wheat field, like a mother humming a lullaby, so gentle it brought tears to the eyes.

A passing traveler stopped to listen, then suddenly turned to ask the child beside him, “Do you know what ‘Yì Shēng’ (Memory’s Life) is?”

The child shook his head.

The traveler smiled, “It’s the lamp that lights up in everyone’s heart when they say, ‘I remember.’”

The child looked up at the sky, stars lighting up one after another.

“Then…” he whispered, “Am I lighting up now?”

The traveler ruffled his hair, “You’ve been lit up for a long time.”

The wind stopped, and the bell’s sound gradually faded.

On the lake surface, water vapor condensed into a short sentence, fleeting:

“You are, I am, we are.”