"There is no parting more cruel…than meeting the one who once held your hand—in a world where they no longer remember your name."
Abyssal Prison – Second Layer: Ancient Tomb of the Spirit Womb
Beneath layers of moss-covered stone at the abyss's bottom, a massive stone platform revealed itself.
This place did not resemble the decayed caves above.It looked like an ancient sacrificial altar, once used to bury living the Heaven's Chosen who had been betrayed by the Heavenly Dao.
The wind was piercingly cold.The air reeked of funerals and forgotten sorrow.
Lâm Mạc beheld shattered stone statues scattered around—figures shaped like kneeling cultivators, their faces forever frozen in defiance, grief, and unwilling surrender.
"This is… the Great Burial Altar?" he murmured.
The name surfaced faintly from the remnants of an ancient scripture sealed in his consciousness.
It was said this was once a prison for those who defied the Dao,sealed away by the myriad clans,erased from the wheel of reincarnation by the Heavenly Heavens themselves.
And at the center of the altar…
A figure stood alone.
He froze.
The heart he thought had long turned to stone… suddenly trembled.
She stood there—Robes white as fresh snow.Hair long and loose, like a curtain of silver mist.
That back—Even if it had been burned in blood,he would still recognize it.
Lãnh Nguyệt Yên.
The one who had once been his betrothed.The one who dissolved their engagement after his meridians were destroyed.The one who had once held his hand beneath a grove of peach blossoms—now stood amidst a sacrificial altar of corpses,her gaze colder than the abyss itself.
Lâm Mạc said nothing.
He stepped forward, walking across the shattered remnants of cursed statues.No one stopped him.No one welcomed him.
Lãnh Nguyệt Yên turned to face him.Her eyes flickered briefly—then returned to ice.
"You… are still alive?"
"Not alive. Not dead either," he replied."I came… to reclaim what was once mine."
"What is that?"
"An answer."
As their eyes locked, a tremor shook the depths of his soul.
From his sea of consciousness, the gray-ash voice returned:
"She was once forced to leave you.There is more hidden within the depths of the Spirit Womb Altar than you know."
A fractured memory surged forth—A woman kneeling before the Lin Clan's altar, sobbing uncontrollably.She offered her blood in exchange for the life of a cripple.
But the elders had forced her to swallow the Heart-Cleansing, Thought-Dissolving Elixir—a forbidden concoction that erased all memory… of the one she loved.
In that very moment, a silver-ash ember emerged from the altar—the second time such a light had appeared since Lâm Mạc stepped onto this path.
It circled him once.Then circled her.
And then—
It dove into the earth.
The entire Great Burial Altar began to quake!
Stone statues cracked and split.Ash surged like a storm tide.A presence awakened—one not of cultivation, but of living memory.
"You thought you were betrayed.But did you ever ask—why someone who once dared to die for you… turned away amid the flames?"
"To enter the Thái Sơ Path…you must have the courage to face the one truth that scars your heart the most."
And deep beneath the ground,a tear-shaped gate—cracked, ancient—slowly began to open.