The Hollow Moon rose once every ninety nights.
A pale, cracked disc that hung low in the sky, casting the world in a faint silver glow.
Old cultivators called it "the night where memory walks."
Fang Xi waited until midnight.
Then he moved.
The Entrance
The Singing Caves were not part of the official sect maps. But he'd known where to look ever since finding the old war diagrams in the archive's lower vault.
He found the entrance near a collapsed tunnel behind the southern fire vent, beneath loose stone and half-dead moss.
He pressed his palm to the rune.
The wall breathed open.
A soft hum escaped, like voices whispering in deep water.
He stepped inside.
The Trial of Echoes
The air within the Singing Caves was thick — not with dust, but with emotion.
Every footstep echoed longer than it should.
As if the cave remembered.
And then, the voice returned.
"Fang Xi… son of memory… do you walk forward or turn back?"
He said nothing.
A step forward was his answer.
Flames lit around him — cold, white, ancient.
And from them walked a figure of ash and smoke.
It wore his old robes — robes from his past life.
The Heavenly Demon.
"You forgot nothing."
"But you buried too much."
The echo attacked.
Memory Combat
This was no ordinary illusion.
It moved like he once had.
It knew his techniques. His habits. His reflexes.
Fang Xi activated Mirror Vein Insight and flowed into Memory Loop mid-combat.
He relived a dozen duels in seconds — every counter, every missed breath, every slip.
His current self began adjusting.
Tighter parries. Narrower stances. Lower posture.
Strike.
Parry.
Strike.
Then — a break in the pattern.
Fang Xi's current body moved sideways, not back. He avoided the fatal line of his old self's style.
He drove his blade straight through the echo's throat.
"I don't need to defeat my past."
"I need to surpass it."
The Cult Lives
The cave darkened.
Then lit again — this time by lanterns.
And figures.
Three of them stood at the edges, robed in black and gray, faces hidden behind silver-veined masks.
One stepped forward.
A woman, judging by her stance.
"You are not one of us… but the Mark accepted you."
Another spoke. "We are the Remnants of Echo, not yet dead."
"You bled. You remembered. You changed."
Fang Xi said nothing.
But they handed him a second rune, etched on jade.
"When you are ready to become more than memory… return."
Then the cave shivered — and the path behind him opened once again.
Exit and Realization
Fang Xi walked out into the cold air beneath the Hollow Moon.
The rune on his wrist now had three rings.
One for memory.
One for combat.
One for… something not yet awakened.
And the jade in his hand pulsed faintly — a key, perhaps.
So the cult lives.
And it knows me.
He didn't smile.
But deep in his mind, something stirred — a hunger not for power alone…
…but for history, rewritten by his hand.