Ling Shan walked out of the abandoned shrine.
He did not look back. The road out of Baihu Village should have been a straight dirt path, cutting through dried reeds toward the northern hills.
But after half an hour of walking…The shrine stood before him once more. There was no trace of fire.
The cracked roof tiles were whole again. The incense burner stood upright. The bamboo beside the shrine was lush and green, as if it had never tasted flame.
Ling Shan stopped.
The air around him… was too fresh. A dog barked faintly in the distance. A young woman's laughter drifted over a courtyard wall.
Slowly, he turned.
The houses that had once been reduced to blackened skeletons now stood in neat rows.
Red lanterns swayed gently beneath clean eaves.
There was no ash. No scent of burning… No silence. Only life, a life that felt strangely lifeless.
"…Impossible."
Then he saw it.
A figure standing before the shrine. Clad in a general's armor. Rigid in posture. Cold in gaze. Untouched by guilt.
It was him. Not a shadow. Not a reflection.
But….
"Ling Shan…?"
That figure was speaking to someone.
Akin's breath caught within Ling Shan's body. He stepped back instinctively...And bumped into someone behind him.
"Watch it!"
The voice was strangely familiar.
Ling Shan turned.
(Manager Li…?)
A young man in a scholar's robe stood there. His hair was loosely tied, a sword hanging at his waist as if worn out of habit rather than pride.
That face….
"Li… Xuanwu?"
The name slipped from Ling Shan's lips before he could stop it. The young man raised an eyebrow.
"Do you know me?"
His tone was cautious, but not hostile.
Ling Shan stared at him.
That face was no different from Li… Akin's art manager in his present life. The same sharp eyes. The same faintly crooked smile.
But the hands before him were rough with calluses…..The hands of a swordsman.
"We've met before. I… ah…" Ling Shan's voice lowered.
Li Xuanwu let out a soft laugh.
"If I had met someone who looked at me as though he'd seen a ghost, I would remember."
(Not the same person…But the same soul.)
At that moment, a group of villagers walked straight through the figure of "Ling Shan from the past," utterly unaware of his presence, as though he were nothing more than mist.
Li Xuanwu followed Ling Shan's gaze.
"You see it too, don't you?"
Ling Shan froze.
"So you're not blind after all."
Li exhaled lightly.
"I'm beginning to wonder whether running away from the Tang court examination was a mistake, only to end up in a place like this."
"You fled the exam?" Ling Shan asked.
"I left before the provincial round," Li replied casually. "Memorizing texts my whole life just to serve someone else? I'd rather carry a sword and wander. My father nearly lost his mind. If he finds out where I've ended up, he might burn me alive himself."
He spoke lightly, almost teasingly…But his eyes were firm.
A man who rejected the path the world had laid before him.
The ground beneath their feet trembled faintly.
The shrine flickered…For a moment, it was a charred ruin. The next, whole again.
Li's smile faded.
"This village… probably doesn't want us to leave."
Ling Shan nodded.
"Aren't you afraid?" Ling Shan asked, puzzled.
Only then did Li's expression shift, as though the weight of what he had just seen finally settled into him.
"Then what about you? Not shocked at all?" Li shot back, a teasing glint in his eyes. "Look at us, wandering the vast jianghu together. We've probably seen far stranger things than this."
He circled Ling Shan slowly, studying him from head to toe.
"It isn't repeating the past…" Li murmured. "It's preserving it."
They began walking side by side.
No matter which path they chose, every turn led them back to the shrine.
At certain corners, Ling Shan saw his past self speaking with Yue Hong.
At others, he saw flames licking at wooden beams, fires no one else seemed to notice.
Li Xuanwu stopped abruptly. He dropped to one knee and pressed his palm against the ground. Ling Shan stiffened at the sight.
"This isn't an illusion," Li muttered. "It's a formation."
Ling Shan's gaze sharpened.
"A spatial locking array… ancient." Li's voice lowered. "It feeds on memory for power."
Ling Shan's heartbeat slowed.
(Feeds on memory.)
"The stronger your regret… the stronger your emotions," Li glanced sideways at him, "the stronger it becomes."
Silence fell between them.
Wind swept through the shrine courtyard.
Then….
"Activate the formation!"
Ling Shan from the past suddenly lifted his head.
But Akin, within Ling Shan's present body, flinched… Li Xuanwu was gathering qi.
He drew upon Heaven and Earth, currents of unseen force spiraling around him as he began constructing a counter-formation to resist the one imprisoning them.
And this time….
The Ling Shan of the past looked directly at them. As though piercing through time itself. As though he knew another version of himself was standing there. A faint smile curved upon his lips… A smile the present Ling Shan remembered all too well. The smile before betrayal.