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*"In the highest vault of Heaven, there is a name etched into a mirror that cannot reflect.
The name was never spoken, never written, never recorded—
Yet it is feared more than any demon."*
—Fragment from the Obsidian Codex
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I. Signs in the Sky
It began with a silence.
Birds froze mid-flight.
Rivers stopped flowing.
Spiritual beasts howled and ran in endless circles, sensing a force older than the stars.
In the northern sky, the Heavenlight Veil turned black.
And from the rip in the firmament, something ancient fell.
Not like a meteor.
But like a forgotten law reasserting itself.
Every cultivator who could touch Fate Qi felt it—
> "A god is descending…"
> "No—not a god. A Deleter."
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II. The One Who Erases
The Devourer of Records had no form—but it chose one.
A towering shape of parchment-flesh, with ink bleeding from its joints. Its head was an open scroll, and every movement it made sounded like turning pages soaked in blood.
Its arms ended in quills that dripped not ink—but memory.
> "Yun Mu," it intoned, in a thousand forgotten languages.
"Aberration. Fracture in the Record of Heaven. Violation of Eternal Forgetting."
> "Sentence: Total Deletion."
Its presence alone caused names to vanish from gravestones. Entire bloodlines woke up without ancestry. Ancient weapons forgot their creators.
But Yun Mu stood his ground.
> "Come," he whispered. "Let's see which of us deserves to remain."
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III. The War Begins
The battlefield: The Wailing Expanse—a realm so ancient it no longer belonged to any sect.
The Devourer struck first.
A wave of Erasure Qi surged forward, swallowing memories, cultivation bases, identities. Trees turned to seed. Stones forgot their purpose and became dust.
Yun Mu's Hollow Qi fought it back—unrefined, unbalanced, but endlessly adaptive.
He screamed, and Void Sigils blazed to life.
Seven of them.
Each born from a moment he had once cast aside:
His first betrayal.
His mother's voice.
His brother's funeral.
His first kill.
The name of a girl he loved.
The moment he chose to become Hollow.
And Yu Ling's face, crying in the Vault.
The sigils didn't shine.
They wept.
Each one slammed into the Devourer like emotional cataclysms.
And the sky cracked.
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IV. Yu Ling's Choice
Far away, Yu Ling held the Nameless Flame Scroll, glowing violently.
> "If I open this," she whispered, "I'll lose all memory of him. He'll be safe… but I'll be empty."
> "But if I don't… the Devourer may consume the world."
She dropped to her knees.
Tears ran down her face.
In her hand, a token: the child's drawing Yun Mu had once saved, before he Hollowed himself. A flower. And beneath it, a crude name: "Big Brother Yun."
She stood.
> "Then I'll burn the scroll."
She lit the Forbidden Flame.
And for the first time, Heaven's Record bled.
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V. Legacy vs Oblivion
Yun Mu and the Devourer clashed amidst storms of thought and chaos.
The Devourer stabbed into Yun Mu's soul, trying to rip out his essence.
But Yun Mu laughed.
> "You made one mistake."
> "You thought forgetting made me weak."
> "But pain is a teacher. And I've had many lessons."
He unleashed the Hollow Ascension Art—not a technique, but a philosophy given form.
He used the Devourer's own strikes—memories of other souls it had consumed—and turned them into a storm of names, cries, regrets.
> "I am the sum of all I once was!" he shouted.
> "And now… I remember everything."
The blow shattered the Devourer's form.
It screamed—without voice. For it had no name, no self. It was never meant to lose.
As it fell apart, names began returning to the world.
Bloodlines. Songs. Forgotten heroes.
And in the center of it all—Yun Mu stood.
Alive.
Unbroken.
Remembered.
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VI. The Judgment
The sky opened again.
But this time, not to destroy.
A single feather of white light fell—a Divine Decree, the highest authority of the Heavenly Court.
It bore only one sentence:
> "Let him walk. For the world needs memory as much as it needs silence."
Yun Mu caught the feather.
And it burned into his chest.
A new sigil formed—The Flame of Memory.
Not Hollow.
Not Whole.
But something new.
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VII. Aftermath
Yu Ling found him on the mountain.
He turned.
And this time…
He remembered her face.
> "You kept me alive," he said.
She smiled, exhausted.
> "No," she replied. "You chose to live."
They sat side by side.
Above them, the stars sang—names restored, stories rekindled, and fate rewritten.
But far beyond, something else stirred.
Not a Devourer.
But something older.
The First Recorder.
The one who wrote fate in the beginning.
And it had now taken notice of Yun Mu.