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"When the world calls your name a thousand different ways… which one answers?"
—Ancient question carved into the Mirror of Truth, now long broken.
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I. Entry into the Mirror World
The Ink-Stained Mirror hovered before Yun Mu.
No qi radiated from it.
No illusion.
No formation.
Just… reflection.
But when he stared into it—
He did not see his eyes.
He saw many.
> "What am I looking at?" he whispered.
The First Recorder's voice echoed from nowhere, everywhere:
> "Every version of you ever imagined."
The mirror cracked.
And he fell.
Not through space.
Through identity.
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II. The City of Masks
Yun Mu landed on an endless street paved with broken nameplates.
Signs overhead showed phrases like:
"Yun Mu the Flame Tyrant"
"Saint Yun of the Hollow Spirit"
"Devourer of Dao, Rewriter of Fates"
He looked up—and saw himself.
Dozens. Hundreds.
All walking past each other. All not quite right.
One had silver hair and eyes that bled.
Another wore chains, smiling with cruelty.
A third wept constantly, surrounded by ghosts.
One floated above the others, wings of fire unfolding like scripture.
Another crawled in the dirt, licking blood from a broken quill.
> "They're all… me," Yun Mu whispered.
> "No," said a voice behind him.
"They're all who the world thinks you are."
He turned.
And saw himself.
Perfectly mirrored.
Calm. Cold. Serene.
> "Who are you?"
> "I'm the first myth. The first believer's version of you. The Original Lie."
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III. The Council of Self
He was dragged—by faceless versions of himself—to a vast court in the sky.
Floating scrolls hovered as walls. Gavel made of severed names.
A throne shaped like the First Flame, with a mirror in place of a judge.
And seated upon it—
A Yun Mu made of ink and fire.
> "You don't own your story anymore," the Judge said.
> "We do."
All the other Yun Mus took seats—hundreds.
Each claimed dominion over some piece of his legacy.
The Rebel—worshipped in the eastern wastelands
The Savior—believed to have healed the Spirit Plague
The Monster—whispered of in children's nightmares
The Immortal—said to have defied Death itself
The God—prayed to by the Blind Flame Cult
The Lover, the Slayer, the Betrayer, the Forgotten, the Ruler
Each demanded control.
Each spoke as if they were the true Yun Mu.
And the real Yun Mu?
He had no voice.
Not here.
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IV. Trial of Truth
To regain his story, he had to prove his authenticity.
How?
He had to walk the Path of the Forgotten Masks—a bridge made of memories denied.
For each memory he reclaimed, one fake would die.
But if he chose wrong—
He would lose pieces of himself.
Forever.
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V. First Memory: The Girl by the River
He walked.
And found a child—himself—kneeling beside a river, holding a dead bird.
> "Why won't it wake up?" the boy asked.
No one came.
No one ever had.
It was the day he realized nothing would save him.
He knelt.
He whispered:
> "It's okay."
And the memory burned itself into his qi core.
A false Yun Mu—one with golden wings and a messiah's face—screamed and vanished.
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VI. Second Memory: The Moment He Chose Rage
He saw himself as a youth, beaten by a sect elder.
Humiliated.
And instead of enduring…
He had smiled.
Cold. Dead. Hollow.
That day, he decided to kill that man. Not for justice.
Not for morality.
But because he wanted to.
Yun Mu touched that memory.
> "I won't deny you."
Another false Yun Mu—the saintly pacifist—crumbled.
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VII. Third Memory: Yu Ling's Hand
The hardest.
He saw the night Yu Ling bled for him.
When he left her behind.
When he walked away.
Because the pain of being cared for was too sharp.
> "She forgave me," he said.
> "But I never forgave myself."
He took the memory.
And with it, the romanticized Yun Mu, the tragic hero of countless ballads—died screaming.
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VIII. The Final Mirror
At the end, only one version remained.
The Judge.
The one made of fire and ink.
The one that had watched from the start.
> "You've claimed your truth," it said.
"But now… one final choice."
It held out a scroll.
> "Write yourself. One word. That is what you will be remembered as. Forever."
Yun Mu looked down.
And smiled.
He wrote:
> "Ash."
Not hero.
Not tyrant.
Not savior.
Just what's left after fire.
The Judge bowed.
The mirror shattered.
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IX. Return
He awoke in the real world, alone, standing in a burned grove.
No scars. No injuries.
But something had changed.
His qi now bore no resonance with any known cultivation path.
His soul felt… clearer.
He no longer feared being misunderstood.
Because he now understood himself.
And so the thousand masks were gone.
But the world?
It still remembered them.
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