By ArkGodZ | DaoVerse Studio
The masked figures remained at the edges of the courtyard, silent and unmoving.
One figure stood slightly apart—the man who had already revealed his face to Jian Yu.His expression remained calm, unreadable beneath the heavy weight of the night.
Jian Yu met his gaze, heart pounding.
"Who are you?" Jian Yu asked, voice low.
The man bowed his head slightly, not in submission, but in recognition.
"I am Shen Mu," he said simply. "A name given when I chose to remember what others chose to forget."
Jian Yu narrowed his eyes.
"Why are you following me?"
Shen Mu's smile was faint—more sorrow than triumph.
"Because you carry what was forbidden to survive," he said. "Because your awakening echoes across the wounds we still carry."
His voice lowered into something closer to a prayer:
"Because you are the beginning... and the end... of every promise we failed to keep."
Jian Yu tried to form another question—but the Sutra pulsed violently within him, dragging his spirit elsewhere.
His body moved before his mind could resist.
Past Shen Mu.Past the watching Rememberers.
Toward the heart of the sect.
Toward the Garden of Returning Promises.
The night bled into silence.
Jian Yu walked without understanding why.
The Sutra pulsed in his chest, not urgently, but relentlessly, like a heartbeat that no longer belonged to him.Each step forward felt heavier, as if the ground itself tried to pull him back.
"This is wrong," Jian Yu thought, clenching his fists. "I should turn back."
Yet his body refused to obey.
The night bled into silence.
Jian Yu walked without understanding why.
The Sutra pulsed in his chest, not urgently, but relentlessly, like a heartbeat that no longer belonged to him.Each step forward felt heavier, as if the ground itself tried to pull him back.
"This is wrong," Jian Yu thought, clenching his fists. "I should turn back."
Yet his body refused to obey.
Behind him, Yuan followed, her footsteps tentative against the cold stone paths.
She didn't call out.
Didn't ask.
But her spirit brushed against his like trembling hands trying to hold something slipping away.
He knew she felt it too—the shift in the Qi of the sect, the way the air thickened with a sorrow too old to name.
Words would only shatter the fragile tether still clinging between them.
The Garden of Returning Promises waited ahead.
A place untouched by ambition, hidden deep within the sect's inner grounds.Where disciples once stood beneath Weeping Lotus Trees to make vows sealed in spirit.Promises that the soil itself remembered.
Tonight, the Garden seemed to hold its breath.
As they crossed the threshold, Jian Yu staggered slightly.
The world changed.
The petals hanging from the lotus trees were wrong—frozen mid-fall, their silver glow dimmed to a bruised gray.The wind, ever gentle in the Garden, had vanished completely.Even the stars above seemed dulled, like forgotten memories lingering at the edge of sight.
"Jian Yu," Yuan said behind him, her voice barely a breath. "We shouldn't be here."
He nodded slightly.He agreed.
But the Sutra whispered louder now, threading through his veins like liquid fire.
"You must remember the promises made to you... and the ones you made."
He stepped forward.
The Garden shuddered.
The stones beneath his feet felt brittle, almost hollow, like the bones of some great creature long dead.
The Weeping Lotus Trees—normally radiant—twitched at the edges of vision, their silver blooms sagging under invisible weight.
The Obelisk of Vows stood at the heart of the Garden, a towering spire of white stone veined with gold.A sacred monument where every vow sworn by generations of disciples had been engraved—not in words, but in spirit.
Tonight, it was weeping.
Fine cracks spidered along its surface, glowing faintly, pulsing like a wound struggling to stay closed.
The closer Jian Yu drew, the more the Sutra inside him answered.
The mark on his wrist throbbed, crimson against his skin.
"Stop," Yuan said, voice sharp with fear.
She grabbed his arm, but the moment her fingers touched him, a shock passed between them—a crackle of emotional Qi that knocked her back a step.
"You're hurting the Garden," she said, panic rising.
Jian Yu gritted his teeth.
"I'm not doing anything," Jian Yu said. "It's the Sutra."
Or maybe…
Maybe it was something deeper than even that.
Something he had carried long before he ever touched the Sutra.
He reached the central path, where rows of lotus petals framed the walkway like ghostly flames.
As he passed, the petals wilted.
Not burned.
Not torn.
Forgotten.
They curled inward, their glow extinguished in soft puffs of black ash.
Each step Jian Yu took pulled a little more life from the Garden.
The Obelisk pulsed once—brighter now—shedding a faint halo of fractured light.
It felt alive.
Angry.
Afraid.
And Jian Yu understood, with a terrible certainty, that the promises buried here were not passive things.They were alive.And they remembered.
The Sutra whispered again, louder, more insistent:
"They swore to protect you.""They broke their oaths.""Now, let them burn."
Jian Yu's breath caught as the first crack at the base of the Obelisk widened, shedding flecks of stone into the air like dying stars.
The Garden trembled.
The Weeping Trees sagged further, petals shriveling.
Above, the high wards of the sect—the great defensive formations—hummed ominously, sensing the disturbance but not yet knowing its source.
Yuan stumbled toward him, desperation breaking through her fear.
"Jian Yu, please!" Yuan cried. "Fight it! You don't have to—"
"I can't!" Jian Yu said, voice ragged. "It's not something I control."
His hands curled into fists at his sides, the Sutra burning hotter beneath his skin, a pulse synchronizing with the collapse of the Garden.
The Obelisk flared one final time.
A sound, not of stone breaking, but of promises unraveling, ripped through the Garden.
And Jian Yu knelt before the dying light, breathless, as a tide of memory—not his own—rushed to meet him.
Faces.Voices.Oaths once sworn and now turned to ash.
Above them, the air grew heavier.
The sect was waking.
The Council would not remain silent for long.
And deep beneath the Garden, something else stirred.
Something that would not allow promises to be broken without a price.
The Garden wept.
Not with rain.
But with the slow, silent fall of dying petals.
Jian Yu stood at the heart of it, breathless, as the first cracks spread like spiderwebs through the Obelisk of Vows.
Golden light, once hidden beneath the surface, bled out in uneven pulses.It wasn't illumination.It was leaking.
Like something inside had grown too large, too angry, to be contained any longer.
The Sutra inside him pulsed in rhythm with the collapse.
"Breathe," it whispered. "Let them remember."
Jian Yu gritted his teeth, hands trembling at his sides.
Around him, the air warped.
The Garden's ancient formation lines—veins of spiritual harmony woven into the stones themselves—twisted and burned.Symbols meant to seal promises glowed red, then black, before shattering into ash.
The first of the Vows ignited.
It happened silently.
A shimmer of light above one of the weeping trees burst into flame—an invisible promise now revealed, consumed, and erased.
Jian Yu heard it.
Not with his ears.
But with his spirit.
The sound of loyalty breaking.
The sound of love betrayed.
The sound of ambitions twisted into bitterness.
One by one, the promises fell.
Some screamed.Some wept.Some simply disappeared.
Each time a vow burned, a shockwave rippled outward, rattling the stones, bending the trees.
Yuan cried out, stumbling as the Qi around her warped violently.
She pressed her hands against her ears, but there was no sound to block.
Only memories that were not hers—and yet cut through her like blades.
"Jian Yu!" she called out, voice breaking. "You have to stop!"
"I can't!" Jian Yu shouted back, barely able to hear himself through the thunder of collapsing oaths.
"I'm not doing this! It's the Sutra!"
The Obelisk cracked wider.
A piece of stone, etched with invisible promises, sheared off and fell to the ground, breaking into black dust.
More and more scripts flared into visibility—ancient oaths, sacrifices made for glory, for love, for ambition—and all of them, all of them, burned to nothing.
The soil beneath Jian Yu's feet blackened, then fractured, a spiderweb of death expanding outward.
Above, the Weeping Lotus Trees twisted grotesquely.
Their trunks cracked, bleeding dark sap.Their roots tore free from the ground.
It was no longer a Garden.
It was a graveyard.
A graveyard of forgotten promises.
The Sutra pulsed faster now.
Each beat of its crimson core sending new shockwaves through the fabric of the Garden.
Jian Yu felt it pushing against his spirit—demanding he surrender, let it consume not just the Garden, but the lies the sect had built upon it.
"Burn them," the Sutra whispered. "Burn their false promises. Remember the truth they buried."
Jian Yu fell to one knee.
His breath came in ragged bursts.
The mark on his wrist burned hotter, the crimson lotus blooming wider, threads of light snaking up his arm toward his heart.
Around him, the very ground began to collapse inward, forming a black spiral that pulled at the remnants of the Garden.
Yuan staggered toward him, fighting the invisible weight pressing down.
She dropped to her knees beside him, reaching out with trembling hands.
"Please," she whispered, tears streaking her cheeks. "Come back. You're still you. I know you are."
Jian Yu looked at her.
Really looked.
And for a heartbeat, he almost believed her.
Almost.
But the Sutra pulsed again, deeper, heavier.
And from deep within the ruins of the Garden, a second pulse answered.
A seal.
Old.
Forgotten.
Now breaking.
The ground beneath them shuddered violently.
The air cracked with the sound of ancient formations fracturing under spiritual weight.
And from the depths of the sect, something stirred.
Something that had been waiting for this moment for longer than memory itself.
The ground cracked.
The Garden wept its last.
And Jian Yu fell.
Not in body.
In memory.
The world around him blurred, the black spiral at his feet swallowing not only stone and spirit—but time itself.
He tried to resist, planting his hands against the crumbling ground.Tried to stay in the present, where Yuan's voice still called to him.
But the Sutra demanded otherwise.
"Remember," it whispered."Remember what they stole."
Darkness engulfed him.
And when his vision cleared—
He stood beneath a burning tree.
Silver fire danced along ancient branches.The Weeping Lotus Trees were gone.In their place stood a colossal lotus-tree wreathed in sacred flame, roots twisting into broken stone.
Petals of ash drifted through the air like dying stars.
Beneath its branches, figures lay scattered—some still clutching shattered swords, others reaching for each other with hands frozen in death.
And at the center of it all, a girl knelt.
Her hair was silver, streaked with soot and blood.Her hands shook as she cradled a dying boy against her chest.
Him.
Jian Yu.
Younger, weaker, blood seeping from wounds that would not heal.
He could feel her heartbeat pounding against his broken body.
"Don't you dare forget me," Mei Lian whispered, voice raw with desperation."Even if they tear us apart. Even if they burn your name from the world."
Tears cut clean tracks down her dirt-streaked face.
"Find me," she begged."Promise me you'll find me."
She pressed her forehead against his, silver hair spilling over both of them like a shroud.
He remembered the feel of her tears hitting his skin.The way her spirit trembled against his.The oath not spoken with lips—but sealed in blood, breath, and broken hearts.
"Promise me..."
The scene cracked.
Shattered.
And reformed.
Jian Yu stood on a battlefield.
Not a noble war.
A massacre.
The banners of the Clã Li lay trampled in the mud, crushed underfoot by cultivators bearing the sigil of the Eternal Flower Sect.
The once-magnificent pavilions of the Li estate burned behind him, painting the night in colors of ruin.
Bodies lined the ground—friends, mentors, even the young ones who had never lifted a sword.
At the heart of the slaughter stood a man clad in crimson and black.
Elder Mo.
His robes untouched by the blood staining the soil.
Jian Yu's spirit recoiled as he saw it—
A trusted elder of the Clã Li, kneeling before Elder Mo, offering up a glowing jade artifact in trembling hands.
A betrayal.
Not a defeat.
A trade.
"Seal the boy," Elder Mo commanded, voice cold as obsidian. "The Dao must not awaken."
The traitor nodded.
The gates of the inner sanctum opened—not by force, but by invitation.
And death flooded in.
"They chose survival over loyalty," the Sutra whispered. "They chose silence over truth."
Jian Yu staggered backward as the battlefield dissolved into black mist.
A third vision formed.
The Inner Sanctum of the Eternal Flower Sect.
The Council gathered in secret.
Elder Zhen, his eyes hard.
Elder Suen, her hands trembling even as she set the ancient shard upon the altar.
Their voices hissed like knives:
"Erase every trace.""Erase even the memory.""Seal the Dao. Burn the roots. Burn the seed."
One elder, an old woman with eyes like shattered glass, spoke last:
"If even one survives, the desire will return."
Jian Yu cried out as the memories clawed deeper into his soul.
Threads of crimson weaved through the mist, binding him to truths he had been forced to forget.
In the real world, his body convulsed violently.
Crimson light bled from his skin, from the shattered ground beneath him, from the broken trees around him.
Yuan screamed his name, tears spilling freely down her cheeks.
But she sounded so far away.
A voice from another life.
And then, through the storm of memories, he saw her—
The girl with silver hair.
Standing alone on the ruins.
Reaching for him.
Her voice breaking:
"Don't forget me again."
The Sutra inside him roared.
The crimson lotus on his wrist blazed brighter.
And the black spiral at his feet erupted into a storm of crimson flame, devouring the last remnants of the Garden's sacred ground.
The flames roared around Jian Yu.
He gasped for air, the taste of ash and broken vows thick on his tongue.
The memories still burned behind his eyes—silver hair, a dying promise, betrayal cloaked in robes he once trusted.
But the Garden was gone.
Only ruins remained now.
Yuan knelt beside him, her hands trembling as she tried to pull him upright.
"Stay with me," she whispered fiercely. "Please, Jian Yu. Stay with me."
Jian Yu struggled to focus, the weight of the Sutra pressing against his soul like a hand crushing a flame.His limbs felt distant. His breath burned like smoke trapped inside him.
He saw the Rememberers forming a loose ring around them—silent, unmoving, their masks gleaming faintly under the bleeding sky.
They did not speak.
They did not pray.
They waited.
As if they, too, knew what was about to awaken.
Then the earth screamed.
A deep, wrenching groan ripped through the shattered Garden, splitting the ground open with jagged, bleeding cracks.
From the fissure where the Obelisk had once stood, light poured forth—not pure light, but the sickly glow of ancient seals unraveling after centuries of imprisonment.
The stones cried out, their spiritual inscriptions burning away into black smoke.
The air became a furnace of spiraling Qi, hot and heavy and full of mourning.
Something was rising.
Slowly.Inevitably.
The creature pulled itself from the broken soil like a corpse clawing out of a grave.
It was massive—twice the height of any man—its body forged from cracked jade and ossified blood.
Chains hung from its limbs, dragging pieces of shattered promises behind it, their links glowing faintly with cursed light.
Runes pulsed along its body—old, angry words, written in a language older than the sect itself.
Its head was smooth, featureless, save for a single eye carved deep into its forehead—a cold white flame burning within it, seeing not with sight, but with judgment.
The Guardian.
The Executioner.
The silent blade left behind by the founders of the Eternal Flower Sect to purge any who dared to carry forbidden truths.
Forgotten by most.
Buried deep.
Waiting.
The Guardian straightened with a sound like worlds grinding together, its cracked joints shedding flakes of ancient stone.
Each step it took pressed centuries of suppressed hatred into the broken ground.
Each breath it drew warped the air, bending the natural flow of Qi into twisted spirals of decay.
Yuan flinched instinctively as the Guardian moved.
"This is wrong," she breathed, voice cracking. "This thing was never meant to wake."
Jian Yu, barely able to lift his head, managed a ragged whisper.
"Run... Yuan... please."
But she only tightened her grip on him.
Her body shook with fear, but her spirit burned with defiance.
"No," she said. "I won't leave you."
The Guardian raised its hand.
An ancient sigil ignited above its palm—a nine-petaled lotus, each petal blackened and bleeding light.
The ground shuddered violently.
The already-ruined Garden began to collapse inward, the remnants of the sacred space torn apart like paper caught in a hurricane.
Above them, the high wards of the sect flared into bloody light.
Sigils burned against the sky—crude, desperate attempts by the elders to contain what they could no longer control.
Execution bells tolled, deep and slow, the sound vibrating through the bones of every living thing within the sect.
The Council had made their decision.
There would be no forgiveness.
No clemency.
Only obliteration.
The Guardian's voice tore through the ruins—not sound, but decree, vibrating in the spirit itself.
"Anomaly detected.""Initiate purification.""Sever the root of forbidden desire."
The Rememberers reacted instantly.
Shen Mu stepped forward, his mask cracked along one side, exposing the scarred jaw beneath it.
His hands flared with muted crimson light, the echoes of promises once broken and reforged now becoming weapons of memory.
Others followed, forming a living wall between Jian Yu and the approaching Guardian.
They knew they might fall.
They knew they might fail.
But remembering was enough.
Fighting was enough.
Jian Yu tried to rise.
His spirit screamed for him to move.
But his body, exhausted by the onslaught of memories and the burning Sutra, refused to obey.
He could only watch as the world tilted toward destruction.
Yuan's hand slid under his, steadying him.
Her forehead pressed lightly against his temple, grounding him.
Her voice was barely audible over the chaos.
"If we fall," she whispered fiercely, "we fall together."
A single tear slid down her cheek.
It hit Jian Yu's wrist, where the crimson lotus mark pulsed in reply.
Not with rage.
But with a quiet, desperate hope.
The Guardian took another step.
The Garden broke further.
The execution bells tolled louder.
And at the heart of it all
Jian Yu burned.
And remembered.
And chose.
The Garden collapsed.
Not just in stone and spirit—But in memory itself.
The Guardian moved through the ruins with relentless, mechanical purpose.
Each step shattered what little remained of the sacred grounds.Each gesture unspooled centuries of promises, scattering them like ash on the wind.
Above, the sky bled silver and black as ancient wards split under the pressure of betrayal and forgotten oaths.
From the distant balconies of the sect's inner sanctum, disciples watched.
Some covered their mouths in horror.Others wept openly, clutching the sashes of their robes as if prayer could stitch the world back together.A few, the ambitious and the fearful, turned away—already calculating new paths through a world that had just shifted beneath their feet.
Anciões materialized at the Garden's edge in bursts of light and wind.
Elder Suen among them, her robes of violet crystal now cracked and dulled by spiritual backlash.
They tried—Summoning ancient formations, weaving seals of containment and suppression.
But it was too late.
The Guardian would not obey.
Not even the Council could command it now.
Somewhere deeper within the sect's core, far beneath the great lotus halls, a ripple of energy pulsed outward.
A resonance felt only by the most attuned.
The Sect Master stirred.
For the first time in decades, the Lord of the Eternal Flower Sect opened his eyes within the Heart of Reflection—his secluded sanctum where he had pursued enlightenment beyond mortal limits.
The Guardian's awakening had shattered his meditation.But even he—master of a thousand cycles—could not reach the Garden in time.
Not yet.
The balance of the sect's very existence hung by a fraying thread.
Back in the ruins, the Rememberers fought.
Shen Mu's blade sang through the broken air, carving arcs of crimson memory against the Guardian's unstoppable advance.
Others flared with desperate courage, channeling promises once sworn and abandoned, reforged now into last stands of spirit and light.
But it wasn't enough.
The Guardian was inevitable.
It raised its hand again, the sigil of nine blackened petals burning brighter, and the air twisted under the crushing force of ancient judgment.
Another Rememberer fell, body reduced to mist and sorrow.
Shen Mu staggered, blood running freely down his brow.
His left arm hung limp at his side.
He looked back—past the ruins, past the dying Garden—to where Jian Yu and Yuan struggled toward the shattered outer paths.
Yuan bore the weight of Jian Yu almost entirely now, her face pale but unyielding.
Tears lined her eyes, but her grip was iron.
She would not let him fall.
Not now.
Not ever.
"Enough," Shen Mu whispered.
He reached inside his robes with trembling fingers and withdrew a small talisman—a shard of ancient jade, cracked and veined with crimson threads.
A relic older than the sect itself.
Forged when the Dao of Forbidden Desire still had a voice in the heavens.
The talisman pulsed once, recognizing Jian Yu's presence.
It would answer now.
Or never.
"Protect him," Shen Mu said to the remaining Rememberers.
They nodded without hesitation, forming a circle around Jian Yu and Yuan.
Their hands flared with the light of remembered oaths—each a vow that had once been broken, now reborn.
Shen Mu crushed the talisman against his palm.
It shattered into shards of red light.
The ground beneath them shuddered—not in collapse, but in revelation.
A spiral of ancient glyphs bloomed outward from the impact, revealing a hidden formation buried beneath centuries of stone and silence.
At its heart, a crack opened in space itself.
A gateway.
Beyond the tear in reality, a glimpse:
Stone halls carved in the shape of blooming lotuses.Walls engraved with nameless promises.Air thick with the weight of sorrow and defiance.
A sanctuary built by the first cultivators of the Dao of Desire—for those who would someday need to flee the forgetting.
"Go!" Shen Mu barked, voice rough and commanding.
"Now!"
Yuan didn't hesitate.
She dragged Jian Yu forward, ignoring the pain lancing up her spine, the tears stinging her eyes.
He stumbled, but she held him upright.
Held him together.
The Guardian reacted, its eye flaring.
It unleashed a wave of destructive Qi, tearing the earth asunder, ripping trees from their roots, sending shockwaves that shattered stone.
Anciões shouted from the Garden's edges, casting defensive formations to shield their disciples, but the Guardian ignored them as easily as one ignores ants beneath a boot.
A wall of Rememberers threw themselves between the Guardian and the fleeing group.
Some fell instantly, consumed by the radiant purge.
Others held for precious seconds—enough.
Yuan and Jian Yu reached the portal first.
As they crossed the threshold, Jian Yu felt it:
The Sutra within him pulsing wildly, not in resistance—but in recognition.
As if it, too, had found something it thought lost forever.
Behind them, Shen Mu followed, blood trailing from his wounds, his gaze burning with determination.
Two other Rememberers—those who still stood—dived after him into the rift.
The last remnants of memory and defiance.
The rift shuddered.
The Guardian's hand struck out—
But the gateway collapsed inward with a sound like a thousand petals falling into an endless sea.
Silence fell.
Only ruin remained where they had stood.
In the sky above, the bells of execution tolled one last time.
Their sound was not a command.
It was a dirge.
A funeral song for a sect that had lost its soul without realizing it.
In the Council's hidden halls, Elder Suen's voice cracked as she spoke:
"He escaped."
Zhen said nothing.
Only clenched his withered hands tighter around the arms of his throne.
The Sect Master closed his eyes again—not in meditation, but in grim calculation.
The Garden was lost.
But the hunt had only begun.
Far below, in the hidden sanctuary, Jian Yu collapsed onto the ancient stone floor.
Yuan knelt beside him, cradling his head against her lap.
Her hands trembled.
Tears streaked her dirt-smeared face.
But her voice, when she spoke, was steady.
"You're safe," Yuan said. "We made it."
The Sutra inside Jian Yu pulsed once.
A low, deep sound—like a heartbeat echoing through forgotten halls.
Old promises stirred in the stones around them.
Old dreams, waiting to be remembered.
And for the first time in his second life, Jian Yu closed his eyes—
Not in defeat.
But in hope.
End of Chapter,
Next Chapter: Chapter 21 – Where Ashes Dream