Whispers of the Jade Saber

"If you burn the truth, what is left?"

---

The world they returned to felt wrong.

After the Sea of Sealed Tomes, colors were too sharp. Sounds too distant. The trees of the Clouding Forest leaned in directions they hadn't before, and even the stars—those ancient, quiet watchers—were blinking in different rhythms.

"Something shifted," Tian Mian said, rubbing his temple. "The Map of Flame didn't just update. It bent the timeline."

They stood in a clearing surrounded by vines that whispered, despite the stillness of the air. Lin Feng looked down at the emberblade in his left hand—Remnant—and the Ashen Saber on his back. Both pulsed with quiet hunger.

A new name had been etched into the scroll:

> Ren Qixu — The Inverted Scholar

Location: Temple of the Vanishing Sky

Status: Erased from recorded memory

Threat Level: Unstable anomaly

Jun Feilan scowled at the map. "What does Vanishing Sky mean?"

Tian sighed. "It means the realm isn't bound by space or time. It's a forgotten fold—like a scroll that's been crumpled, written on, and thrown into a fire. A place erased from the world because what happened there… shouldn't have."

"Then how do we find it?" Liang Yue asked.

Shi Qian, silent until now, stepped forward.

"We let it find us."

---

They climbed to the Singing Cliffs.

According to Tian, that was where the sky thinned.

The journey took two days. The cliffs towered like jagged piano keys, black against the churning clouds. Wind howled through the rock formations, carrying with it fractured sounds—laughter, whispers, screams, and songs in languages no one remembered.

"Don't listen to them," Liang Yue warned.

But Lin Feng did.

He heard his mother's voice.

He never remembered her speaking before.

> "Don't look back, Feng'er. Even stars die if they remember too much."

---

At the cliff's edge stood a ruin: three columns and a shattered sundial.

Shi Qian placed her hand on the stone, and for the first time, Lin Feng saw a sigil burn into her palm—an ancient seal of spiraling ink.

Tian gasped. "That's the sigil of the Historians Unwritten. They were wiped out ages ago."

Shi Qian didn't look back. "One still breathes."

The sundial glowed.

The clouds above peeled open—not like a portal, but like pages being torn from a book. Beyond the clouds: a spiral of ink and stars, an inverted world suspended like a library shattered across the heavens.

The Temple of the Vanishing Sky had opened.

"Step quickly," Shi Qian said. "Time doesn't wait in there."

They entered.

---

Inside the temple, gravity died.

Up was sideways. Down looped. Hallways stretched endlessly until blinked at—and then ended in abrupt drops. The walls were made of living parchment. Words formed, read themselves aloud, then bled into nothing.

In the distance floated broken towers and staircases spiraling through void.

No sun. No moon. Only words, glowing.

"Ren Qixu built this place with a single spell," Tian whispered. "A forbidden ink known as the Reversal Sutra. He inscribed it on his soul and it inverted everything he touched."

"Why?" Lin Feng asked.

"To find the original moment," Shi Qian answered. "The instant where history was changed."

Jun Feilan walked with her spear pointed backward. "And let me guess—he didn't come back the same?"

"No one does."

---

As they descended a staircase that bled into nothing, Liang Yue suddenly gripped Lin Feng's arm.

"Don't move."

He froze.

Ahead of them floated a scroll.

It was closed, but pulsing.

A voice whispered: "Truth is a weapon sharpened by memory."

Shi Qian stepped forward.

"That's one of his echoes," she said. "Be careful. If it opens too quickly, it'll write you."

Lin Feng approached it slowly, Saber pulsing.

The scroll unfurled.

---

Inside—

He saw a memory that wasn't his.

A city of flame. Not Ashen Flame—but blue, like ink on fire.

A tower rising beyond stars.

At its peak, Ren Qixu stood, body stitched from scripture, holding a pen of black flame.

He was writing something in the air.

And with every stroke, people vanished.

Not just from space.

From time.

No bones. No screams. No mention in history.

Gone.

Lin Feng's breath caught.

Ren turned to face him, within the memory, eyes glowing with inverted light.

> "If I erased you, would you still fight me?"

The scroll snapped shut.

And shattered.

---

The Temple screamed.

The spell lines on the walls cracked. Phrases from lost dynasties spilled into the air like mist. One column toppled, revealing beneath it a sigil shaped like a question mark wrapped around a star.

Shi Qian gasped. "He left a challenge."

Tian's eyes narrowed. "A truth puzzle."

"What kind of puzzle?" Lin Feng asked.

Liang Yue touched the sigil.

> "The kind where the wrong answer erases your name from fate."

"The moment you name something, you give it power to vanish."

---

The sigil burned in the air—twisting and spiraling until it resolved into three glyphs, each floating before the group like ghostly options.

Each glyph hovered silently, inscribed with words in a script older than modern memory. The Reversal Sutra. The language of lost time.

Tian Mian stepped forward cautiously.

"This is a soul cipher. One of Ren Qixu's most dangerous defenses. Choose the wrong glyph, and your name could be ripped from every mind—including your own."

"What are the glyphs?" Jun Feilan asked, tightening her grip on her spear.

Shi Qian raised her fingers, touching the air just beneath them.

"They're questions," she said. "Or answers. It depends on how you read time."

Each glyph pulsed faintly.

1. The first read:

"I am the flame that forgets."

2. The second:

"I am the truth that hides."

3. The third:

"I am the name you cannot write."

Liang Yue's breath caught.

"They're riddles. One of them is him."

"No," Lin Feng said slowly. "One of them is us."

Everyone turned.

He stepped forward, Ashen Saber whispering across his back, the emberblade humming low in his hand.

"The Temple's built to erase, right?" he asked. "To undo what history can't contain?"

"Yes," Tian replied carefully.

"Then if we're walking through someone else's forgotten truth, we're already inside their answer."

He pointed to the third glyph.

> "That's the one. 'I am the name you cannot write.' Because Ren Qixu erased himself. We're here because he failed to be remembered."

The sigil trembled.

All three glyphs flickered—

Then two exploded into burning ash.

Only the third remained.

And a doorway opened behind it—one made of inverted script, glowing backward, twisting space around it.

Tian exhaled. "You passed."

"Or guessed well," Jun muttered.

"No," Shi Qian said softly. "He understood."

---

They stepped through the threshold.

The realm beyond no longer pretended to be a temple. It was a spiral archive, floating through stardust, where every shelf was a ribbon of flame, and every book opened into a moment rather than a story.

Words didn't stay still here. They slithered along the floor like snakes.

In the center of the space floated a mirror, ten meters tall, shaped like a lotus in full bloom.

But it reflected nothing.

Not even light.

"That's the Void Mirror," Shi Qian whispered.

"It doesn't reflect?" Lin Feng asked.

"No. It inverts."

Tian looked up in awe. "The last surviving piece of the Reversal Sutra."

Jun stepped back. "I don't like it."

"It shows you not who you are," Shi Qian said, "but who you were meant to be—before fate rewrote you."

Lin Feng stepped forward.

And the Void Mirror shimmered.

---

It didn't show him a tyrant.

It didn't show him a hero.

It showed him a boy.

Living peacefully in a village nestled in the foothills of a mountain range that never existed. No Saber. No war. A life without fire.

He had a family. A younger brother. A mother who laughed like bells. A father who fixed roofs. He was happy.

And then…

One word appeared in the mirror, floating above the boy's head:

> "Erased."

The world behind the mirror vanished.

Lin Feng's eyes widened.

The Saber on his back pulsed—like a heartbeat skipping rhythm.

He turned to Tian. "That life… it was mine?"

Tian looked shaken. "Maybe. If what the mirror showed was real."

"It was more than real," Shi Qian said. "It was original."

Liang Yue stepped beside him.

"What now?" she asked.

A voice answered.

> "Now you rewrite me."

---

The air shifted.

The Void Mirror cracked—just slightly.

And from it stepped a man in scholar robes lined with swirling ink, eyes covered by a band of silver parchment. His skin flickered like wet ink under sunlight, half-there and fully aware.

He bowed.

"I am Ren Qixu," he said. "Or I was. Until I failed to become."

Lin Feng stepped forward.

"You erased yourself."

"To find the moment I was born wrong," Ren replied. "And in doing so… I made it worse."

"What were you searching for?" Liang Yue asked.

Ren looked toward the mirror.

> "The instant Heaven decided to lie."

---

Ren turned to Lin Feng.

"You carry the Ashen Saber. I remember that power. I once held it… in another fold."

"You were a Recordbearer?"

"I was… a Backscripter," Ren said. "One who writes not what was, but what was never allowed to be."

Lin Feng asked, "Then why did you vanish?"

Ren smiled.

"I found a name I wasn't meant to write."

He turned to the Void Mirror and raised a finger.

A single stroke burned through the surface.

> A name appeared:

"Lianhua."

Liang Yue froze.

That name—

Ren turned to her.

> "You were her. Before the world unmade her. Before the Saber chose a new fate."

"And what does that mean for me now?" she whispered.

Ren looked at Lin Feng.

> "That to move forward, you must rewrite the flame itself."

The temple trembled.

Words began to fall from the sky.

The Void Mirror split open—

And from it came a new scroll, burned from two timelines:

> A fusion of Ashen Flame and Reversal Sutra.

Ren Qixu placed it in Lin Feng's hands.

> "You now bear the power to unname fate. Use it carefully."

He smiled.

And, like a page in fire—

Ren Qixu burned.

---

End of Chapter 33