Chapter 9: When Heaven Forgets You Exist

The morning after Lin Xuan's return from the Hollow Bloom Chamber was eerily quiet.

No whispers. No stares. No rumors.

Not because of awe.

Because no one remembered him.

Not Zhao Wuren.

Not the disciples he'd defeated.

Not even the record tablets where his victory over Ji Yunlan should have been carved.

It was as if Lin Xuan had never existed.

He walked through the sect like a ghost—unseen, unfelt, untouched.

Except for one.

 Nie Qing

She was waiting at the cliff's edge, overlooking the bone lake.

Her expression, as always, was unreadable behind her porcelain mask, but her puppets twitched violently in their cages.

"The Heavens have sent the White Mirror," she said. "They've begun the erasure."

Lin Xuan said nothing.

"Do you feel it?" she continued. "Your name is unraveling. The scripts that hold your place in this world… are being rewritten."

He looked up at the sky.

Cloudless.

Yet the sun seemed fainter.

"Then it's time I unwrite them in return."

Heaven's Tool: White Mirror Envoy

That night, the White Mirror Envoy descended.

It did not arrive in light.

It did not walk.

It simply appeared—standing over the sect's central plaza, faceless and featureless, clad in silver robes of flowing mirror-light.

A ripple of divine authority surged.

Everyone who looked at it forgot what they were doing.

Even the Elders felt their memories skip like scratched jade. One fell to his knees, whispering a name he couldn't remember forgetting.

The Mirror raised a hand.

A single scroll unfurled—blank.

Then it wrote:

"Correction: Remove Lin Xuan."

 Spiritual World Collapses

Lin Xuan's inner sea cracked.

His past memories blurred—his mother's face, his voice, his old name.

His own soul began to flicker between presence and non-being.

"So this is the Mirror's power," he thought. "It doesn't kill. It deletes."

But he was not an ordinary soul.

He was the Inheritor of the Hollow Bloom.

He was anchored not in reality—but in void.

And so he fought back.

 Battle in the Ashen Plaza

As the White Mirror extended its hand to erase the last shard of Lin Xuan's name, a spiral of void essence surged upward from the ground, cutting through divine law.

Lin Xuan appeared mid-air, eyes pitch-black, cloaked in layers of shifting unbeing.

His presence caused the runes on the sect's towers to crack.

Even the sun dimmed slightly.

The White Mirror turned—though it had no face—and launched its Fate Slice, a ripple of spiritual decree that unstitched three moments of Lin Xuan's time, locking him in a loop.

But Lin Xuan's eyes burned with silent comprehension.

Void Technique: Cause Severance.

He erased the "reason" the Fate Slice struck him—and so, it never had.

The ripple fizzled.

The Mirror twitched.

 Technique Reveal: Name Unmaking Seal

Using the void seed's fusion with the Hollow Bloom, Lin Xuan invoked a forbidden glyph that nullifies identity itself.

Not just for himself.

But for anything it touches.

He formed the sigil with both hands and struck.

The Mirror's robes rippled as a wave of anti-name energy surged into its form.

"You forget me?" Lin Xuan said coldly. "Let me teach you what it means to be unremembered."

The White Mirror staggered.

For the first time in its eternal duty, it faltered.

And then, its blank scroll tore in half.

The Envoy's form shimmered—fragmented.

It tried to rewrite the world again.

Lin Xuan stepped into the ripple.

One palm against the scroll. One thought:

"No."

And the scroll ceased to exist.

So did the Envoy.

 Post-Battle: The Sky Watches

The heavens were silent.

The Eye blinked once.

Then closed.

Phase Two had failed.

But now the heavens knew: Lin Xuan was not just resisting. He was rewriting.

And somewhere deep within the celestial bureaucracy, a higher decree was whispered.

"Initiate Phase Three.""Deploy: Heavenfall Trials."

Back in the mortal world, Nie Qing appeared beside Lin Xuan.

"You erased a divine enforcer," she said.

"They will not send a mirror next time."

He looked toward the stars, which now watched him in silence.

"Good," he said. "Let them send the sky itself."

"I will erase that, too."