3 Amnesia

The withered forest was a scene of utter devastation. The bloodstains on the ground had scorched to black, leaving only messy, chaotic marks. The massive handprints that had once seeped with ghostly energy had vanished. Two of the malevolent spirits had been obliterated, leaving nothing behind, while the final remaining spirit dared not even twitch.

"Daoist," the spirit trembled, not daring to move, "I was wrong! I won't run anymore!"

The youth’s eerie eyes turned toward it, seemingly wanting to draw closer. Just then, the youth choked and spat out a mouthful of dark, stagnant blood. He slumped backward against a tree, his chest heaving with violent, ragged breaths. The veins in his neck bulged, as if something were surging rapidly through his meridians.

From the corner of his eye, the crouching spirit caught a glimpse of the scene in the distance, and a sudden, inexplicable chill crept up its feet. The skin of the young Daoist, who had just suppressed them, seemed to be splitting and knitting back together. A pool of blood had gathered beneath him, and the surrounding yin energy was scrambling to force its way into his body.

To any observer, he looked to be on the verge of death—his leg broken, his body covered in wounds, and lacerations from falls and collisions visible everywhere.

Yet, despite all this, his breath never failed.

The sensation of being scoured by yin energy was agonizing; his entire body was filled with the chaotic, rampaging force. The first thing the youth felt was the energy eroding his meridians. He desperately wanted to expel it, but his body was unnaturally absorbing the chilling energy, devouring it hungrily as if by some irresistible survival instinct.

His empty dantian was now flooded with a vast amount of external yin energy. After scouring his meridians, the energy flowed slowly toward the massive eye totem residing deep within his dantian. He tried to reclaim his consciousness from the pain, but various obscure sigils and memories collided in his mind, rampaging through his sea of consciousness like a plow.

With a dull thud, he felt himself dragged from the scorching agony into a bone-chilling, icy abyss. Suddenly, fragmented memories surfaced in his mind:

In the freezing depths of a pond, people mocked him, pressing his head beneath the water. Only when he was on the verge of suffocation would they pull him out, as if granting him alms... He heard his own wailing, listened to the perpetrators’ gloating, condescending pity—mocking him as they ruined him, then pulling him back from the gates of death like a charitable act.

The bone-chilling sensation vanished, and suddenly, the clamor of arguments filled his ears. In the ancestral hall, the man who had always been arrogant and treated him like an ant was fuming with shame and anger; the elders, usually so high and mighty, were in a panic... He knelt, isolated and helpless, in the center of the hall, his palms throbbing from wounds carved by a knife. He listened blankly as the elders who had once shown him slight kindness turned against him, hurling insults and calling him a useless piece of trash. It felt as if someone were stepping on his hands, grinding them into the dirt, forcing coarse sand deep into his wounds.

*Who is this?*
*This is you.*
*Who am I?*
*Su Yu.*

The clamor of the ancestral hall faded into the distance, like a lantern show suddenly pulled away.

*What was the end?* Su Yu thought, feeling like a stranger to himself. *Oh, in the end, he was pushed off a cliff.*

Within his sea of consciousness, the proverb, clinging like a malignant tumor, echoed once more. Intense pain flooded his mind again:

*'You cannot die.'*

*So noisy. Stop it.*
*Get out! Get out!*

Subconsciously, Su Yu tried to cover his ears. The water from the memories receded, and the sound of rushing wind surged into his eardrums. With a boom, all his past memories were suddenly reeled back. He gasped for air and snapped his eyes open.

Soon, the sensation of being choked and controlled vanished.

Su Yu closed his eyes. The urging voice in his mind seemed to have disappeared, and the memories were a chaotic jumble. He tried to focus, but found he could recall nothing. As the docile yin energy settled within him, the strange, obscure sigils in his mind faded along with it, and his nearly withered body seemed to find a glimmer of life.

The yin wind howled through the dead forest, bone-chilling gusts blowing in succession, and the surrounding pool of blood slowly spread.

The spirit shivered in the wind, scuttling away in fear, avoiding the blood—which it usually loved—as if it were a venomous snake. *How can a human still be alive after losing so much blood? Is he dead? What will happen to me if he is? Will I die too?*

The spirit cautiously raised its head, only to see the youth sitting in the pool of blood in the distance.

The golden patterns in the corners of the youth's eyes were slowly receding. His eyes were deep and dark, with only faint golden traces remaining on the edges of his pupils. At this moment, those eyes were fixed on the spirit.

The spirit was even more terrified. "Daoist, please don't look at me like that... I'm scared."

As Su Yu regained movement in his fingers, the clamor of the spirit’s pleas became clearer, and strange spots of light appeared in his previously dim vision. He looked at the light with a sense of detachment. It overlapped with the sound of the pleas. A strange totem rotated in his mind, a vast amount of yin energy coiled in his dantian, his near-dead body had been saved, and now, a ball of light appeared before him.

It was a humanoid ball of white light.
*No, I shouldn't be able to see.*

Su Yu recalled with a sense of estrangement, *I am a blind man.*

"Come here." Su Yu blinked uncomfortably, watching the white light stand up and move toward him in accordance with his command.

The spirit had guarded this place for a long time, not daring to leave. The longer it watched, the deeper its fear of the young Daoist became. *To be wounded like this and still be alive... is he even human?*

But the spirit dared not ask. It simply followed the Daoist's orders. After circling a few times, the Daoist finally told it to stop.

"What are you?" Su Yu asked.

The spirit was dazed. "I... I'm just a small ghost nourished by the yin energy of Nanwu Mountain."

*Yin energy?* Su Yu looked at the humanoid gas cloud.

Su Yu didn't ask further. Thinking he hadn't been clear enough, the spirit stammered, "I... my name is Zhang Fugui. I was from Xinglin Village in Nanwu Town. When I was alive, I was an itinerant physician. I fell off a cliff while out gathering herbs..."

The yin wind continued to howl. The spirit's legs were aching, and its throat was dry. Seeing no response, it asked cautiously, "Daoist...?"

Su Yu ignored it, beginning instead to examine his current state.

When he lifted his hand, he still felt a dull, sluggish ache. Control of his body had returned. He touched his foot and, judging by the angle of the bones, realized his leg was broken. His touch was met with warm blood, and he found it incredible to think that all this blood had flowed from his own body.

*How can I still be alive after all this?*

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, the eye totem in his dantian flared up again. A powerful sense of compulsion washed over him, and the next moment, he uncontrollably spat out a mouthful of fresh blood.

*Still spitting?!* The spirit watched in horror. *Is this, is this... is this still a human?*

The youth in the distance truly looked like something neither human nor ghost. After spitting another mouthful of blood, his body seemed to reach its limit. Even though the spirit called out to him several times, the youth did not move. His eyes were closed, and he leaned against the tree like a corpse.

"Daoist?"

*Is he really dead?* A surge of joy rose in the spirit's heart. Confirming the youth remained motionless, it turned to run out of the forest.

But it hadn't gone more than a few steps before it was bound by an invisible force. With a clang, it was yanked back several steps. Turning in terror, it saw a blood-red chain tied to its ankle, seemingly made of fresh blood—one end connected to it, the other to the youth in the distance.

It tried walking away, but the further it went, the more it felt its soul being torn apart. After several attempts, it realized it was bound to the young Daoist. For a ghost like itself that had only just formed a soul, being torn meant the end of all possibility of cultivation, and likely total annihilation.

At that moment, the yin wind high above Nanwu Mountain grew fiercer. The spirit watched the flow of the wind.

"No way... is the seal closing?"

The spirit gritted its teeth and finally summoned the courage to approach the young Daoist. When it reached him, the youth still hadn't moved. It saw the youth's broken leg and hesitated, glancing at the wind in the distance, then back at the blood-soaked ground.

*I can't die here. I have to escape.*

"Thank goodness, he can still be saved." The spirit breathed a sigh of relief. It floated to the side of the broken leg, its fingers gingerly stroking the limb to assess the damage. Once it found the fracture, it exerted force with its fingers. With a *crack*, the sleeping youth let out a muffled groan of pain.

The spirit became even more careful, scared into a pause by the youth's groan, before apologizing while it worked. "Forgive me, Daoist. This leg must be set, or it will be broken for good."

The bent leg was forcibly realigned. Once finished, the spirit scavenged some dry branches, tore a few strips of cloth from the youth’s robes, and skillfully splinted the leg, performing a simple dressing to stop the bleeding.

Only then did it hoist the youth onto its back.

The chain tied to its ankle caused no backlash. It easily lifted the youth onto its back; even when it had been dragging him, it had felt how light he was, and now, carrying him, it felt he was absurdly thin.

*He’s dressed so well, why doesn't he eat more? Are all cultivators so obsessed with staying thin?*

The spirit thought of its long-unseen son. When he was alive, his son had been a chubby boy; by age seven, he was so fat he panted when he walked. Whenever he told the boy to diet or exercise, the little rascal would just act spoiled to get his way.

Thinking of this, Zhang Fugui realized how long it had been since he had seen his wife and child.

Nanwu Mountain was a place where yin thrived and yang withered. The fissure at the bottom of the mountain gorge was a graveyard for ghosts—a place from which none ever returned.

The spirit, Zhang Fugui, had fallen to his death in this gorge years ago while gathering herbs. Since forming a soul, he had tried every way to leave, but the entire fissure was suppressed by a special seal, said to be left by a great master. Any creature that died here could never leave Nanwu Mountain; even the fierce spirits who lived here could not shake it.

Zhang Fugui had assumed he would spend the rest of his existence as a ghost in this place.

But a few months ago, the famous fierce spirits of Nanwu Mountain had suddenly begun to slaughter one another, seemingly fighting over some secret treasure. It was then that the iron-clad seal began to weaken. This weakening continued until a few days ago, when a crack finally appeared in the seal on the western side of the mountain.

The chance to escape had come.

Su Yu regained consciousness amidst the swaying motion. The dull ache in his sea of consciousness had not vanished, but he felt himself draped over a cold, chilling body. He opened his eyes slightly and saw the white light carrying him through the forest.

"Where are we going?" Su Yu asked.

Zhang Fugui was panting with exertion. Hearing the voice, it reflexively replied, "To escape, of course! If we're any later, the seal will close—Daoist!? You're awake!"

Su Yu tried to move and found the pain in his body had lessened significantly. Most notably, his leg felt better; the fracture was less painful, as if something had fixed it in place, and the jolting of the movement didn't aggravate the break.

He looked down at the spirit and asked, "You did this?"

Zhang Fugui nodded hurriedly.

The person on his back didn't respond. Zhang Fugui glanced to the side.

The youth’s eyes, still flecked with golden patterns, were half-closed, seemingly not noticing the nod.

*Is he really blind...?*

Su Yu sensed the white mist moving. "Why don't you speak?"

Zhang Fugui blurted out, "I—it was me."

*If I didn't treat that leg, it wouldn't just be about it being ruined; the blood loss alone would be fatal. Besides, if I didn't treat the wound, how could I carry him? If he kept bleeding, every wild ghost within ten miles would be drawn here.*

In life, Zhang Fugui had been an itinerant physician. Nothing bothered him more than patients who refused to follow medical advice. If this were one of his old patients, he would have given them a piece of his mind for such reckless behavior.

Zhang Fugui kept his grievances to himself, acting timidly. "If the wound were left alone... you would have died."

Su Yu replied, "Isn't dying a good thing?"

*What's good about dying? It's terrible!*

But facing the youth, Zhang Fugui didn't dare utter a word of rebuke. It was nothing more than a desire to survive. Besides, death only brought more suffering.

Their conversation ceased. Zhang Fugui remained silent, and the person on his back said nothing more. The youth didn't seem to care about where they were going; after those first few sentences, he didn't express interest in anything, nor did he indicate where he wanted to go.

The exit to the seal was in the west. Zhang Fugui carried him for two hours, gasping for breath as he reached the edge of the withered forest.

From a distance, he could see the fog outside thinning, and the faint aura of the world beyond Nanwu Mountain began to drift in. Overjoyed, his pace quickened. But just as he reached the edge of the forest, he sensed the scattered yin grass and the remnants of broken yin energy.

*It's too quiet. Why isn't there a single ghost to be seen...?*

A chill ran down Zhang Fugui’s spine. Just as he took a few steps back, a violent gust of wind swept in, forcing him to retreat several paces. He hurried to huddle behind a dead tree to withstand the gale.

"What's going on—" The wind stung Zhang Fugui’s eyes. Suddenly, a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. "D-Daoist?"

The strength of the grip pinned him. Zhang Fugui, who had wanted to run, felt his legs rooted to the spot. He tilted his head to see that the person on his back wasn't looking at him; those eerie eyes were fixed straight ahead—

The youth’s eyes shifted slightly, his pupils—calm as stagnant water—seeming to rotate.

"Don't move."