Several years later.
When the morning sunlight pierced through the floor-to-ceiling window right on schedule, Lin Mu had already woken from sleep. He washed up with practiced ease, knotted his tie, pushed open the door, and merged into the clamor outside.
After graduating from university, on the strength of his excellent grades, he had smoothly found a job in this city — one that looked glamorous and paid handsomely in the eyes of outsiders.
And at his side.
That girl who in high school had always worn an adolescent smile had shed her childishness as well, accompanying him all the way to the present.
The two had already moved in together, their lives stable, their feelings deep.
A few days ago, both sets of parents had even formally sat down together, smiling as they seriously discussed the bride price and the wedding date.
These past few years, Lin Mu's life could almost be described with four words: smooth sailing all the way.
A respectable job, a considerable income, a few close friends to gather with on weekends, parents in good health who felt immense pride and satisfaction in his current state.
That past life of an ordinary, introverted, even somewhat self-deprecating shut-in had been revised over again, as though by the gentlest of brushstrokes.
It had become a more complete, happier, and far more attachment-inducing version.
But in Lin Mu's heart, one string had never truly been loosened.
He had always kept a hidden notebook.
In that notebook were recorded, densely packed, all his memories concerning the "Gu world."
He would still open that notebook from time to time, and even on his vacations, he would deliberately defy his original life track entirely — going alone to unfamiliar remote mountain villages, approaching strangers who had never existed in his memory, doing things he had never done.
He was attempting, through this near-extreme "deviation," to probe this world.
But several years had passed.
Nothing had happened.
Those people who had no connection to Lin Mu were all living their own lives, each full of mundane human warmth.
Faced with this situation, Lin Mu had to admit one thing.
At the very least, with who he was now, he simply could not prove that this place was fake.
And so he had written that notebook.
His thinking was very simple.
Human memory can deceive. Written words cannot.
If one day this illusion realm truly began to alter his memories, then at least these black words on white paper could still remind him who he really was.
But what truly made Lin Mu shudder was not any change in the outside world.
It was the change in his own psychology.
When he first returned here, he had thought about everything in the Gu world every day, every single moment.
Later.
It became once every few days.
Later still.
Sometimes a week or two would pass without him actively recalling any of it.
This busy yet incomparably warm real life, full of mundane human warmth, was pushing those memories bit by bit into the furthest corner of his mind.
...
Black Wind Ridge, within Black Blood Stockade's Mountain Protection Grand Array.
Several scouts knelt on one knee in the side chamber of the council hall, reporting intelligence to Lin Cang.
The men Lin Cang had sent out had finally brought back a batch of sighting records concerning Lin Mu.
"Patriarch, Lin Mu did indeed withdraw back to the main stockade."
The lead scout's voice was low as he reported:
"Clansmen have seen him. Some remember he was covered in wounds at the time, walking slowly past in the direction of the main stockade's side gate."
"Others remember his complexion was exceedingly poor, to the point that even walking normally seemed extremely strenuous for him."
"And some vaguely saw him heading deeper into the stockade."
"But beyond that…"
The scout lowered his head, a trace of helplessness in his tone.
"Because the situation was too chaotic, the trail goes completely cold at that point."
Hearing this report, Lin Cang's eyes narrowed slightly.
Naturally, the suspicion in his heart grew heavier.
In a chaotic situation like this, if a man simply died out there, that would be the most normal thing imaginable.
But the problem now was this.
Lin Mu had clearly made it back to Black Blood Stockade alive.
Yet he had strangely vanished!
This was absolutely not normal.
Lin Cang's fingers tapped lightly on the tabletop as he carefully considered how to handle it.
But just at this moment.
"RUMBLE——!!!"
An exceedingly violent muffled roar came thundering in from the stockade's outer perimeter!
The offensive outside had grown ever more ferocious.
Li Mang and the White Bone Alliance's Gu Masters were by no means ordinary figures.
After a great deal of prior probing, they had gradually grasped a thread of the Mountain Protection Grand Array's operating pattern.
They began shifting tactics.
No longer bombarding the light curtain at random like headless flies, they instead concentrated large amounts of elite combat strength on a few regions that showed abnormal reactions, striking them in waves.
Just a moment ago.
One of the key array eyes had come under repeated fierce assault from several Rank 3 Clan Elders of the White Bone Alliance.
Though the Mountain Protection Grand Array's foundation was deep and it had not been broken outright, under this kind of targeted offensive, obvious ripples had already appeared in the light curtain over that area.
"Report——!"
A Gu Master's hoarse voice came from beyond the hall.
"The southwest array eye is under attack! Requesting reinforcements!"
"I'll lead men there personally!"
Lin Zhen, stationed to the side, did not waste half a word and immediately charged out with a batch of elites.
A brutal struggle swiftly erupted between the two sides over that area.
Lin Cang slowly rose to his feet.
He understood perfectly well that however strange the matter of Lin Mu was, it could only be set aside for now.
At this moment, he had to devote all his mind to coordinating the overall battle.
Once the White Bone Alliance truly managed to break through the Mountain Protection Grand Array step by step, Black Blood Stockade would not have much time left at all.
"Investigate."
Lin Cang glanced at the Gu Masters kneeling on the ground and issued his order:
"Keep looking into his whereabouts."
"But remember — do not make a sound about it."
"Yes!"
The subordinates accepted the order and swiftly withdrew.
The search radius began to expand quietly, bit by bit, within Black Blood Stockade's main stockade.
Every location Lin Mu might have gone to, or might have hidden in, was carefully combed through one by one.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
In the end, following the earlier direction, the scouts searched their way along until they gradually drew near the territory of the rear mountain.
By this point, all the clues had grown exceedingly thin.
The captain leading the team frowned, looked at the dim and deep path ahead, waved his hand, and was about to lead his men into the rear mountain to continue a deeper search.
And it was precisely at this moment—
An unremarkable figure slowly walked out from a patch of shadow to the side.
It was none other than that nameless female cultivator who had earlier let Lin Mu into the rear mountain without hesitation.
Her expression as usual, she came before those few Gu Masters and exchanged a few quiet words with the captain leading the team.
After a few sentences, the captain's originally taut expression seemed to ease slightly.
He no longer insisted on pushing deeper into the rear mountain, merely nodding before turning and leading his men away.
The light of their torches dimmed bit by bit along the rear mountain path as they receded into the distance.
Until at last it vanished completely.
The rear mountain returned once more to a deathly silence and depth.
The female cultivator stood quietly where she was.
She tilted her head up slightly, looking in the direction where those Gu Masters had disappeared. On that utterly plain face, there was not the slightest ripple.
A moment later.
Her figure, too, vanished soundlessly into the heavy darkness.
...
Time is the most merciless thing of all.
It is like a river, exceedingly gentle yet utterly unstoppable.
Who knew how many more winters and summers had passed.
The years had already carved the most genuine of marks upon Lin Mu.
He had entered middle age.
Those classmates from his high school days, chattering in his ears every day with their vivid, lively faces, had long since scattered to the four winds after graduation, dispersed to the ends of the earth.
Those memories he had once thought he would remember all his life had also begun, under the crushing weight of daily living, to be worn pale bit by bit by time, until they had even grown somewhat blurred.
Lin Mu's own life had likewise entered an exceedingly standard, yet exceedingly stable track.
A nine-to-five job.
Household trivialities that were occasionally a headache, yet full of warmth.
Weekend chats over tea with two or three old friends.
Day after day.
Year after year.
This kind of life was not bad.
Indeed, for most ordinary people, it could already be called an exceedingly happy and fulfilling life.
One day.
During an utterly ordinary weekend cleaning, while Lin Mu was sorting through dust-covered old things in the bottommost drawer of his study, he dug out that old black notebook once again.
The notebook's hardcover had grown somewhat worn and faded.
The pages inside had begun to yellow slightly from the erosion of the years, giving off a faint musty smell.
Wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, Lin Mu sat quietly at his desk.
He extended fingers that had grown somewhat coarse and slowly turned to the notebook's first page.
At the very top of that first page.
Still written in exceedingly forceful strokes were two large words, by now somewhat faded:
Reverend Insanity.
Lin Mu looked at those words, looked at them for a long time.
He simply looked at them quietly.
Those memories that had once kept him sleepless countless deep nights, that had kept his nerves drawn taut.
Now, viewed again across the long years, they had unexpectedly taken on a strangeness difficult to put into words.
As though…
he were looking at someone else's life.
Just then.
From beyond the study door came a familiar, gentle call:
"Honey, what are you spacing out for? The kids are all ready, they're just waiting on you. Let's go."
That was his wife, with whom he had shared so many years through thick and thin.
Lin Mu was slightly dazed.
Then he came back to himself, and the corner of his mouth curved into an exceedingly natural, gentle smile.
"Coming."
He reflexively closed that yellowed notebook and set it casually on the desk.
Then he rose and left the study.
The door was pulled gently shut.
The study sank back into quiet.
Only the window did not seem to be fully closed.
A light breeze quietly blew in through the gap outside.
The wind brushed softly across the desk.
That closed old notebook was idly blown open by this gust.
The yellowed pages rustled faintly in the wind.
One page.
Then another.
At last, the wind stopped.
And the pages slowly came to rest on one of them.
That page was mostly blank.
Dead center, there were only four Chinese characters written in black fountain pen.
The strokes were still sharp, as though they meant to pierce through the back of the paper.
Gu Yue Fang Yuan.