At the edge of the Scarlet Cloud Pavilion, away from the floating peaks and radiant towers, stood a monolith of black stone—a tower without windows, doors, or carvings.

  No one entered it.

  Unless they sought the Third Trial.

  The Silent Tower.

  Yue Xian stood at its base, watching Li Fan approach.

  “This trial will not test your body. Or even your soul,” she said quietly.

  “It will test whether you can still call yourself Li Fan when everything else is stripped away.”

  He nodded once.

  And walked inside.

  The door sealed behind him.

  No sound.

  No warmth.

  No qi.

  Just darkness. Infinite and unblinking.

  Li Fan sat cross-legged in the void, focusing on his breath.

  At first, he could hear it.

  Then… even that vanished.

  No heartbeat. No voice. No sense of time.

  He was alone.

  Utterly, terrifyingly alone.

  I am still here, he thought.

  I am still me.

  And for a while… it worked.

  Somewhere—nowhere—a whisper echoed.

  Not heard with ears.

  Felt in the soul.

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  “What are you without your stars?”

  “What are you when no one remembers your name?”

  “Will you still rise… if no one watches?”

  Visions flickered in the dark—memories twisted and sharpened. His father’s dying breath. His mother’s absence. The endless silence of his childhood. The loneliness.

  He trembled.

  He forgot his voice.

  Even his thoughts began to slip like sand through fingers.

  And then…

  A spark.

  A beat.

  A star.

  Not one of his seven.

  But a new one. Buried deeper.

  It didn’t speak.

  It didn’t burn.

  It remembered.

  Li Fan opened his eyes—though there was nothing to see.

  And he felt the star awaken.

  It whispered not words… but memory.

  A life before this one.

  He stood atop a ruined world beneath a fractured sky.

  Swords drifted like corpses in the air.

  Mountains floated on broken ley lines.

  And in the center… he stood.

  Wearing a cloak of falling stars.

  Holding a blade carved from silence.

  “I ended it once,” his past self whispered.

  “And the heavens bound me to forget.”

  “But now… you remember.”

  Three days later, the tower door opened on its own for the first time in centuries.

  Li Fan stepped out.

  Eyes distant. Calm.

  Around him, qi stirred like it had found its master.

  Even the clouds bowed slightly.

  The disciples watching couldn’t speak.

  Yue Xian met his gaze and asked, “What did you see?”

  Li Fan replied, “Nothing.”

  But his hand brushed his chest—and the Nameless Star pulsed once.

  He had not just passed the trial.

  He had begun to awaken a legacy long buried in the bones of heaven.

  In the Sealed Root Vault, a third chain shattered.

  In the Sea of Falling Skies, the white-robed woman raised her head.

  And in a distant realm, beneath a withered world tree, a True God opened ancient eyes and whispered:

  “The Starforged… remembers.”