33: Chapter 33 Selflessness

The entrance to the Inverted Tower was on the back mountain of the Danding Sect. A bluestone slab, three feet square, was carved with the character for "Tower" written upside down.

Lu Chen pushed open the stone slab. The stone steps were very narrow, only wide enough for one person. Luminous pearls were embedded in the walls, providing dim light that barely revealed the steps beneath his feet. As he walked down, the air grew cooler and damper, like stepping into a dream from which one could not wake.

He had passed through the first floor. He had passed through the second floor. He had also passed through the third floor.

He stopped in front of the door to the fourth floor.

The door was grey. It wasn't stone, nor was it iron; it was made of something indescribable. To the touch, it was neither cold nor hot, like touching a patch of nothingness. There was no handle on the door, no patterns—only a single line of text—

"Those who enter this door, forget self."

Lu Chen pushed the door.

It didn't move.

He pushed again. It still didn't move.

He looked down at his hand. His palm was pressed against the door, but he couldn't feel the sensation of the door—it wasn't that the door didn't exist, but that his hand could no longer feel it. It was just like that time with the Pill Furnace. His sense of pain was gone, and now his sense of touch was disappearing too.

He withdrew his hand and looked at that line of text.

self-oblivion.

Not remembering who you are. Not remembering what you've done. Not remembering why you walked here.

The Sect Head had said—"When you come out, you might not recognize yourself, anyone else, or this world."

But he had already made it this far. Qin Wu's Restriction was broken, but others' were not. The truth of the fifth floor of the Inverted Tower had yet to be found.

Stopping now—would be more agonizing than death.

Lu Chen took a deep breath and raised his left hand.

The white thread on his wrist shimmered softly in the faint light of the luminous pearls. Six loops, seven knots. He didn't remember who the thread belonged to; he only knew it was there. As long as the thread was there, the person was there.

He pressed his palm against the door.

The door opened.

Inside was a world of white.

It wasn't light, nor was it fog. It was a whiteness that surged from all directions. It was so white he couldn't see his own hands, his own feet, or anything at all. Lu Chen took a step forward—the ground beneath his feet vanished. He wasn't falling; he was floating. Floating in a whiteness where nothing existed.

He looked back. The door was gone.

He looked forward. There was nothing.

He looked left, right, up, and down. Everything was white.

He stood in this whiteness, waiting. Nothing happened.

"Is anyone there?"

His voice couldn't travel. The whiteness absorbed the sound, like sand absorbing water.

He waited for a long time. How long—he didn't know. Here, time did not flow. He couldn't feel heat or cold, hunger, or drowsiness.

He couldn't feel anything at all.

He looked down at his hands. They were still there. The white thread on his left wrist was still there—six loops, seven knots. He knew the thread was important, he knew it couldn't be removed, and he knew someone had told him, "Don't take off the thread."

But as for who said that—he didn't remember. The voice, the face, everything about that person—it was all gone.

The thread remained. The person was forgotten.

Lu Chen continued to walk. He walked within the whiteness, with no direction and no reference points. How long did he walk—he didn't know. Perhaps an hour, perhaps a day, perhaps a year.

As he walked, he stopped.

It wasn't because he was tired. He couldn't feel fatigue.

It was because a question surfaced in his mind.

"Who am I."

He spoke the words aloud. But his ears couldn't hear them. The whiteness not only absorbed sound but also language itself. He opened his mouth, his vocal cords vibrated, his lips moved, but no sound came out.

"Who am I?"

He tried three times. Then he gave up.

It wasn't that he didn't want to know. It was that he could no longer remember.

His name—the first thing to vanish. Whether it was three characters or two, he couldn't recall clearly.

His past—the second to vanish. Where he came from, where he had been, whom he had met—all of it was gone.

His purpose—the third to vanish. Why he had come here, what he was looking for, where he was going—a complete blank.

A blank.

As white as the whiteness itself.

It was white outside, and white inside. He didn't know who he was, where he was, or what he was doing.

He didn't even know what "not knowing who I am" meant.

Because the very act of "knowing"—was also disappearing.

His body felt light. It wasn't that he was becoming weightless, but that his boundaries were dissolving. The outline of his fingers blurred, the outline of his arms blurred. His body was like a shadow scattering. He couldn't feel his own existence—it wasn't just that he couldn't feel his body, but the very thought of "I" was fading away.

There was no I.

There was no him.

There was no one.

There was only white.

Within the white, there was a point.

It wasn't seen with the eyes. It was felt from somewhere deeper than the eyes—at the very bottom layer, on the edge where "I" was about to completely vanish, there was something that hadn't been swallowed by the white.

That thing was very small. Like a grain of sand. Like a spark.

That thing was speaking.

Without a mouth. Without a brain. It was something more primitive than thought or language—it seeped directly out from the bones.

The bones were saying—

"I want immortality."

It wasn't an obsession, a resolution, or a choice. It was something carved into the bones from the very beginning. It was older than his name, older than his past, older than his self.

"I want immortality."

That point lit up.

It wasn't white light. It was golden. The same color as the light in his Dantian—the deep gold of Spiritual Qi after being permeated by the Grey Spirit Root.

Gold seeped out from that point. It seeped out from the bones. One rib lit up, then two, then three—his chest cavity was filled with gold. Then the gold moved downward—the Dantian lit up. It moved upward—the skull lit up.

The white began to crack.

It wasn't a sound, but a visual. Cracks appeared in the white world, and gold light shone through them. More and more cracks appeared—

The white shattered.

Like a mirror smashed from a height, shards flew everywhere. Every shard reflected a scene—a person he didn't recognize. It was his past self, himself in the eyes of others, himself before the shattering.

Within the shattered whiteness, a section of a Finger Bone fell down.

A pitch-black bone, with deep golden light radiating from its core.

The fourth Finger Bone.

Lu Chen reached out his hand. His hand was trembling—not from fear, not from excitement. It was because he had almost vanished just now. It wasn't death. It was something more absolute than death—non-existence.

His hand passed through the shattering whiteness and grabbed the Finger Bone.

The moment it entered his hand, deep golden light drilled from his palm into his arm, into his shoulder, into his chest, and into his Dantian.

The Dantian exploded.

Not a shattering explosion. An expansionary explosion.

His Spiritual Qi rose from thirty percent to thirty-five, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-five—fifty percent. Level 4 Qi Refining Middle Stage.

The light was still surging. Fifty-one percent, fifty-three, fifty-six, fifty-nine—

Breakthrough.

Qi Refining Level 5.

The Dantian transformed from a bowl into a basin. Its capacity tripled. Spiritual Qi surged, and deep golden light shone out from his abdomen, illuminating the entire stone chamber.

Sixty percent. Seventy percent.

It stopped.

Qi Refining Level 5. Dantian at seventy percent.

The golden light slowly withdrew into the Finger Bone. The Finger Bone grew quiet. Lu Chen looked down at the bone in his hand, then looked up at the collapsing whiteness.

After the white shattered, the true form of the fourth floor was revealed—a stone chamber. It wasn't large, about three paces square. The walls were covered in carvings.

It wasn't one person's handwriting. Many people had written there. Some were deep, some shallow, some neat, some scrawled.

"I forgot my mother's name."

"I forgot why I cultivate immortality."

"I forgot—and then I remembered. It wasn't I who remembered, but my hatred. Hatred remembers longer than love."

"I remembered nothing. I don't want to be me anymore. I'll change my name and start over."

"The fourth bone is here."

The handwriting of the last line ended there. Below it, someone had added another line—the handwriting was different, older, and fainter—

"The fifth bone—next floor."

Lu Chen read every word on the wall. Then he turned around.

Behind him was a door. It was grey, just like the one he had entered through. There was only one character on the door—

"Truth."

The entrance to the fifth floor.

He looked back once more at the walls of the fourth floor. Those words were still there and would not disappear. Everyone who entered had left their mark.

Only he had left nothing.

He had nothing with which to write on the wall. Nor did he have anything worth writing.

"I want immortality"—those three words were not on the wall; they were in his bones.

Lu Chen pushed open the door. Outside the door were stone steps leading down. They were narrower, darker, and had fewer luminous pearls.

He stepped out and closed the door. He went down step by step.

The white thread on his wrist was still there—six loops, seven knots. The thread hadn't changed.

But he didn't know if he was still that same Lu Chen.

tianxuan calendar, 18th Year of taiping, Winter.

Lu Chen, Qi Refining Level 5. Dantian at seventy percent.

The fourth Finger Bone in hand.

Compassion—only a tiny bit remained.

Next—the fifth floor.

"Truth."