In the highest spire of an abandoned immortal formation, carved into the skeleton of a collapsed Grotto-Heaven, the clone stirred.
He did not answer to Fang Yuan. He did not answer to any name at all.
He wore no Gu. He carried no path.
He was severed from all threads—fate, dream, even memory.
Around him, myths unraveled like vines scorched by flame. A Ren Zu parable bled from a nearby mural, distorting as he moved:
"Ren Zu once met a shadow with his face, who offered to take every step in his place."
He stared at it, unspeaking.
Behind him, thought-path pulses shimmered. Yellow Heaven's residue still clung to his skin. Not even the silk of forgetting could remove it fully.
He sat upon a disc woven from abandoned names. Under his palm: a broken compass Gu that pointed nowhere.
He did not smile. But the void around him seemed to pause.
"They will seek me soon," he said to no one. "Fang Yuan most of all."
From the bone walls, echoes of past truths spoke:
"Final Thread is incomplete."
"Myth reacts when no one remembers."
"A Sovereign's shadow must choose between echo or root."
The clone looked upward.
Somewhere far above, Fang Yuan's aperture shimmered.
Somewhere far below, Hei Lou Lan bled into stone.
He stood.
The forgotten clone began walking— —but not forward.
He walked backward, into a pathless world, into legends not yet spoken, toward a myth Ren Zu once denied.
He would not fight Fang Yuan.
He would become what Fang Yuan never could:
A Sovereign without a name.