Chapter 18: The Trial of Echoes
The Gate of Echoes did not open with a roar, but with silence.
A silence so thick it carved into the air like a blade, slicing the wind, the breath, the heartbeat of the world. Luo Qingshen stood still as the stone doors groaned apart, revealing a void not of darkness, but of memory.
His boots touched nothing solid, yet he walked forward as though compelled by something ancient. Lights drifted like dying stars around him—shards of memory, suspended in a sky without horizon.
"Enter, Hidden God," a voice whispered.
It was not spoken aloud. It echoed in his bones.
The Trial had begun.
He found himself in a fractured courtyard—a distorted version of the Eastern Cliff, where he'd once trained beneath the cherry blossoms. But the trees here bled silver leaves, and the sky rippled like water disturbed by an unseen stone.
Figures moved at the edge of sight. Familiar. Intimate. Forgotten.
A child version of himself appeared, training with wooden blades. No, not wood. Bone.
The child looked up. "Will I become like you?" he asked.
Luo Qingshen stared.
He did not answer.
The child laughed bitterly. "I thought not."
A crack split the sky. Blood leaked from the horizon.
Phase One: Reflection
"Show me," he demanded.
The space answered.
Visions rippled before him. The day he turned away from his divine inheritance. The moment he sealed the Heaven-Tier blade beneath a waterfall of stardust. The silence of his exile, chosen but not deserved.
Each memory hit like a sword strike. Cold. Surgical. Unforgiving.
"Why did you run?" the Trial asked.
"Because they betrayed me."
"And why did they betray you?"
He clenched his fists.
"Because they feared me."
"And do you fear yourself?"
The question pierced deeper than any blade.
Phase Two: The Mirror Wraith
A figure emerged. Cloaked in twilight. Its face was his own, but crueler. Older. Burned by gods and fate.
"I am what you would become," it said.
They fought.
Blades clashed in midair, steel echoing against fate. Nullburst surged from Luo's palm, but the Wraith caught it with mirrored magic. They were too alike.
Pain flared across his chest. He stumbled back, coughing silver.
"You cannot defeat me," the Wraith said. "You cannot defeat yourself."
Luo's eyes glinted.
"I'm not trying to defeat you. I'm trying to accept you."
He lowered his weapon. Opened his arms.
The Wraith hesitated.
Then shattered into a storm of stardust.
Phase Three: The Whispering Truth
The Trial was not over.
A final corridor appeared—endless, black, pulsing with echoes.
As he walked, whispers crawled over his skin.
"Do you remember her?"
A vision flickered.
A girl in moonlight. Laughing, dying, vanishing. Her name torn from the records of Heaven.
He stopped. His chest ached.
"Who was she?"
The Gate did not answer.
Only one whisper remained:
"She died because of you."
He fell to one knee.
The pain was not physical. It was the weight of truth.
But then he rose.
Slowly. Surely.
"Then I will carry that weight," he said. "Until I remember. Until I make it right."
A light burst through the void. The Gate of Echoes hummed. The path ahead shimmered.
And from the shadows behind the gate, a figure watched. Cloaked in darkness. Smiling.
"So," the figure said softly. "The Hidden God walks again."