Chương 708: Chapter 707: The Price of Remembering

The silence of the pocket dimension stretched on for a long moment. The warm light of the massive pearl cast soft shadows across the pale blue jade stones. Li Yu continued to sleep soundly on the ground and was completely oblivious to the heavy emotional weight settling over the courtyard. Khaos looked at the old man. He saw the unwavering certainty in the clear bright eyes of his former general. The ancient warrior did not look angry or disappointed by the refusal.

Instead, a slow, knowing smile spread across his face.

"Perhaps this is for the better," Khaos said softly. His voice carried an understanding that only someone who had lived through what they had could truly possess.

"Memories are a grand tapestry but they are also a form of torture. We carry the ghosts of everyone we failed to save and the echoes of every choice we made. To remember the victories is to also remember the rivers of blood it took to achieve them." Khaos picked up his empty porcelain cup and turned it over in his hands.

"You have found a sanctuary here. A place free of all that noise and all that pain. I respect your choice my friend. I will leave your mind exactly as it is." The old man let out a slow breath. He felt a massive weight lift from his shoulders. He had feared that this intimidating stranger might try to force the memories upon him out of a sense of duty or lingering attachment.

"Thank you," the old man said with gratitude. He bowed his head slightly.

"Thank you for your understanding. It is a rare thing to find someone who wields such terrifying power yet possesses the restraint to not use it." The two ancient beings sat in a comfortable silence. The tea in the clay pot was completely cold and the glowing blue wine was gone. The atmosphere felt resolved. It felt like a chapter was finally closing on a tragic forgotten past. But the old man kept looking down at his empty cup. His calloused fingers twitched slightly against the polished wood of the low table.

He shifted his weight on the woven cushion. His brow furrowed as a single nagging thought refused to let him go. He looked up at Khaos. The clear bright eyes of the gardener were clouded with a sudden desperate hesitation.

"Did I have any family?" The old man asked. His voice was quiet but it trembled with an intensity that he could not hide. Khaos raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. He set the empty porcelain cup down on the table.

"I thought you did not want to know," Khaos replied gently.

"I thought you wished to leave the past buried in the fog."

"I do," the old man insisted while leaning forward. He placed his hands flat on the table.

"I do not care about the wars or the blood or the titles I might have held. I do not care about the enemies I defeated. But I cannot help myself when it comes to this. I have to know." The old man looked around the beautiful pristine courtyard. He looked at the lush willow trees and the blooming exotic flowers he had tended for countless years.

"If I have a family out there," the old man continued with his voice cracking slightly.

"If there is someone waiting for me then I cannot stay here. I would need to get my memories back so I can go to them. A man can abandon his history but he cannot abandon his blood." Khaos stared at the old man. The dark ancient eyes of VoidClaw softened more. He saw the fierce and unyielding dedication burning in the gardener's expression. It was the exact same dedication that had made the general hold broken lines against an impossible horde.

'That is just like you.' Khaos thought to himself with a surge of affection and sorrow.

'Even with your mind scrubbed clean, your core remains exactly the same. You will always sacrifice your own peace for the sake of others.' Khaos offered a warm and sad smile.

"You do," Khaos answered directly.

"You have a wife and you have a son. Both of them would be absolutely overjoyed to have you back." The old man froze. The breath caught in his throat. He had expected the answer to be no. He had expected Khaos to tell him that his family had perished in the same ancient wars that had broken his mind. Hearing that he had a wife and a son actively existing somewhere in the vast universe was a shock that shattered his serene composure entirely. Tears welled up in the old man's clear bright eyes.

They spilled over his weathered cheeks and tracked down into his white beard. He let out a choked sob and buried his face in his calloused hands. His shoulders shook violently. He wept not from sadness but from an overwhelming sense of lost time. He wept for the centuries he had spent tending a quiet garden while his wife and son lived their lives without him. Khaos sat perfectly still and allowed his friend to process the revelation. He did not offer empty platitudes.

He let the old man grieve for the years that had been stolen away. After several long minutes the old man slowly lowered his hands. His eyes were red and his face was wet but his expression was hardening into a fierce determined glare. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. He looked across the table at Khaos.

"If you knew I had a family." the old man asked. His voice was thick with emotion and carried a sharp edge of accusation.

"Why would you even offer to let me stay here? Why would you allow me to choose ignorance when you knew they were waiting for me?" Khaos did not flinch from the anger. He met the old man's gaze with unwavering sincerity. His expression was calm and completely unblemished by any trace of fear or hesitation.

"There is more to it than just walking back into their lives," Khaos explained patiently.

"You must understand that your family is safe. They are living incredibly well and they are very well taken care of. I made absolutely sure of that. I secured their future and I have people watching over their bloodline. They will always be protected. They do not need you to save them. The same goes for all our honored brothers." Khaos leaned forward slightly. His dark robes seemed to absorb the ambient light as his presence grew heavier.

"But bringing back your memories will bring back everything else." Khaos warned in a solemn tone.

"It is not just remembering their faces. It is remembering the pain and the trauma from countless apocalyptic battles. It is remembering the screams of your dying soldiers and the feeling of your own bones shattering. The seal on your mind is the only thing keeping the madness at bay. If I break it, you will get your family back but you will also get the nightmares." Khaos pointed a finger at the old man's chest.

"I offered you the choice to stay because I wanted to spare you that agony. You have suffered enough in my name. I wanted you to keep your peace." The old man looked down at the pale blue jade stones. He thought about the serene quiet life he had built inside this giant shell. He thought about the crushing and horrifying weight of the trauma Khaos had just described. The idea of welcoming all that darkness back into his mind was terrifying. But then he thought about his wife and his son.

He imagined a face he could not quite see and heard a laugh he could not quite remember. The old man wiped the tears from his face and sat up completely straight. The hesitation vanished from his eyes entirely.

"It would be worth it." the old man said with ironclad conviction.

"I will gladly take all the nightmares in the universe if it means I get to see them again. Please, my friend. Give me my name back." Khaos looked at the fierce determination burning in the old gardener's eyes. A respect washed over the ancient warrior. He nodded slowly, accepting the decision.

"Then sit down." Khaos instructed with his voice returning to a calm, authoritative tone.

"Sit cross legged on the ground and close your eyes. Relax everything and do not fight the foreign Qi when it enters your foundation." The old man immediately stood up from the low wooden table. He walked to an open space in the courtyard a few yards away from where Li Yu was still sleeping. He sat down crossing his legs and rested his hands lightly on his knees. He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath, preparing his mind for the incoming flood of forgotten horrors and lost joys.

Khaos stood up and walked over to the old man. VoidClaw moved behind his former general. He stood tall and raised his hands. He began to channel a very specific ancient technique of foundational Qi. It was a delicate process. Breaking a mental seal forged by trauma required absolute precision. If he pushed too hard he could shatter the man's soul completely. If he pushed too lightly the seal would simply harden and become permanent.

He would use his own memories of their time together to ignite and jumpstart the old man's memories. Khaos closed his eyes and focused his immense power. He lowered his hands and was preparing to press his palms against the back of the old man's head to initiate the technique. The peaceful silence of the courtyard was violently shattered. It happened in a fraction of a second. Khaos did not sense any killing intent. He did not sense any fluctuation in the ambient spiritual energy. There was absolutely no warning.

A purple and ethereal arm burst directly out of the old man's back. The arm was jagged and wrong. It looked like it was made of sickly, corrupted light. It tore through the coarse grey fabric of the old man's robes without spilling a single drop of physical blood. It shot backward with impossible speed and instantly clamped its long clawed fingers entirely around Khaos's right wrist. Khaos snapped his eyes open. The moment the purple ethereal hand touched his skin a horrifying reaction occurred.

A bright sickly purple color instantly invaded Khaos's flesh. It bypassed his supreme defensive auras entirely and began traveling rapidly up his forearm and was creeping toward his shoulder like a fast moving venom. It felt like a freezing rot was sinking directly into his soul. The old man remained seated and completely still. He was entirely unaware of the grotesque ethereal limb protruding from his own spine. He was still waiting for the memory restoration technique to begin.

A sound echoed through the pristine courtyard. It was not a roar of a beast or the crash of an attack. It was laughter. It was a chilling, screeching laughter that scraped against the eardrums like rusted blades. The sound seemed to emanate directly from the purple arm itself. The ethereal purple light flared violently. The energy twisted and expanded pulling itself out of the old man's back until it formed a complete, spectral figure hovering in the air directly between the old man and Khaos.

It was a creepy purple female image. Her features were sharp and her eyes were empty voids of dark violet energy. She floated in the air with one hand still firmly clamped around Khaos's wrist while her other hand covered her mouth as she continued to laugh.

"After all this time." The purple female image sneered. Her voice was a horrific blend of sweet whispers and grinding stones.

"After waiting in the dark for thousands of years I finally got you." She pulled closer to Khaos, tightening her grip on his infected arm. The purple rot had already reached his bicep.

"The mighty VoidClaw will fall on this day." The female spirit mocked with her violet eyes blazing with triumphant malice.

"And you will fall in such a pathetic and unknown place. Trapped inside a clam with a broken old man." Khaos did not panic. He did not scream or thrash against the grip. The soft emotional vulnerability he had shown during his conversation with the old man evaporated like water on a hot forge. His dark eyes turned into absolute bottomless pits of terrifying calm. He looked at the sickly purple rot spreading up his arm and then looked directly into the empty violet eyes of the spectral woman.

"So." Khaos said, his voice dropping to a dangerous rumbling frequency that vibrated the jade stones beneath their feet.

"You did survive, Xyphyra."