Gu Chengyin said nothing. He merely tightened his arms, holding Lin Qingyan even more firmly.
His heart was nowhere near as calm as he appeared on the surface.
Lin Qingyan’s words were like a key, slipping into a door deep within his heart—a door he had never dared to open.
There was too much hidden behind it.
His past life. His destiny. The reason he had chosen the path of Supreme Forgetfulness.
And the question he had always avoided, yet could not escape forever:
Where would this great path ultimately lead him?
Supreme Forgetfulness.
Those four words had circled endlessly through Gu Chengyin’s mind.
From the day he set foot on this path, he had known what awaited him at the end.
Forgetting emotion did not mean losing one’s memories. It did not mean becoming mindless, or turning into someone who remembered nothing at all.
Supreme Forgetfulness meant forgetting love and attachment—not memories.
In theory, that was how it was supposed to work.
That was why Gu Chengyin would remember Lin Qingyan.
He would remember the way she smiled, the way she lost her temper, and the wholehearted dependence in the way she leaned against him.
He would remember the way she called him Chengcheng—sometimes coquettishly, sometimes with indignation, and sometimes through a sob.
Every Chengcheng was different. Every tone was different.
Gu Chengyin would even remember the first time he saw Lin Qingyan.
He would remember the sunlight that day, the clothes she wore, and the way she looked at him.
He would remember everything.
He simply would no longer feel his heart stir.
It would be like looking at a painting and remembering every stroke, every line, and every color, yet no longer feeling the overwhelming impact it had made the first time he saw it.
The painting would still be the same painting, and he would still be himself.
But the invisible thread between him and the painting would have snapped, never to be mended.
That was Supreme Forgetfulness.
It was not forgetting. It was letting go.
It was not losing one’s memories, but losing the emotional bond attached to them.
In a sense, that was even crueler than forgetting.
If he forgot, at least there would still be a chance to fall in love again.
They could start from nothing, meet each other anew, feel their hearts stir again, and fall into love all over again.
But if he merely lost his emotions, then the more he remembered, the more painful it would be.
Because he would know perfectly well that he ought to love her. He would remember perfectly well how deeply he had once loved her.
Yet he would no longer be able to feel that love.
It would be like standing behind a transparent wall and watching his own past.
He could see everything, touch nothing, and return to none of it.
So Gu Chengyin did not know.
He truly did not know whether, if that day ever came, he would forget Lin Qingyan.
Not forget in the sense of losing his memories, but forget in the sense of whether he would still feel anything for her.
The only thing Gu Chengyin knew was that Lin Qingyan’s instincts had never been wrong.
That meant that, according to her instincts, he really would forget her.
Not possibly. Not perhaps.
Certainly.
But Gu Chengyin could not say anything. He could not tell Lin Qingyan about it.
If he told her that his path was Supreme Forgetfulness, the result would be obvious.
Lin Qingyan would never allow Gu Chengyin to forget her.
Never.
She would use every method she could think of, summon every force at her disposal, and pay any price necessary.
Even if it meant destroying Gu Chengyin’s cultivation, even if it meant making it impossible for him to cultivate immortality ever again—
She would stop it.
That was simply Lin Qingyan’s nature.
When it came to love, she never cared about reason. She cared only about the outcome.
And there was only one thing that mattered to her:
Would Gu Chengyin forget her?
If the price of continuing along the path of immortality was forgetting her, then Lin Qingyan would erase the very words “cultivate immortality” from Gu Chengyin’s dictionary.
So Gu Chengyin had to confirm one thing.
Why had Lin Qingyan suddenly thought of qi deviation?
Had she discovered his path—or was it something else?
The question was of immense importance, important enough to determine everything that happened next.
If Lin Qingyan’s instinct had come from discovering his path of Supreme Forgetfulness, then everything would have to be reassessed.
How much could she accept? How would she respond? And would she truly do the things he had played out countless times in his mind?
If her instinct had arisen for some other reason, then things would still be all right.
At least she would not yet have touched upon the one secret she absolutely could not be allowed to know.
Gu Chengyin would still have time to prepare and find a solution that satisfied both sides.
But he could not give up the path of Supreme Forgetfulness.
Gu Chengyin had considered that possibility before. The answer was obvious.
Once he broke through to the Golden Core Realm, the entanglements of his past life would transform into ceaseless inner demons, haunting him for life after life.
Supreme Forgetfulness was the only way to escape the bonds of his previous existence.
It was an unsolvable dilemma.
The bonds of his past life and those of his present life were like the two ends of a scale.
He stood in the middle. Whichever way the scale tipped, he would fall.
If he did not follow the path of Supreme Forgetfulness, the entanglements of his past life would bind his Dao heart.
If he did, the entanglements of this life would lock him away in a dark little room.
Unless no one found out.
As long as he was not discovered, the dilemma could resolve itself.
Not truly solved, of course—only hidden away.
That was Gu Chengyin’s method.
It was not the best solution, but at least it was the only one available to him for now.
So he had to be certain.
“Auntie, we’re only talking about ‘if,’” Gu Chengyin said naturally, his tone even carrying a hint of helpless amusement. “If you hadn’t brought it up out of nowhere, I wouldn’t even have thought about it.”
As he spoke, he deliberately controlled his Dao heart to make sure Lin Qingyan would not grow suspicious.
He forced everything that might arouse her vigilance down to the deepest level.
Then he brought the most superficial, harmless, and Gu Chengyin-like emotions to the forefront, placing them where Lin Qingyan could see them at a glance and accept them without the slightest defense.
It was like driving all the dangerous beasts in a dense forest into the deepest caves, then placing a few docile, adorable white rabbits in the clearing near the edge.
Anyone who entered the forest would see the white rabbits first.
They would naturally assume the forest was safe.
Lin Qingyan noticed not the slightest flaw.
She had yet to recover fully from the tremendous emotional shock just now.
Her thoughts were still in a state of half-boiling turmoil, leaving her unable to think as sharply as she usually did.
She merely clutched the lapel of Gu Chengyin’s clothes tightly, like a drowning person grasping the last piece of driftwood.
Her fingers were clenched so hard that her knuckles had turned white. Her lips were pressed together slightly.
Her expression was a mixture of lingering fear, grievance, and a touch of willful stubbornness.
“I don’t know why I suddenly thought of it either,” Lin Qingyan said in a small voice, so quiet that she sounded like a student called on by a teacher in class, uncertain whether her answer was correct.
“I just felt that Zhao’er was still enduring it in silence. That her not saying anything now was all so she could eventually take you away from me.”
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
