The Forgotten Temple emerged from the detritus of history, an architectural revenant radiating an aura of absolute, suffocating silence. As Xan Li Fang approached the threshold, his ocular gaze settled upon the weathered inscription carved deeply into the stone archway: [The Omniscient God's Tomb]. He attempted to suppress the linguistic comprehension, relegating the words to the recesses of his subconscious, yet the mere visual recognition triggered a violent, incendiary spark within the core of his soul. Fragmented, alien memories illuminated his psyche like stroboscopic lightning, forcing a whispered, agonizing query from his lips: "To whom do these recollections belong?" He stumbled into the interior, which was stark and austere—a solitary chamber constructed of frigid, unadorned masonry, dominated by a heavy stone sarcophagus positioned in the precise geometric center. Xan took slow, ponderous steps toward the epicenter, but the moment he traversed the invisible threshold, the dam holding back his sanity fractured catastrophically.
BOOM. A torrent of memories—entire lifetimes that were not his own—inundated his cerebral cortex, blurring the demarcation between illusion and reality until he could no longer discern the difference. The influx of data was so massive and chaotic that his sense of self began to disintegrate; he seized his golden hair, pulling with violent desperation as his eyes darted frantically around the vacuous chamber. "Who is the entity I define as 'I'?!" He laughed, a shrill, fractured sound that ricocheted off the indifferent stone walls. "Hahahaha! I am Xan... Negative, I am Wang! No... I am Raydon!" His voice cracked, oscillating wildly in pitch and timbre as the cognitive dissonance reached a crescendo. "Hahahaha! What is my true identity?!" The temple remained silent, an impartial observer to his descent into madness, as Xan, overwhelmed by the crushing weight of six overlapping existences, forgot his nomenclature and his mission.
Hours elapsed, or perhaps diurnal cycles faded into oblivion. Eventually, the mindless husk of Xan Li Fang began to animate once more; he staggered toward the stone coffin, swaying with the erratic equilibrium of the intoxicated. "You... you within the sepulcher..." Xan giggled, pointing a trembling digit at the lid. "You possess knowledge of my identity, do you not? Hahahaha!" With the adrenaline-fueled strength of a lunatic, he shoved the heavy stone lid aside. GRIND. The coffin yawned open, and Xan peered into the abyss. "You... you are me... I am... you..." His eyes dilated in sheer disbelief. "An impossibility..." Inside the sarcophagus lay a corpse that was no stranger; it was Xan Li Fang himself, or at least a doppelgänger sharing his precise facial structure. "This is merely a jest, correct?" Xan mumbled, his mind snapping further. "Someone orchestrates a prank... Servant! Summon my father! Inform him it is the New Year festival! Hahaha!" He was hallucinating vividly, simultaneously experiencing the memories of six distinct individuals, hovering on the precipice of total insanity where identity dissolves into the void.
However, a solitary glint of luminescence arrested his descent; on the stiff finger of the cadaver, a Space Ring sparkled with inviting brilliance. That single point of light acted as a psychological anchor, the innate avarice of a cultivator piercing through the fog of madness to reignite the instinct for survival. "I... I must regain my faculties," Xan gasped, striking his own visage to induce clarity. "If I fail to organize these mnemonic fragments... I shall be reduced to a vegetative state." He collapsed onto the flagstones in the lotus position, closed his eyes, and commenced a desperate meditation. The passage of time became irrelevant as dust settled upon his shoulders like a shroud. Finally, Xan Li Fang opened his eyes; the madness was sequestered behind a mental fortification, his gaze clear, frigid, and calculating. He rose and returned to the sarcophagus to inspect the corpse with clinical detachment. "I require your equipment more urgently than you do," Xan whispered.
He began to strip the corpse of its attire, starting with the robe, a sartorial masterpiece of inexplicable craftsmanship. The garment was a complex chromatic composition: fifty percent deep, abyssal black; twenty percent ash grey; ten percent pristine white; ten percent matte obsidian; and ten percent emerald green. "Forgive my transgression," Xan muttered, liberating the garment. "However, this robe appears to be a defensive treasure constructed from materials alien to my experience; we shall execute an exchange." He divested himself of his own attire and dressed the corpse in his discarded garments. Next, he appropriated the boots—seventy-five percent black leather, accented with ten percent golden yellow, ten percent light blue soles, and a five percent white trim. Finally, he noticed a pitch-black hat resting between the corpse's hands; he claimed it, depositing a pile of unused magical items and tools from his own collection into the coffin as recompense. "And this..." He slide the Space Ring from the corpse's stiff digit and replaced it with his own band.
Stepping back, now clad in the corpse's strange, multicolored black robes and the ominous hat, he resembled a grim reaper from a forgotten epoch. "I executed this transaction in fairness," Xan stated, bowing his head solemnly. "A trade enacted for the salvation of your soul." He clasped his hands and commenced a prayer, his voice echoing in the stone chamber. "The Deity in the Mysterious Ancient Temple... accept this exchange from your subject to mine... I beseech your acceptance." It was a simple invocation, yet it carried the weight of his intent. He turned and exited the temple. Behind the structure, precisely as he had hypothesized, stood two colossal trees, their branches twisting together to form a gate identical to the one in his Sea of Mind. "It is the identical portal..." Xan glanced backward; there remained only the dusty temple and the void, with no path returning to Lindao or the Illusion. "There is no trajectory for retreat," Xan whispered, adjusting his new black hat. "Only advancement." He approached the arboreal archway, pushed the gate open, and without a backward glance, Xan Li Fang stepped into the unknown.