The man's gaze landed on the girl, and an indescribable heartache surfaced in his placid and bone-chilling eyes.

"Does it hurt, Xiao Feng?"

The man swiftly knelt down and gently pulled the girl into his arms.

"Why... are you here...?" The girl opened her eyes and weakly looked at this man who resembled a G.o.d descending to the mortal world.

"I was worried about you," the man answered.

"Is it... just you...?" She stared at him.

"Just me is enough," the man expressionlessly said.

"Leave. Forget about me... It's unrelated... to you." It was unclear whether it was tears or raindrops on her face.

"Don't talk." The man carried the girl, allowing her to lean against his chest.

The man's bone-chilling gaze set on the dense ma.s.s of people ahead. His voice contained the final calm before an apocalypse, and around him was his extremely repressed aura, ready to explode at a moment's notice.

"The Martial Arts Union, is it...? From now on, the Independent State's... Martial Arts Union must... perish." The man's icy gaze sent chills down people's spines.

However, this relatively complete memory fragment ended there, and the scenery changed.

In China at the Si residence:

The man accompanied the girl every second and every minute, not leaving her side for a single moment.

The girl frequently sat outside without a word and rejected all food and water. The man had to resort to forceful methods to make the girl eat her food and preserve her life.

"Just what happened in the Independent State?" he asked her.

However, the girl seemed to intentionally avoid this question.

"Si Yehan... can you do me a favor...?" the girl said to the man one day.

"Help me erase all of my memories..." the girl requested.

"No way." The man was resolute and decisive.

"Is that so...? Even if I want to die?" Despair permeated the girl's face.

The man sank into silence.

The moment before the girl entered the surgery suite, she took out a ring and handed it to the man. "Si Yehan... this is my most treasured ring. Can you help me safeguard it...?"

The man accepted the ring and studied it for a moment. "What is it?"

The girl smiled faintly and shook her head. "You don't need to know. Keep it and hide it."

Things pa.s.sed in the blink of an eye, but it also felt like dozens of decades later when Ye Wanwan in the headmaster's office suddenly opened her eyes and reflexively shot up, fiercely coughing like she'd choked on water.

"Deep breaths," the Scarlet Flames headmaster instructed from the side.

Ye Wanwan gradually recovered after doing as the headmaster said.

"A memory impairment like yours should be recovered after two more sessions. Go back and rest." The headmaster returned to his desk and started reading his doc.u.ments again.

Ye Wanwan left the office like a zombie, her head buzzing. What she recalled in her hypnotized state this time weren't memory fragments anymore. They were two fairly complete segments of memory, and she watched these segments like a movie as an observer.

The Martial Arts Union... The shrouded man... Elder Jin who wanted to kill the girl with a dagger... And also... Si Yehan. Everything... everything seemed to connect into a shocking truth.

Ye Wanwan was certain that girl was her old self—the Second Miss of the Nie family, Worriless Nie.