Meng Lin felt her consciousness awaken, where she found herself engulfed by an all-consuming obscurity. Her mind was clouded and distant, but unlike the first time, confusion did not last long.

She could not feel her physical existence, her vital energy, or qi, and even her spiritual consciousness seemed to have vanished.

For a brief moment, she simply remained still within the darkness.

Then a thought surfaced.

“…So I died again.”

There was no panic in the thought, only a quiet acknowledgment of what had happened.

"The booze,” she muttered sharply.

With her mind now fully clear, Meng Lin quickly realized that something about her behavior earlier had been wrong because she had been too hasty.

“That sacred-grade alcohol…” she continued thinking, slowly piecing together the cause of her behavior. “It must have affected my judgment more than I realized.”

The realization annoyed her, not because she had died, but because the mistake had been so unnecessary.

She remembered drinking it earlier and feeling the strange warmth spreading through her body, yet at the time, she had dismissed it as nothing more than an unusually strong spirit brew.

“Dying because of a moment of drunken stupidity,” she said with a bitter hint of self-mockery. “That would be a ridiculous end.”

Yet even as that irritation passed through her thoughts, another question quickly followed behind it.

“If that pressure crushed my body so easily… then my soul should have been destroyed as well.”

Meng Lin fell silent again while carefully examining that point because the power she had faced earlier had been far too terrifying to leave any room for survival.

Immortal Flesh could reconstruct her body after death, but even that technique could not revive someone whose soul had been completely shattered.

“So why am I still conscious?” she asked herself quietly.

Her thoughts moved carefully through her memories until one particular item surfaced in her mind.

“The Soulbinding Crystal,” she murmured slowly.

She remembered how she was unable to store it in her inventory. Is it because her soul was bound to it? Is that the reason she's alive?

She murmured to herself thoughtfully. “If anything could have anchored my soul at the moment of death, it would have been that thing.”

She repeated the reasoning several times to ensure it made sense, and eventually, she accepted that it was the most logical explanation available to her. However, that answer only solved part of the problem.

Another question slowly emerged in her mind, and this one was far more important.

“How long will it take this time?” she wondered quietly. “The last resurrection took thirty days when I was only in the Gold Core Realm.”

Meng Lin remained silent for a while as she considered that fact carefully, comparing her current situation to what had happened before.

Her cultivation had risen drastically by two realms; she had already stepped into the Nascent Soul Realm.

“That probably means the reconstruction will take longer,” she concluded after some thought. “Maybe months… maybe even a year.”

The idea of waiting that long inside this endless darkness was unpleasant, yet she quickly realized something that might actually make the situation easier.

“The last time I died, my mind collapsed after about thirty days,” she recalled slowly. “My memories went blank and I stopped thinking completely by that point.”

That might actually be useful.

“If resurrection takes a year, then it would be pointless to stay conscious the entire time,” she said thoughtfully. “If my mind goes blank again, then I would essentially skip most of the waiting.”

The logic made perfect sense to her.

“I only need to endure the first thirty days,” she concluded calmly. “After that, my mind should collapse again, and when I regain consciousness, the resurrection should be complete.”

With that thought settled, Meng Lin felt a small sense of relief appear within her mind.

“Alright then,” she muttered quietly. “Thirty days isn’t that bad.”

Five days quickly passed.

Meng Lin spent most of the time reviewing her memories, repeating important details about her cultivation, the system, and the enemies she still needed to deal with once she returned.

Sixteen days passed.

Meng Lin suddenly paused during one of her mental recitations when something felt slightly wrong.

“Wait… why haven't my memories started slipping away?” she wondered quietly.

During her previous death, the erosion on her mind had begun much earlier, yet her thoughts remained unusually clear this time.

“Strange,” she murmured to herself while examining the situation.

After carefully considering the problem for a while, Meng Lin eventually arrived at a simple explanation.

“My cultivation realm is higher now,” she reasoned calmly. “My soul should naturally be stronger than before.”

That conclusion seemed logical enough to satisfy her for the moment.

“If my soul is stronger, then the erosion would take longer to begin,” she continued thinking. “That means the collapse might not happen exactly at thirty days.”

“It doesn't matter,” she told herself calmly. “As long as it happens eventually.”

She accepted that explanation without too much concern and continued counting the days.

Thirty days passed.

By this day, Meng Lin felt a crawling pressure beneath her skin that made her want to move; however, it was like there was an invisible restraint holding her in the void.

Her mind itched as if it had grown nails she could scrape against the emptiness, but there was nothing to touch, no resistance, only the maddening sensation of being trapped.

“…It’s… unbearable,” she thought to herself. “…I want to move… I want to feel… something…”

Forty days passed.

Meng Lin tried to calm herself, repeating the mantra in her mind: “Calm down… calm down…” yet the pressure beneath her skin only intensified, coiling around her nerves like iron bands.

Her limbs twitched involuntarily, desperate for motion, and every imagined scratch, kick, or push against the void left her chest tight with frustration she could not release.

She forced herself to think, running through her memories, her cultivation techniques, the system, anything to distract from the maddening sensation.

Yet the itch and tension were relentless, a constant reminder that her body was still trapped, still unable to act, and the longer she stayed still, the sharper it became.

Sixty days passed.

The calm she had cultivated began to fracture. Her thoughts began snapping against the relentless pressure, each mental image tainted by irritation and anger. “…Why are my memories still intact, nothing is happening?” she said to herself, the first sharp edge of panic creeping back. “If only… no, I should calm down, maybe it's a year this time.”

Her thoughts calmed, and she turned back to reciting her mantras.

Eighty days passed.

The itch and pressure Meng Lin was feeling became a constant thrum, pulsing in her mind until…

Ninety days passed.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Meng Lin was startled by a screaming voice that tore through her mind.

"Huh."

“…I… Hate This… I Hate… Being Trapped…!” the voice shrieked again, furious at the void. Meng Lin suddenly felt a surge of hatred at her inability to move, the fact that she was still alive but felt trapped.

"What is this?"

For a moment, Meng Lin’s mind steadied, and the shift was immediate enough that it caught her attention. The itching and irritating sensation that had been tormenting her disappeared completely, leaving behind a strange and unnatural calm that spread through her thoughts.

Yes, she only had to endure.

"But what was that just now?" she clearly heard a voice, yet there was no one else here, and that alone made the thought difficult to place. She lingered on it briefly, uncertain if it had been real or simply something her mind had created under pressure.

Fearing the return of that earlier irritation, she did not dwell on it any further and quickly pushed the thought aside. She returned to her mantras once more, letting the repetition take over as she focused on maintaining her composure.

This time, there was nothing interfering.

“…Weird,” she murmured quietly, though even that thought did not last long before it faded.

One hundred thirty days passed.

Meng Lin continued as she had before, letting her thoughts move in a steady rhythm without forcing them too much, simply allowing the repetition to carry her forward.

There was no resistance now, no irritation clawing at her mind, only a quiet stillness that remained unchanged no matter how much time passed.

At some point, a faint thought surfaced.

“…I’ve probably repeated my name more than twenty thousand times by now,” she murmured, the idea forming with a slight pause behind it. “At this point, even if everything else disappears, that’s probably the last thing I’ll forget.”

Lamenting her time here, she continued to count, her goal of thirty thousand waiting for her.

Two hundred fifty days passed.

Her thoughts gradually shifted away from repetition, moving instead toward the memories she had already gone through countless times before, though this time there was less effort behind it.

The scenes replayed clearly, one after another, as if they had already been sorted and refined without her needing to intervene.

A battle surfaced.

Then another.

“…That could have ended faster,” she thought calmly, observing one of her past movements with a detached clarity that had not been present before. “That exchange wasn’t necessary, and I wasted a lot of time here.”

These realizations didn’t bother her; she just accepted them as learning moments for her past self.

She didn’t linger on it.

Three hundred days passed.

Meng Lin's mind flickered.

The shift was subtle, but it stood out enough to pull her attention away from the steady flow she had maintained for so long. Something felt off, not because something was present, but because something that had once been there… wasn’t.

“…Wait,” she murmured quietly.

She focused inward, going over what she could still perceive, and the absence became clearer the more she paid attention to it.

"Did I forget something?"

There was nothing.

Also, there was no irritating feeling around her even now. “…That doesn’t make sense,” she said slowly, her tone even as the thought settled in her mind.

During the earlier days, that sensation had been constant, impossible to ignore no matter how much she tried to suppress it.

Now it had vanished entirely, leaving behind a stillness that felt too clean compared to before.

As she thought about it, her mind returned to the only thing that had changed.

The voice.

“…If there was a reason, it would be that,” she murmured, her thoughts narrowing slightly as she followed the idea.

But why did I suddenly forget something? There are only sixty-five days left before one year, so do I lose memories the closer I am to the end?

“…It still doesn’t make sense,” she repeated, her thoughts lingering on it.

Then, just as before—

She let it go and continued to go through her memories.

Three hundred twenty days passed.

Meng Lin stirred. "What's going on? There are only forty days left. I should be forgetting a lot by now, but other than that one time, I haven't felt anything."

Meng Lin couldn't connect the dots; it just didn't make sense. Any memory, no matter how small, she would instantly realize if it was missing, yet now…

"Let's just wait then. I already endured over 300 days; forty more days, then I can leave." She wouldn't have to worry about things like this once she was out of here.

Time passed, and the long-anticipated day arrived.

Three hundred sixty-five days passed.

The number settled into her thoughts, and this time it did not pass as easily as the others had. It remained there, heavier than it should have been, forcing her to acknowledge it instead of letting it blend into everything else.

“…One year,” she said quietly.

She waited.

And waited.

And waited.

"Huh?"

Nothing happened.

Everything in the void remained the same as it had been; no changes occurred.

“…That should have been enough,” she murmured, though the certainty behind the words did not feel as solid as before.

Silence answered.

Then—

A voice returned.

“YOU LIED.”

It tore through her mind with far more force than before, the sound sharper, heavier, filled with a raw anger that did not fade after it appeared.

Meng Lin steadied herself, her thoughts tightening as she held her ground.

“What is this? Who's that?” she replied.

“IT WASN’T ONE YEAR,” the voice snapped back instantly, its fury rising without restraint, each word striking harder than the last. “YOU JUST SAID THAT WE WOULD LEAVE HERE."

Her thoughts wavered slightly as her focus shifted from the screaming voice in her thoughts to the one year that just passed.

“It should have been—” she said, though the words felt weaker this time.

“IT DIDN’T END,” the voice cut in again, louder now, more unstable, the emotion behind it spilling over without control. “WE’RE STILL HERE. NOTHING CHANGED, NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE.”

Meng Lin fell silent.

This time—

She didn’t respond immediately.

The stillness that followed felt heavier than before, pressing against her thoughts in a way that she could not immediately push aside.

And for the first time in a long time, she felt it again.

Something slipped.

A memory that had been there just moments ago disappeared without warning, leaving behind an empty space that she could not fill no matter how hard she tried to recall it.

Meng Lin stilled.

“…What…”

“…No…”

Her thoughts tightened as the realization began to form, each passing moment making it harder to ignore what was happening.

Looking back at the first time she died and came to this place, she realized that last time she had lost her first memory after six days.

This time—

It took three hundred for her to lose her first memory.

“…six days to 30, and now 300 days t ..."

“NOOOOO,” a scream tore through the thought, the emotions behind the scream spilling without any restraint.

The sound ripped into Meng Lin's mind, and in the next instant, a suffocating pressure crashed down without warning, tightening without pause as if something was crushing her from within.

Meng Lin’s thoughts shattered.

Pain flooded her consciousness, overwhelming everything else, leaving no space to think, no space to resist.

Then—

Everything went dark.