Chapter 7.Red lantern by the Pond

In the eastern compound of Wei's inner courtyard, there was a portion of manor generally called the Eastern wing. Primarily used as residence of young unmarried daughters and young masters of the family, each son and daughter had their own courtyards situated in there, with gardens and all its other amenities. Legitimate sons and daughters however owned the right to own a complete independent courtyard, but others birthed by concubines could only follow the arrangement of Second Mistress and live jointly in shared buildings. Whatever one's place in the hierarchy of Wei House, it was a well-known fact known to everyone in Weijia that the Eastern wing had a forbidden zone which couldn’t be easily entered. An abandoned courtyard besides the pond.

Quietly tucked between falling walls and unkempt pathways, its position was ingeniously secretive. Surrounding it there were several linked courtyard houses nearby, each separated by small alleys and pathways, arched bridges and elegantly placed corridors supported by towering wooden pillars and overarching roofs with their eaves curled up towards the sky. At this moment, those eaves let down droplets of collected rain, pitter-pattering onto the marbled pathways. Several puddles had formed just underneath the roof.

Pitter patter, pitter patter the sound echoed – that was the only sound that could be heard tonight in such hours.

At day time, when light flooded its premises aplenty, these buildings with their sprawling gardens and tall pillars standing along alleys and corridors and dispersed but commonplace pavilions, gazebos for resting and lingering around at leisure; all of these formed quite a picturesque escape from mundane feelings of everyday life into more idyllic recesses of comfort. Young masters and misses could be often spotted loitering around or enjoying nature's ample gift.

Because the region’s weather never resorted to being too cold or too dry, every month was akin to spring or autumn– Wei manor was delicately refined with the weather in mind, allowing every occupant to enjoy its various pleasures at all times.

But at night, with its vast empty spaces and darkness enveloping everything and anything and with no human to add a tale to its tall walls – it appeared plagued with a morbid sense of maligned mourning. As if its stone walls were crying. Or its high and curled eaves hung a pained soul, suffocating over the ropes tied to its neck, and its lament resounded in the wind that made walking down at night a painful task. Often maids would fall prey to their fears and become bedridden. There was anger in its emptiness to be found; even the redness of festive lanterns of such a night that had passed tonight, couldn't ward off that melancholy. Or that ever-present emptiness it bore in its bereaving bosom.

Unsurprisingly, no one dwelled in Abandoned courtyards, which looked pretty much like a whole compound that had been abandoned and now lay sprawling with three and four, big, empty courtyards. No one dared to come close to it.

Despite the proximity with those more bustling courtyards of older misses and young masters, with their crowds of slaves and servants filing in and out at all hours of night and day close by - this specific spot seemed to be cut-off from all that liveliness. Day or night, it remained forgotten.

In fact, its walls had long formed cobwebs and dust marks, left to the mercy of time it bore traces of ruin and destruction. Its red pillars had their paints flaking off – its actual color hard to find, only visible in remaining blotches one would seldom notice. The roofs were beyond repair, and moths and termites had visibly eaten away a chunk of its previous architectural glory. Who might have lived in these walls before? That was something only a few people knew, for others it was a constant fodder for imagination.

At a nearby shore, grasses were as tall as an adult man's thigh; their sharp blades made a slithering noise whenever the wind blew past the pond water towards them. To-night there was no such wind, or when it came it was too quick to die down. The dawn had yet to approach. The red paper lanterns were still hanging outside, dangling down the eaves. Their red reflection falling on the walls were mottled, sliding, often flickering. Once, twice in the softer breeze, it danced. One could even hear a crisp ringing of a bell coming from somewhere inside the gloomy chambers.

It must be the wee hours when the darkness is as deep as can be imagined and soon light will penetrate its depth– like blue ink softening into abyssal nothingness; something happened. As the light of the lantern seemed to be being sucked off, an embrace all too suffocating to its existence, when there was no other sound apart from that haunting pitter-pattering that never ceased to make its presence felt and not even noises of crickets chirping, rustling of the grasses could be heard any more; a sound disrupted the quiet, jolting the place back to life.

"Plop!"

Water. Cold and biting stung her. It was a torture to endure!

"Why? Why should I endure this? Why? Why-Why-Why this fate? Why only me? No, I won't accept this!"

Someone had fallen into the pond and she was drowning.

No one came to her rescue, however. At the moment of fall, waves after waves washed up to the shore furiously, washing the grasses into clumps of bowing stalks, conquering land. But soon all the rippling waves and tremors settled down, like a river settling down after a piece of pebble fell into it. Again, the previous silence was restored to night, it gripped the scene at chokehold, stifling everything like before.

It wasn't until fifteen minutes later that a pair of bony hands broke the pond's stillness again.

Those hands were like a ghoulish spirit breaking through its burial mound, ready to chew the spectator! A figure frantically broke through, came out panting and gasping for life. Her white hands pierced the black waters, a head rose first then her shoulders emerged and then her nose came out choking over mouthfuls of dirty water – all while frantically wading to stay afloat. Haggard and desperate, she remained engrossed in that heady adrenaline of having survived, panting for breath, then choking horrifically over it, and then gasping and panting some more while still pushing forward through the dark waters towards the shore.

But it was difficult – the task to stay afloat. Her thick cloak seemed determined to drag her down under water, as did the weeds entangling her ankle bones. From the way she tried to swim, she didn't look like someone who had ever come in contact with water, or had ever swum in general. It was sheer desperation that kept her afloat. But fortunately, in a few minutes her white hands clenched the grasses over the pond's shore and forced herself out. This brusqueness of spirit abruptly ended as she toppled over, with the last bit of protest stifled out like a burned-out candlelight.

Kneeling, Wei Ziya let out a silent cry. No sound came out at first through her strangled neck, yet her eyes were round and hazy and desperately roving in their places – forced to engorge in size, her pupils dilated and wavered. Her whimpers finally reached her mouth and then like the most horrific song of a dying bird, her lips trembled and let out a cry. And what a cry it was – like a deer's last cry on its approaching death, it could shake the heart of heavens.

The girl kept crying...crying her heart out. She knew not why, but she cried and kept crying for a long time.

When the sound of her desperate crying ceased it was a long, long while later. Tears still fell warming her cold cheeks, her throat now sore like a piece of sandpaper rubbing together, but having vented much of her helplessness, her frustration of a lifetime – Wei Ziya fell down on her back. She lay sprawled on her back gazing upward into the black sky for an unknown amount of time.

Wei Ziya knew. Tonight, she got a bargain. She'd saved herself from endless agony. She was truthfully free from her curse. She escaped a fatal point in her life. In her previous life – she remained undiscovered in this very pond for several hours, lost all consciousness and when she was finally rescued back and woke up, the soul in her body was no longer hers. Everyone thought she just recovered from a coma; but only she knew...she had drowned that night and was replaced by another woman’s soul! What then had she turned into at that moment? Just a wisp of lingering resentment that had fortunately slipped unnoticed under the hawklike gaze of that woman, and someone who would later accompany her invisibly for another hundred years of toil and trouble.

That woman took away her body, took her name and used it as her own. She still remembered those seemingly parting words uttered to her who was thought as dead and gone –

"Don't worry over your karmas in this world. I will take care of your family in your place and cherish them as you should have done yourself. Please go worriless on your journey to the netherworld and start a new life."

These words were so final, so direct. As if she was destined to end everything that night, despite her body being still alive and fine. But Wei Ziya hadn’t died yet. She couldn't just go off to some netherworld on her own, could she? There was no underworld guard coming to lead her straying soul to the right place, nor did any light transport her away to life after death...nothing. She could only helplessly keep struggling on the verge of death, watching that alien soul pretend to be her, slowly replacing all the memories related to a certain other Wei Ziya.

And she did watch. For a long, long time. Watched her lie, kill and set fire to all things she, Wei Ziya, had loved and cherished all her life! Grandmother died because father’s plot was discovered earlier than it should have been. Grandfather personally killed father pushing her grandmother to choose death. Everything in the shadows were unravelling at wrong times and that woman made it clear that her only choice could only be one that served her own interest.

"Ha! What a Heaven's Chosen daughter-!" Wei Ziya flinched, saying out aloud. "All along it was her! Ha! A soul reborn in phoenixes fire, they called her, and what about me? That shell that was replaced by another soul, forever unnamed and forgotten? Who could have thought the pure white fairy was nothing but a cuckoo overtaking a nest?!"

Heaven's Chosen children. In those senseless years of floating in a closed space, Wei Ziya met many so-called Heaven’s daughters and sons. Each one taller and stronger than the last, and if not for the witch-hunt that usually followed once someone was found to be really one on whom the heaven showered all its luck, many more would come out in front of the world to dazzle everyone with their adventurous tales! Wei Ziya later learned that these people were considered the blessings for their world. If one was lucky to be born in years of heroes and heroines like heaven's chosen ones, they could dream to achieve anything they ever wanted. However, if someone fell into enmity with these Chosen people – his only end could be death.

Unfortunately, she herself had already become an existence that would threaten to unravel that woman’s secret. How could the heavens allow such a pesky fly like herself to spoil a beautiful tale of wonder and luck? She died and it was the only end someone like her could have got in that 'grand tale'.

As if the world was a piece of a bard's tale – and everyone else just puppets, waiting to bow down under the light of those heaven's children, there was only one way and that was the way as desired by the chosen one. Only the Chosen ones were humans, everyone else a mere puppet in their story!

Wei Ziya laughed. She had seen it play out too, a completely fantastical story. She watched that daughter of heaven seeking unparalleled positions, forging paths that another soul in her place could never imagine forging. From a small mortal world, she rose and swept everyone under her influence. She became the best, the most sought out person in the fairy world.

Wei Ziya came to know Ying Yueru wasn’t from this world quite soon enough. When she watched her use someone’s hand to kill the three-year-old toddler, steal a locket and then design one after other traps to thwart a person named Ying Yi whom she called her ‘dear younger sister’, Wei Ziya knew she came to her world unknowingly and there were many more like her. This world had long turned into a sieve allowing every wandering soul to be sucked within, causing chaos here, there and everywhere!

Ying Yueru would go on to become a highly sought after cultivator, the only one who had become a Mahayana level ancestor in just a hundred years! People spent millennia searching and seeking dao, but she would just walk in the world of cultivation one day and in just a century create an unparalleled myth. As the only student of an ancient Mahayana Cultivator who was later revealed to be incarnation of a God, her birthright will later include noble ties with the Spiritual realm when she will become a real Phoenix descendent. Her senior brothers will be one of the most outstanding cultivators with huge cultivation families supporting them from behind, but every one of them will be willing to love her, sacrifice for her, support her like their most cherished beloved and precious treasure. Powerful Demon Kings, Sect lords and Beast kings, powerful men sought after her; whether they themselves were already engaged or married, it didn't matter much to anyone. High positioned women tore at her at any chance they got as if she was the bane of their existence, never minding their own positions and statuses or the fact that if they could try well to seek revenge justly with well thought out methods, they could really tear a piece of her flesh away successfully! But if Ying Yueru's aura charmed men into becoming her slaves, then women on meeting her could be said to instantly become woeful idiots and fools.

Whoever stood opposite her died or was silenced forever. Whoever stood with her, became the most fortunate person in the whole realm. Naturally, many intelligent people sided with her once they understood the direction of the wind. Resources, opportunities and chances fell on their head like a soft, gentle shower – blessings directly sent from heaven became their trophies. Maybe these were the only people who successfully came out of the quagmire, neither slavishly wasting their lives pining for Ying Yueru, nor putting endless effort and resources to plan her destruction and finally finding themselves defeated with no way out.

But Wei Ziya didn't care. Neither for that woman’s nobility or fame, nor her endless struggles that earned her Immortality. That woman could dance her favorite dances all she liked; it didn't matter to her. The world was full of geniuses. Envy? She was never in a position to be envious. She always knew she was just a mortal in their world who chanced upon the scenes of grandeur and might. If not for Ying Yueru she would never enter that world and forever live like a frog in her own small world.

She didn't envy their fates. She just hated - hated her! Hated her entitlement, her selfishness. It was because of that woman, her indifference that this small realm had taken its final gasp – her Jinghai was no more! Her world in which she had been born and grew up, watched people laugh and cry, the world that held all the people she’d made merry with... this world was torn and shattered to pieces!

Only because this realm had long served its purpose with that woman's entrance into the cultivation world. The treasure had been given away, essential secrets unravelled, inheritances distributed. Those cultivators might not know, but she did find out later that this world’s destruction was an essential part of the whole ‘story’.

People only found that a ‘Demon God’ was born in this realm, which sucked away vitality and threw away the balance that could maintain its existence. But she knew the secret was deeper, grimmer than that.

How could a small realm like this have the inheritance of Demon God? Who arranged for it to arrive here and why…why only when Ying Yueru successfully gained that ‘Pheonix blood’, did that ‘God’ emerge from shadows like a ghost and then shattered this world? Was it Ying Yueru’s luck or a mere coincidence? If that could be a coincidence then wouldn’t her falling into this pond be one too, and also the ‘accidental’ presence of another soul in need of a body? How wonderful!

No one could convince her that it wasn’t predetermined. Gods favoured that woman; Gods designed her win and the rest were defeated because they hadn’t earned the Deities favor!

With the fulfillment of destiny of hosting the Phoenix seed, this realm became worthless…the humans in this world were worthless, its animals and plants just senseless existence. All this world could ever be, was a place to go in search for treasures. Soon enough, when the last bit of treasure was drained away –what was the need of a plane that served no purpose or benefit to any God or Immortal?

That woman clearly knew many things. Although Wei Ziya couldn't peek into her memories, her actions had been sufficient enough to prove that she could have done many things if she wanted to save this small realm. She was powerful, resourceful, had unexpected luck…if she just wished…

…Even Gods would bend if she wished…

Wei Ziya sat up, drying away endless trickling tears.

What about taking care of her karmas for herself? Wei Ziya, that helpless original owner of the body – she was long forgotten. That woman hadn't even shied away from dirtying her hands sharing those spoils from that final war between humans and cultivators! She hadn't even flinched, hesitated just for a while, as she was piling up all that blood-sucked treasure into her coffer. How could she expect such a great sacrifice from such a selfish soul?

After that defeat, nothing had mattered to Wei Ziya in those years, as everything she cared for was dead or destroyed. She couldn't remember why she was so obsessed with living on. But every time she deliberated vanishing, she found it pitiable. As if a piece of her world was caressing her head, saying –

"O child, but don't I dwell in thy heart? When you recall, I thrive. You see, after your death – there will be no one with my memory...alive."

With her death, that history of her defeated world would also vanish. As a silent witness of that year's war between humans and those so called 'Gods' who were just some cultivators of Dao…as the lone survivor of her world's tragic end – wouldn't it be too tragic, that she too died so pitiably? Wasn't the best value of her, a silent witness of that atrocity, be that she reminisces about that piece of past forever? Forever mourning, echoing that final scene of death, of parting, that final flash of light when her realm shattered into arms of universe's darkness?

So, she had lived. But no one knew her, Wei Ziya. Her name too was soon forgotten as the woman changed it back to her own. All relations dead, her birthplace blasted to bits – and she herself only able to watch like a bystander as someone else carried on a happy life using her body; she was like a lone star dwelling in endless darkness. Floating, floating forever with no strings to fall back on.

Not tonight – that alien soul from another world, let's see how she comes to this world this time around! This time, even if nothing else changed, she was herself.

"Oh, what a loss to the world would be her majestic lore! Her endless feat and her grand tale of success. No one will recount her legends anymore – what a pity! And all this, because she, a parasitic ghost, couldn't replace a fainted mortal! Tonight, tonight she dies as I died. I, Wei Ziya, mother goddess, lived a proud life, as you asked us. I waited and waited for justice. Then as a gift, let me relive that past of shame, of defeat...let me remember it...all alone in this new life."

‘What about children of heaven?’

It wasn't her own heaven’s chosen children to begin with, nor this world's. Heavenly rule of this realm died the night this realm collapsed. Then why should it be her, Wei Ziya, who had to sacrifice her soul and body to hold that woman's soul – the 'chosen one' of those invaders? For glory – but whose? Clearly not her own, nor of this world's! Whether it was the so-called 'heaven's chosen one', or that alien soul from 'another world' – what do these titles have to do with this small realm? Nothing! And it wasn't like there couldn't be another chosen child of heaven if a single Ying Yueru dies. Someone will replace a mere Ying Yueru, right? Like many chosen sons and daughters, a mere Ying Yueru was nothing without that ‘Pheonix blood’.

"Really...the master who played with the world is no more." A God will die scattered tonight. She thought and laughed which ended in a coughing fit.

As Wei Ziya coughed, she recalled with tears in her eyes the exchange between those two lovers in the final year before their ascension into the Spirit Realm. Before she was captured by that woman’s grandfather – Lord of Vermillion Birds clan– and given away as a prisoner to be refined into a useless sword spirit.

***

"Ying Yueru…It’s just a matter of time before we become one. Just a few more years." That man had embraced Wei Ziya's body and bowed down his proud head, caressing her tresses. A scattered petal fell, which he hid in his hands covertly as if touching his beloved had become that petals virtue, and now it carried a trace of her which he could freeze and carry forever with himself. "Before long we will be Taoist Couple and no one will ever come in between us. Neither your master, nor mine would say a word when we prove to them that we can stand tall even without them! After we have dealt with this rumor of divined Heaven's daughter – you and I will get married like you wanted it to be done – miles of peach blossom tree will bloom, thousands of wild flowers will be showered and the sky will resound with the cries of dragon and phoenix! Auspicious clouds will dye our wedding day sky a wondrous feast for eyes. Heaven will agree with us, me and you. And no one will stop us. No chosen one will ever come in between us. I swear to heaven – I, Chen Jinhua, swear to you, Ying Yueru, that I will never fall in love with another woman after you, or I will have my cultivation ruined, my soul shattered under thunder strikes to never to be reborn again!"

"Don't - You don't have to do this!" Ying Yueru had placed her hands against his chest looking teary eyed into those of his beloved, shocked and mortified.

"But I do. You see, I can do anything for you. If it was asked of me to leave everything, I ever had to gain you, I will do that and that too with no hesitation. My love needs no proof lower than this. I hope you know, I do love you."

"But what about Immortal fate…? Master Ming has already predicted that you will have a smooth-sailing life if you enter into matrimony with her – that phoenix. Your dragon blood can only be tied down to her – she is your destined partner. You were tied together since the day you were born for heaven’s sake! And what about the love your men have for you? Their expectations? How will you answer them? After all, the Emperor of the Spiritual realm is no light title...your Dragon blood makes you its natural heir, it’s just that I cannot be a worthy queen ruling and standing beside you!"

"I will sacrifice everything to be with you."

Ying Yueru had cried with her doe like eyes flooded with tears. "You can leave everything, but what about those Oracles divining that only a daughter of heaven can ever completely get you rid of your bad luck? I will allow you to give up everything but playing with your life? That I can never condone! I won't allow you to turn me into the cause of your death! I believe that you will forgo all temptation – of ascending to heaven with no hurdles in your path but what about responsibilities and duties? Becoming an entity who can rule a whole realm is your birthright. Your dragon clan, your father and mother will be expecting you to wear a crown. Don't persuade me otherwise, please!"

Wei Ziya remembered feeling disgusted at that charade. That woman was clearly pretending – she had seen her designing the accidental death of that phoenix seed’s host in the mortal world and then sucking out all its luck and bloodline. Who else could be a prophesized phoenix if not her?

"Ying Yueru! You have to understand there is still no such person in this world right now! And I fell in love with you –and that is a fact. Why don’t you believe me? There will never be anyone better than you, purer than you, more loving and kind-hearted than you. How could I ever dream of leaving you? And did not the master Ming of the Qiyun sect foresee that it is more likely that such a woman had already appeared? If it was my fate to love her – then why don't you believe that you, Ying Yueru, are the one being talked about in these divinations? Because that is more likely than thinking I could ever betray you!"

“Only that neither am I a heaven’s chosen daughter, nor a Phoenix. I carry no bloodline but that of a human, and your Dragon clan abhors human cultivators. I know what the relationship of humans and Demonic Beast Cultivators in the Spirit world is. Holy beasts like your own clan will never submit to a human queen! Look truthfully into your heart and see if even one of these fact’s I’ve said is wrong. I believe you, but just you.” Ying Yueru’s eyes had turned really sharp. Wei Ziya knew, Ying Yueru only had ever loved only one soul apart from herself and that person had earned her wholehearted cherishment.

The young man had traced her body's falling tresses and whispered into her ears. "But I stand on your side, don’t I? Forever and ever. Because of me, because I chose you, they will have to accept you no matter what. And why do you undermine yourself thus? You are the youngest Mahayana cultivator. There is no one who can compete with you when it comes to luck or resources or ability – they cannot even do that in their dreams. Who doesn't know of your high accomplishments in alchemy? The Immortal of Alchemy himself left you an inheritance. If there is a heaven's chosen daughter with heaven piercing luck, a blessing for the whole cultivation realm, then in my heart it can only be you!"

"But what if someday you get tired of me-?! What if there is a soul who owns such a fate? Who is the protagonist of this world – who should be your one true love and the one who you should have loved, not me?! What if she suddenly knocks on the door one day and then you just leave me behind to go after her?"

"But there is no such person. I don’t believe that such a person can exist! Do you think so low of my love? Can anyone sway me away if they wanted to? What are you even thinking about Yue’er? What's going on in your head?"

"What if?! We both know how powerful destiny written by heaven can be. I…I am just afraid that you will change one day."

"Then I can only disappoint others, and go against heaven for you! We cultivators were originally destined to go against the heavens from the day we started practicing. Our existence on its own is a huge resistance against this natural order of heavenly rule. Attempting to keep my love for you intact and be with you in all the difficulties and pleasures of my life – how could I disappoint you in that vow? I have already promised, I will only love you, Ying Yueru. I will fulfill that vow, no matter what comes in my way! You just need to believe in me. Do you?"

"I believe you. But remember these words you said to me."

***

And he was right, that man. Ying Yueru was heaven's daughter – even if she had never let anyone know of that fact. She didn’t know what happened after their ascension as she was soon sealed away. But the dragon clan and the vermillion bird clan did hold a wedding – it could only have been theirs. Ying Yueru stole a fate from a child who was born with the phoenix seed, but Wei Ziya knew Ying Yueru will never allow anyone to discover her secret. Her death was a clear proof of that.

In hindsight, the whole play was ludicrous. While the world searched for a sign of this chosen daughter, she was lurking in the shadows watching everyone play a game of tag. How she knew of that Phoenix seed, or who let her know that it could make her the noblest of heaven's creation – Wei Ziya could only wonder. But now she had a clue. Waking up tonight, here, feeling breeze on her flesh, Wei Ziya imagined such a fate falling on Ying Yueru – if she could return back to an earlier period of her life, then why couldn’t this happen to Ying Yueru? Ying Yueru didn’t have an Oracle's vision…she could only be a person going back in time like herself.

It was just a pity that she didn’t know the place where that child was born, or else she could go herself and see if anything could be done to stop another Ying Yueru from rising up. She was very clear that the bane of this word had always been that ‘Phoenix seed’.

Wei Ziya thought and imagined with great intensity. A world where Ying Yueru was missing. What would such a world look like? Another woman will be the first to rank in halls and lists of greatest of cultivators of all times – perhaps it could be that baby who will grow up intact this time. Another person will snatch that alchemy inheritance she prided. And that lover – he will lie in the laps of a different woman, what a pity for Ying Yueru! All that just because she couldn't snatch a mere mortal soul. Hasn’t this event turned more laughable?

Wei Ziya tiredly squinted out the water from her eyes. New tears kept flooding down her cheek, warming her face. But she didn’t know that she was unconsciously giggling out loud, her lips hideously stretched on both ends.

It took her a while to reign in her laughter.

'Yet,' she thought soberly, 'I came back too late.'

If it had been a year or two earlier, she could have done so much more to help the resistance.

The Black Shadows in Daxia, the Seven Temples and Longsheng Mountains, Liming Sect’s Master Su, several names and forces rolled at the tip of her tongue. This was the final year of peace before those cultivators made themselves known to everyone in the world. But now, everything was already on the path of no return. The ritual ceremony of sacrifice will be carried out next year. She could only fight to death to save her sister Wei Zhiruo.

The war between Dajin and Daxia six months later was inescapable…endless pain and battlefields everywhere will become the norm of this world. Two years later, this world will erupt in an all-out war draining away all its peace and prosperity. Humans will stand tall against Cultivators – but with such power imbalance and disparity, anyone could foresee the outcome. How could an egg hit the stone and think of doing any damage to it? It could just be a dream.

Wei Ziya thought as she wrung water out from her cloak, which was now hanging heavily on her body. She wrung her long tresses. Wiped her cheeks but some more tears poured out. Salty water drenched her face, those drops of heated liquid made her lose all her grace and bearing. Her cracked lips lined into a whimper, shivering due to burst of emotion and cold.

"But this time, when everything enters darkness – I wouldn't be left alone wondering why."

But was it really her soul's rebirth tonight? Not a cruel joke by that woman's grandfather – that Vermillion Bird Immortal? Or of those Immortals of the spiritual realm who showed her this new illusion to torture her and win Ying Yueru’s favor? Showing her what she wanted the most to only snatch it away later – haven't they already done that a million time?

But this event, to-night, was so personal to that woman! How could she let a soul know of this night? She hadn't even shared that secret with her lover! After all, it was a taboo whether in the cultivation realm, or spiritual realm to take over someone else's body. It was considered the most frowned upon thing. Only heathens did that, no orthodox cultivator could ever fall to such a degree. Especially, not a Phoenix seed, someone with noble phoenix blood and inheritance! And that woman also carried Vermillion Holy bird's bloodline that was renowned to burn away evil.

Or could it be that she was dreaming? Was all that happened in her previous life rather a dream, a premonition that unfolded her destiny foretelling all her fallings and victories? A forewarning? Was it a blessing from the dark, from some unknown force that wanted her to escape those dark days and those vile men and women? Mother goddess-? Could it be her blessing? Her guidance?

But Wei Ziya shook her head. 'No, Mother goddess is dead.'

'No,' She argued with herself softly. 'How could someone give me this chance if he wanted me to fulfill my predestined role? And if he was against this predestined fate – why choose me, a shell with no value? I, myself, am not that worthy to shoulder such a heavy responsibility of saving a world. In fact, all my life, I have been struggling with bad-luck, horrific bad luck. Living like a mirror, only reflecting what others did and wanted. While I remained stifled in an inhuman state. Is there any ability still left in me? Always living in fear of being discovered, terrified of being destroyed and being punished. Facing blood curdling helplessness all I could do was pray for help. As if the dictates of my fate were those failures – and my sinful birth only deserving of this treatment, one after other walls collapsed in my past life. As a shell who cares what befalls me? But why...why only me?"

As pain numbed her senses, doubts arose in her mind.

Was this bad-luck result of her birth? Yes, she shouldn't have been born – as a proof of the sins of old, a detestable existence like her should never have a happy ending. She was the reason her mother was put under house-arrest, the reason that caused his father to lose his lover whom he cherished more than his own life! If she hadn’t been born away from the mansion, no one would point fingers against mother that she had betrayed father; no one would throw blame at her and push her mother to allow father to marry another person! Wasn’t she the sole reason why her small sister Wei Zhiruo could never enjoy a mother’s love, her elder brother Wei Yize could never hold his head high in front of others?

‘Thankfully, mother’s life ended soon. Such pain…it is better that she goes and reincarnates as a blessed person earlier.’

Wei Ziya acknowledged that Karma was never on her side. But being born only to die? Who chose this punishment for her? Why should her life be taken just to fill in a gap for others – acting like a body container for a foreign soul? Why should she be turned into the likes of an empty casket which could be emptied at will? She was a dignified creature, a life worthy of respect, wasn’t she?

"Do I deserve being treated like that?" Her voice cracked, piercing through the silence. “A puppet with a string? With no will of my own?”

'No.'

Wei Ziya shrunk her shoulders and broke out into shivers. “I am not made of wood. Of course, I shouldn't have been treated like that! Look, when my ashes should have settled in the river of time, I am back here. Whatever the cause of this blessing might’ve been, I am still me. No one, no soul knows I am back here! Look – look at these arms, these limbs – I am still me! This is me! Even if this is another dream they weave, I will break through it, one day...one day. Even if it's another evil trick – I will live through it like all those other times. Yes! I was never an unthinking log of wood...I’ve always been a human. I will never think of myself so low...no-! No one knows what happened in a previous life. No one."

"Tip-tap-tip"

Water droplets dripped from the eaves.

Wei Ziya jerked awake. Her eyes took in her present surroundings, finally coming out of her deep thoughts. She saw the pond and those time ravaged buildings standing tall. It was night time. Her eyes contracted with a strange, weird yet apprehensive glint. She looked around once more and found no other figure near herself, she panicked.

Way past twelve in the night. Perhaps way past even the most of the night! The silence was dead, as gloomy as penetrating despair. No cricket chirped. Even the wind had died down, leaving no trace of itself behind.

Wei Ziya hurriedly retracted her feet which were still dangling inside the water. She crawled back with so much intensity that for a while her whole body ached and trembled. But she didn't care for that. In the rush of the moment, the sharp blades of tall grasses cut several lines on her wrist – she didn't feel it bleeding too. All she had in her mind was how to rush back. She had to run, but her legs were not rising up. She limped along the unpaved path; slow steps raised and fell. Strenuously, she kept struggling to increase her pace.

She couldn't stay outside.

The family warning resounded in her mind; her grandfather had strictly prohibited people from going out after midnight. She recalled the fate of her maid Nu’er who only spent a night away in the firewood shed.

‘No, no, no. I cannot die!’

She didn't know the reason for this ban. But she knew that whatever was restricted was for a reason.

'I should go back quickly…’