Chapter 8. Red Haze by the Reed-bed 02

Everything grew silent. Her surroundings, her own echoing thoughts — everything became a blank canvas for her to paint.

Wei Zhiruo looked down into her human blood circulation system using her inner eyes. The various blood vessels were all properly circulating —no lump or clogging was spotted; the blood itself was red and human. No cerulean pigment, nor any trace of Mana dots and particles flowing in them, charging it with zealous energy that slithered like licks of thunder was seen. A strangely distorted sense of loss filled her as she had grown used to seeing her different colored blood. But she didn't stop there for long, and plunged headfirst further down.

Another layer was penetrated.

The body that was made of flesh and blood, her heart and other organs were still very human. Her skeleton, on the other hand, was shining brightly full of white dots blinking sparingly —these were definitely those particles she absorbed tonight. Star-light.

She still felt some of them trickling through the pores of her skin, and filling through the rest of her body. They never settled, but each wash of their running self generated warmth and a fulfilling feeling in her heart.

But it was different from past life. She felt that those white dots were not only warming up her bones but were also healing her malnourished bones? Doubtfully, she stopped and lingered over them.

Starlight covered all of her bones in a thin layer of white light film, while small dots trickled down and penetrated into the pores and filtered inside the marrow. She felt its warmth, and became sure that her body was healing from...within?

Wei Zhiruo observed this process for a while, trying to guess why it was different from before. Starlight particles could also heal? Why didn’t it do that in her previous life? Was this function specifically restricted to the human body or what? She had never heard another clansman ever speak of this phenomenon —and no doubt, there were many humans in her bloodclan!

'Another bewildering stuff…'

Wei Zhiruo didn’t stop for too long. She let herself fall deeper and deeper – until she, her inner eyes more specifically, opened up to her Inner body. Her outer shell was now shadowed in darkness, as another wide space appeared in her inner eyes. She, as an omniscient observer saw her Inner self as a phantom, transient but a complete self nevertheless.

This was what she had crafted herself, a small mirror of her outer body. This self was meditated, and forged with her deep understanding of her previous body, each muscle, each bone at a time. Now —it felt like a relic of the past.

Strangely enough, now this inner image of herself had the same appearance as her current self, but the clothes she was wearing —that intricately carved headwear fanning above like plumage of a firebird, covering her forehead and top of her hair, huge earrings falling down to her shoulders and the necklaces carved with clan symbols that hung all the way down to her waist, which was again wrapped in a belt of beaded symbolic accessories— all of these were the same things she had worn on the day she died. Her coronation dress.

"A Coronation dress-?"

Suddenly an echo reverberated in the silent water. A memory, perhaps. A warm embrace, and a slightly floral note of spring touched her, pulling strings of her mind as it recalled herself as she played beside a woman who weaved a flower crown. The meadow was vast and full of sunlight...

"Yes —it should have been embroidered by the very hands of your mother, but since you place so much love on your auntie, how could I have disappointed you, my love? So I made it myself— green silk for your budding warm heart like the lushness of spring, and red, from red-tailorbirds thread, symbolizing your fiery will. And finally —gold threads made of old golden dust, because it's auspicious. When you turn twenty, I will place a Sapphire and Ruby Crown of Empress on your head, and then you will kiss my hands and I will lead you to the throne, where my brother, your father, will hand the royal staff and seals. Just ten more years, right? Your cousin is more excited to be pledged as your guardian knight—"

Wei Zhiruo stopped in time before she lost all control. She looked over and deliberately retraced the familiar gown.

It was the dress reserved for her coronation. Since she feared she might die during the sacrificial ceremony, she donned the most elaborate court dress, a huge flowing gown embroidered with clan totems, to remember a past identity that everyone had crushed and stamped with their feet. It was green, bright and vibrant, full of red flowers and golden threads embroidered lovingly by her dead aunt.

But now, it appeared here as a manifestation of her Inner body, flickering and transient. Like a regalia of a distant clan that was no more. Of people that were left behind in dust...

Wei Zhiruo let her sight flow down inside still at the same light pace – but this time, with a specific direction in mind, as she wanted to see her core, her own soul.

The Inner body, like the Outer one, had all kinds of complex looking circulatory systems. Major of all was the vessel that flowed with life essence, and another that flowed with the body's internal energy —both intertwined seamlessly.

However, her bloodline had now completely conquered these parts. Those fine red filaments seemed to have penetrated everything and were running wildly everywhere. Its red thread became the most dominant force inside, as it entangled, penetrated and rippled in, like a spider's web linking itself with each object therein.

Wei Zhiruo followed these fine red threads, as she dug deeper and deeper into the center and appeared inside the core area.

What appeared in her field of vision was her soul, with its past wounds, and now a towering root of a red tree encircling it, enveloping and shielding it from all sides. The tree itself wasn't huge, its trunk was as round as her present body's waist – but even this was a great advancement!

"Oh my—!"

For twenty years of her past life, she had seen it sprout from a tender seedling to a proud stalk, but for unknown reasons it had stopped growing bigger after reaching the size of a bamboo stalk.

Now, it proudly stood tall as a young parasol tree, lush and fluttering with leaves and branches. Its leaves were a color of blood-like red but were now shining with bright white starlight particles, rustling in a wave of mysterious rhythm.

She picked one fallen leaf to see it up close – the veins were so well formed she couldn’t help but gasp out aloud. It was as clear as real tree leaves! And it had captured so many star-particles too! For how many years had it been silently absorbing those starlight? She couldn't tell.

And branches — there were so many of them; heavy boughs laden with lush and luxuriant leaves swaying all around.

"You look…thriving. I've never seen you like this before! Now I have changed my mind, this-this is hardly any disaster for you, but more likely a blessing in disguise. You broke through your previous level." Wei Zhiruo couldn't help sighing with satisfaction.

A few red blood-like drops emerged in her field of vision. The flying red liquid bubbled up a little, and then took a form. It fell over her shoulder and turned into a cat with fur white as cloud and purest of ruby red in his eyes. Marr looked particularly aloof and proud, with his head only bowing down to touch his master. He snuggled and complained—

"I am just holding myself back from rushing all out, you know? Look at all those jumbled up red lines in there? It's like a weed conquering everywhere! I am running and running like a headless chicken, unaware where I should go."

"Don't worry, I will help you with that. Leave everything there to me and go do your thing. Just don't forget to call me when you are ready to push into the Second phase, alright?" Wei Zhiruo assured him, rubbing his head, and watched him fly away turning back into red drops merging with the huge tree.

Wei Zhiruo didn't remain in the Core area for long. She flew back where she had observed those red roots.

Although she had deeply checked this body once before, she didn't actually study the energy system stemming inside. She knew it was going to be different from her actual body of her previous life —they were essentially different organisms to begin with. But...it was still quite hard to wrap her minds around it. The difference was subtle, but over-present everywhere.

Although she hadn’t cultivated very complicated Body Art and Technique, like a full-fledged Mage, she had still been a very successful Rune maker. Her Soul Art was peerless. Once, she didn't even need to use a medium to write Runes and was able to write them with the sheer strength of her thoughts!

Whatever she had learned, she had used up to strengthen her body, and fortify its various parts. Now looking at a completely weak self, which wasn’t even strong enough as her toddler self of past life — she did feel the tumultuous result of changes, bared right in front of herself.

"Alas! It's going to take time..." To get her top-strength back was a distant dream right now.

Wei Zhiruo tried to remember a similar looking image. Yes, it was in the past...her mother's clan had this stored away as a secret method of cultivation. This was one of the things she had raided before setting out on her space journey after the fall of her clan. She was running away to save her life, but she hadn’t forgotten to give them a blow.

"What was it called? Something like [Pure Energy Technique] right? These intertwining vessels carrying Internal energy- they looks the same as in that chart —the meridians and apertures are almost the same. The technique said it carries Qi — another word for Internal energy. Do you have an impression?"

"Not right now. Maybe a little bit —hmm, is it that thing you stolen from your grandfather's collection? Do you want me to send you the image from that scroll? I think I know where I stored it away...wait a second."

"Oh...sure."

"Great! Found it —here you go!"

"Thanks Marr." Wei Zhiruo smiled and thanked, and saw the image floating in her mind's eye.

She looked at the yellow parchment paper full of blotches of many kinds, some of which looked like dirt. Moths had eaten most of its corner and some words too, but overall it was still legible. When she first saw it, she found it hard to believe that those Ruze people were so bad at preserving their clan's greatest inheritance. For a moment she even thought whether she had been hoodwinked and stolen some other document!

"Let's get started —shall we?"

Wei Zhiruo first matched all Qi meridians and their apertures she saw with the parchments.

There were some twelve main meridians joined with thirty six principal meridians running from head to toe, thin as a human hair. These were those found attached to muscles and tendons, a few connected to her bone marrow and spinal cords, as well as to her head; some were connected to her other internal organs from her heart, kidneys to her lungs and spleen. And then there were thirty nine peripheral meridians, their thickness not even as good as a spider's gossamer. They branched out everywhere!

"This looks familiar. Oddly familiar. It's not our first time reading this technique, so why is that? Where have I seen something like this…before?" Wei Zhiruo mumbled. She felt it was odd that she could hardly recall what this technique was about. After struggling a couple of minutes, the answer flashed in her mind. "Aah...now I see. Nature Mage Eruthmys – was it? I think I read one of his treatises called <Reckoning with Internal Healing> and felt a lingering familiarity but it never struck me why. When he set out on his journey to write down ‘self healing’ medicinal practices, I recall, he heavily emphasized the role of so-called vital vessels in his treatises. He drew the vital vessels in humans of the Middle World, and called them Rujen. Objectively, that Rujen spiritual vessel system should be different from the Qi system from the Cuiping world but no, apart from slight shifts and changes, it's a spitting image of that. I remember, Rujen's twelve main vital-veins are exactly the same!"

"Why do you think it's strange? The Middle World and the Cuiping world are still in the same galaxy aren't they?"

"Yes, since both the places are still inside the same galaxy, we can imagine why humans would resemble each other right? Obviously, all other fringe races — like our own clan, elves, dragon-kinds, beastkin, merkins, and those avians who are sentient and know cultivation — not one of these races has something like these meridians in our system. Think about it — if you take that there was some sort of internal migration in ancient times, and all humans might have originated from a single source, it's understandable. I can wrap my head around that fact. But look — twelve meridians again. A spitting image of this technique and Rujen! Why does this body, now in a different world, have almost the same Qi circulatory system like the other two worlds?"

Wei Zhiruo said and continued —

"It makes sense that humans of the Cuiping world, or those humans in the city of Mages Oplehema in the Middle World are the same. Almost all inhabitable planets in the Sagittarius galaxy have humans. They may claim to have come from different sources, but there is no valid proof of that. Some trace their origin to fallen gods, some to even chaos — but who knows where they actually came from? I just don't understand, why does this resemblance even reach out to this completely new world? I am sure we are not inside the Sagittarius galaxy anymore; the sky is completely different from how it would be if we were to be on one of its planets. Are we near it, somewhere close by and still in the same universe?"

"I don’t think so." Marr deliberated. "I cannot feel the same kind of resonance as I did in our universe. You are not as attuned to celestial forces as I am so you wouldn’t feel it, but, when we just came here, I remember feeling suffocated and strangled as if we were fishes thrown out of water! This feeling didn’t recede until we were unconsciously sucked in inside that embryo. I think it was fortunate that it happened. The feeling I got from the surrounding was akin to us having intruded into someone else's home! No bloodkin will feel this way in his own world! We were born amongst the stars, our natural habitation is the endless space and universe! Just travelling to a different galaxy would never make us feel so…unwelcome. I bet this place is different, a different universe altogether!” Marr replied.

“Is that true? So we can never go back to the Middle world again?”

“I don’t think we can.” A slightly hesitant Marr replied.

“That's sad. I was hoping we could try travelling all over the Middle world this time and even to those faraway regions of elves and dragon-kinds. We could have revisited Abyss and spent some time there too…”

Both of them simultaneously fell silent while doing their own things.

“At least we are alive.” Marr observed, clearly trying to divert her mind. "From the turn of events in those last days, I was even fearful that we would be torn to pieces, souls shattered."

“Emm...We can travel in this world too, right? Let's just do that after we are done Awakening. Live a free, unfettered life for the rest of our lives." She said and then started counting the apertures and special nodes in the meridian, shrugging away the sense of loss brought out by this new revelation.

"There are too many of these nodes —four hundred specially marked ones that are precisely like the parchment mentions. Out of them all, three hundred and sixty five are more prominent than the rest. And now, because you have made a mess and infiltrated almost everywhere with your roots, there is no counting some hidden ones. Eh— there must be more hidden ones I think. Okay. Let's start straightening your red roots out."

Wei Zhiruo observed and then started pruning the red threads. She would tug out any excessively dominant roots, leaving just a single red thread merging into one meridian. But for the principal twelve — she left a few more rooted there.

She found a few hidden points and mapped them in the chart, calling out to Marr to send his red roots into the specified points and merge them.

"What use are these meridians, anyway? After all, we cannot rely on technique . The technique is so cryptic that it's useless to work it out." Marr still didn't understand why they needed so much time to understand this new system.

"It's not useful right now —but who knows when an opportunity comes our way? Usually, it's judicious to just grasp your own strengths and weaknesses so that you don't let a good opportunity slip away from your hands. Did I make sense to you?"

"Hmm...I can imagine that fine."

After Wei Zhiruo was done, doing whatever she could, she felt the changes in her human body and asked, "Did you examine the Sea of Consciousness? Has it changed too?"

"No, I didn't. I was too busy to think of that. Do you want to?"

"But are you in control, right now? You won't go feral on me, will you?"

"Nah- not right now." Marr embarrassedly looked around in his cat-form and said sheepishly. "Your help greatly decreased the pressure on me. I just sorted out my roots surrounding your soul, so it's good here. But I was going to ask you —do you want to see the place where the blood drop sealed away itself? I found that it's a place near your navel."

Wei Zhiruo thougt about observing the nearby Sea of Consciousness first instead, so she said, "No, let's see the changes in the Inner World first. Do you think it's still in the shape of the Central House of Knowledge? With all the books you copied in there? You spent countless nights stealing into those strictly guarded treasure houses and buildings just to store away that rich collection of scrolls and books. It will be a great loss if everything is gone —you spent so much effort to craft it out like that!"

"I can just do it all over again. To tell you the truth, I am not even that sad." Marr floated around her in his red drop form.

In a second, they were both floating over the Sea of consciousness. Wei Zhiruo with her inner eyes and Marr with his real body. What they saw there, completely shocked them, subverting all their previous notions!

"Let me rephrase it — it hasn't just changed but drastically altered. Did we use up all our luck or what?" Marr exclaimed.

An enormous blue ocean thundered with rageful waves, while a sky full of spiraling Runes almost blinded them. There was also the familiar looking corner, that they both knew as the actual part of their previous Inner world.

A tall three story building with an emerald dome shaped roof. Its walls were made of the toughest kind of black obsidian which was considered a great conductor of all kinds of magic. It still retained all those ancient, undeciphered Rune's etched over all its visible surface which Wei Zhiruo in her short span of twenty years of life never got the chance to decipher completely.

But the Runes now floating all over the sky were completely new!

“These must be some of those you just absorbed tonight. Thank goodness it just changed and enlarged the sea of consciousness. We could have been in a coma or, worse, dead.” Wei Zhiruo observed those flying Runes and felt a shiver of relief running through her spine.

"So...true."

From being a building on land, the towering obsidian palace had changed to an architecture floating over in the air. Clouds of different colors and mist surrounded it, some flowing around it like a pool of water, some falling down into the behemoth of an ocean, underneath, like a waterfall.

Marr tried to grasp the cloud. He changed to his cat form and walked over the misty ocean. "It feels real, but it isn't. It's still an illusion, or rather, soul like energy's creation—thank goodness. It would be a mess if a new world opened up in your mind!"

"It is definitely it, the soul power. Just like that building we made with it. Maybe that space does impact people in different ways — It said, "you will be born anew". My guess is that it wasn't just a phrase to dramatize its effect, but rather... it meant it literally. Rebirth? What does rebirth entail —changes and enormous changes, life shattering changes. This, isn't it pretty much that?"

"Yes it is...with this much condensed energy, we can just spend ages just deciphering some of the rules working over this place."

Then next, they both floated down the Core, near the navel.

"What is this?"A puzzled Marr asked loudly. "Are you still human? Why do you have roots growing in your body?"

Before their eyes was a small space opened up near the navel, it wasn't big enough like the Spiritual Sea, but was still spacious. But the whole thing looked astoundingly bizarre.

"They do look like roots." Wei Zhiruo dumbfoundedly echoed. "Of course I am human, there is no doubt about that. Maybe humans in this world have these things growing here —we didn't have this space within us prior to this , so how could we know what this is for? It must serve a purpose."

She reassured Marr and carefully took note of the mysterious space and roots growing inside it.

There were five colorful roots, each entangled with the other. They looked about the same size, yet, each had its own individual aura. An ice blue one emanated chill, while another black colored one was full of ominousness. A bright, shining white one emanated softness, as if it was healing its surroundings. The dark and the light roots were almost merged, coiling together. And in such a naturally balanced way that neither allowed another to become dominant! The other two were quite difficult to find out too, entangled in a mess. But one of them was pure green full of vitality, and another a red color, almost burning its surroundings with heat!

All of them were of similar length, coiling together. And interestingly, all the meridian's coiled down together as if taking these roots as their core!

"Strange...!" Marr looked around for a while and then muttered. "The blood drop is not here. It should be somewhere here, but that space hasn't opened up yet. Only these roots…are growing."

"Don't you think they kind of symbolize a specific element?" Wei Zhiruo however, intrigued in the study of newly found roots, interrupted Marr. "Look—that red is clearly burning fire, and the green is lush greenery, wood, and then the white must be light and, clearly the black one is darkness, right?"

"Ahh—Yes, and the blue one, ice. Two from Five Basic elements and three from Five Special elements?" Marr said.

"Yes I was thinking the same. It's strange and familiar."

"Anyways...I don't know what these are but we don't have enough time to search for answers right away. Ama, I feel we might go into the Second and Final phase of Awakening back to back —the force inside me is building up again. You should get ready."

Wei Zhiruo turned away from the roots and said, "Are you sure? Okay, I know. Don't worry about hurting me and extend your roots as far as you can. You can alter everything here —but don't touch this space on your own. I have a feeling that there is a hidden mystery to this place and it's very important. Try to not change anything about here, if you can."

"Heard you. I will take care of that. You are heading to the shore next? Amaranthus, be careful not to be spotted."

"I will. Don't overexert yourself, okay?"

"Umm…"

Wei Zhiruo took a last glance at the magnificent roots and then prepared to get out of her meditation.

For one, she needed to reach the shore quickly enough before Marr was completely finished with the first phase. "I will be quick —wait till I find ourselves a good hiding place."

But before heading to her destination, she stopped and thought for some while and then went back to draw a [Preserve] Rune over the opening of the space using her Spiritual Senses as medium, and then sighed and woke up.