When she woke up, it was way past midnight, somewhere in between three or two in the morning.
By the time the tides of pleasure brought by her short sleep waned, Wei Zhiruo felt she had sobered up a little. The sleep had washed away the remaining of her restlessness. Now, sobriety dawned over her in waves like an epiphany. It stole away the shivers, the pleasures and in its place left a cold, hard touch of reality. Thoughts filled her: her own, others, permeable thoughts echoed each other, resounded and ricocheted.
Sobering up, Wei Zhiruo hid her tiny figure further inside the canoe, stiffening her body into an inconspicuous blob as she collected the events of the day, finally ready to analyze her current circumstances.
She woke up. Was cared for by a maid in her courtyard. Those shards of broken jar had vanished by the time she was dressed and dolled up for any proper company and left to her own devices for the rest of the day.
She recalled the face of that maid, and the only exchange that they had had in the day –
"Ninth miss, you must stay in your room, okay? Please don't go out on your own, it won't be good if Second Mistress finds out about it. It is the eldest master's crowning ceremony and many families from around the county have come to pay a visit. Everyone's been quite busy, you see. It is crowded and you usually don't like these kinds of occasions, do you? You're such a quiet child, may god bless you for that. You never give Tou'er any worries. Be obedient, miss, our second Missus said she will ask you out when it's time for dinner. Then you can gift the young master with those embroidered kerchief you have made for so long! I must say, how happy he would be with you after that! It's your Eldest brother's most important moment in life! You wouldn't want to ruin it, right? Is miss happy? If not, I could go ask mistress for permission…"
A strange kind of schadenfreude had dripped from the maids seemingly well-intentioned words. Her eyes had almost narrowed down into a slit, especially showcasing her amiable cheerfulness, though. But a pretense was pretense. How dare it feel real?
'Snitch,' Wei Zhiruo had summed up the role of that woman in an instant.
She was this family's ninth miss and today she was ignored, remained confined in her chambers on the occasion of the coming-of-age ceremony of the house's heir. It was a lot of information to take in at once.
'Unfavored or orphan? Perhaps, an illegitimate child?' Wei Zhiruo had thought of many reasons for such disguised ostracization at that moment and even asked tentatively–
"Will others be there? My sister…"
"Eldest miss? She? Yes…of course she has to go. No other way about it. A while ago the royal edict came– all of us were so afraid, you mightn't have an idea how much?! Aunt Jiang was so close to fainting – for a long time she refused to get back to the kitchen at her post, but I think she was pretending for the most part. We had no inkling of what was to come, and everyone just thought about which kind of trouble the Master had put us into this time, but fortunately! Guess what? It was an edict of engagement! Your eldest sister's going to marry a prince! Miss has been promised to the second prince, who would have thought of that! Although the royal family is so far away in the capital, far away from Jinghai, I heard that he had heard of our eldest miss's reputation. They had met by chance –how lovely is that–and then the engagement was settled. The prince might come to meet our Young master and meet the family this time. A prince, must you know! Such an honor has been earned by Eldest miss for the family, how could she not be present there on such an occasion?! Of course she will be there tonight!"
"Oh well…then, will my other sisters go too? Will you go there?"
"…oh, they…"
After that, there came no reply. Her maid had just continued twisting her long hair, twice her body size into an unfamiliar coiffure, adorning it with strands of jeweled ruby pieces, its end dangling down her earlobes, touching down her small narrow neck. Few carved pieces were stuck in between the rolled buns. The rubies in some of them, intricate though, were fixed on one end of a single silver piece shaped like a long needle, which was inserted to hold the bun in place.
A small memory from the Original owner had reminded her that the 'needle' shaped ornament was called a 'hair-pin'. It served the same purpose as the decorated comb had done in her own world – which was to hold hair in place. But she could clearly tell that it was uncompromisingly huge for her own head. Not her own for sure.
After that exchange, there was just silence; no pretense of obedience was heard for a long time. With a stiffened and annoyed smile on her lips and dull light in her eyes the maid had slipped away quickly, reminding—
"Ninth miss – don't forget, alright? You cannot come out to the banquet tonight."
If only this event had happened, it wouldn't have mattered much to Wei Zhiruo.
An abandoned child, uncared for by everyone is great news for her personally. She could spend time at her leisure and find clues about her surroundings without any worry of being discovered or treated as an alien, much worse like a pariah – a straight-out coldblooded, body snatcher! Particularly, now, when what she knew was so little about this world, that every step she took was filled with a probable chance of being discovered as something not right, like an alien with no common sense or knowledge of norms.
Although her age could act as a shield for such ignorance, putting it against such an affluent family as this where children are so precocious since birth – the chances weren't slim at all! She didn't want to take her chances at being discovered by underestimating people of this world.
Finally, she couldn't be sure that her wayward emotions or streams of thought that phased like the moon, would remain unnoticed if she was under the gaze of others all day long. The Less the crowd around her, the better. Or she risked being declared insane. Being a closed off bastard was a great chance, an invisible role with little to no consequences.
What had troubled her mostly was…an unfamiliar, unkind gaze that had been chasing after her since the moment that maid had left her courtyard! From that moment forward, a pair of cold, covetous eyes had been following her. Thoughts, unfamiliar, rootless and especially malevolent — so chaotic, that if they manifested in reality, they would look like an unscrupulous, unresolvable piece of jumbled up wool yarn, smothered in mud — had started filling up her room. This was deeply concerning, especially for her, who was so easily influenced by thoughts of any kind. Even a stone could raise a storm in her mind, if she chanced upon such a 'thoughtful' stone, not to mention that such malevolent thought had no root or meaning!
It was all chaos, with no good thing in them for her to accept. If she let those thoughts enter inside her mind and influence her own thoughts, she would be plagued with chaotic, no-end-in-sight problematic thoughts all day long and that too with no solution to eradicate them.
It was pure suffering and she just wanted to root it out from existence before it became a more serious problem for her. And, she wasn't just blindly chasing behind it. Wei Zhiruo had experienced a similar negative existence in her own world – these 'negative thoughts' as she liked to call them, were a major source of trouble in her past life. She had learned by trial and error that simply erasing them the first time she encountered one of these was the safest method.
There was no redeeming quality in such an existence. To her, it was even worse than a piece of stone. At least, a stone's 'thought' could give her an insight into what it felt, and what it thought of the surrounding world. Sometimes, some of these could even turn into peculiarly great insights. But all a negative thought could do was malform other thoughts with chaos and infect them with similar chaos. In no time, all her thoughts will end up having no 'meaning' or 'sense' to them.
Even setting aside her own personal preferences, she abhorred these 'negative thoughts' also because most of the time they originated in the human heart and with their chaotic nature knew no way of fitting with the rest of the natural order. In the ancient past, they'd even caused a serious plague in the Middle World, causing endless nightmares in their surroundings, killing millions and injuring more!
All day, today, she had just kept looking for its source, yet the strange thing was that it seemed to be especially alert of her combing spiritual consciousness. This situation of standing in the light, while her predator was looking up from somewhere, crouching in the shadows out of sight, was really unsettling – more than being uninvited to a special family gathering or banquet.
The last time she felt its traces was around this very area. Since it disappeared somewhere in here, she had just started exploring and then found this abandoned place and this pond.
Wei Zhiruo breathed in the fresh cold air, her back straightening a little, losing their tension. A strand of her hair flew up in her inattention, blowing up with the wind. She didn't know when the hairpins and other adornments on her had come off by themselves, but now her hair flowed down like silken threads. That stray strand of hair flew and then suddenly touched the surface of the black water, creating a few ripples in it. She chased it blankly then looked up.
She unabashedly stared at the sky filled with countless stars, flickering, dancing merrily. She eased her mind, letting her Spiritual Senses travel as it pleased.
Waves after waves emerged from the depth of her soul. It rolled in small ripples, encompassing all that came in its way, like a misty cloud swallowing down hilltops and trees, herds of sheep and cattle asleep, inconspicuous housetops and rolling meadows and valleys. It submerged everything, intangible and tangible in its midst and rolled. Mightier and mightier waves emerged and followed. In a space, impervious to all, her spiritual consciousness was combing through the town once again.
From the small inconspicuous corner of that manor, it trebled past its majestic walls and shadows, past its grooves, orchards and bamboo yards rustling in the mellow wind and past the small stream that ran along its boundary walls, creating invisible ripples and waves in its cold, dark water.
It flowed like churning waves, rustling past Jinghai city fort, even past the mirror-like water filled fields of suburb, past all the way towards the cracks and crevices, snowy tops of the snow-covered Mysterious mountains!
Her Spiritual Consciousness rose up like smoke and fume, and dark rolling tides of oceans– it brimmed over and bubbled, frothed and shattered its own loosening edges, finally merging into the wind. Once again –she was snatched back by an aching soul at the most exhilarating moment.
"Over-exerted, have I?" She questioned an unknown bystander. "But where are you hiding –? How can you be so traceless? Not in this plane, are you?" To her, not finding its traces anywhere in the real world was tantamount to that thing having hidden itself away in another dimension or a place that was shielded from any prying Spiritual Consciousness.
Spiritual Senses themselves were actually just a force-field, coming directly out of the soul. When this force spanned out over an area, emerging from the soul, it could directly paint where other souls and objects coming under its path were situated at. It was just the simplest of the things it could do. It was this combing that allowed her to paint a clear picture of the world around her, filling in the blank gaps of her oversight, and helping her get the idea of what was happening all around her. If she concentrated hard, she could even spy a few words and conversations using it. Hence, how she came to know the name of this place – Jinghai.
This searching method was the most cost-effective investigation technique. All one needed was a strong enough soul to carry it out in detail —there was no doubt in her soul being strong enough to attempt that —and a proper method. As a Rune-maker by profession, her job didn't require a high-level affinity with surrounding elements, like those of Mages did, but it was heavily dependent on high comprehension ability and in turn, a very stable soul state and its flexibility. There might be some conspicuous wounds over her soul right now, but there was no doubt in her soul being able to carry out such basic functions like soul investigation.
Wei Zhiruo kept searching for some while, but still had no clue about where that sight had disappeared so cleanly. But no, not everything was futile. When she was close to giving up entirely and going back to her chambers, she finally found some strange traces.
There was a strange stone with Runes etched over it, embedded into the floor of one of the abandoned courtyards inner chambers. Although, she couldn't tell whether it was related to that thing that she was chasing, but any peculiarity was a step forward. Thinking like that, she tugged back her Spiritual Senses from elsewhere and concentrated hard over the specific area just above the pond. If she had found one, maybe she could find some other things here too?
"Good. It really is a Rune chain!" Wei Zhiruo exclaimed.
She really found some more suspicious looking stones. They felt full of a strange and brimming energy, and when she touched one of them with her Spiritual Senses, she felt her Spiritual Sense tingling and a desire to 'suck' up the power of those stones grew wildly in her mind. However, she didn't let her impulsive Spiritual Senses unconsciously absorb any piece of that energy, and instead became more alert. The situation had grown overly mysterious. Now, she didn't even have an idea about what these stones themselves were formed of!
There were some six of these stones with almost identical Runes drawn over them. These specific stones formed a very conspicuous looking hexagon; each corridor, each chamber abandoned or occupied had these carved stones embedded into its floor. It was so conspicuous that Wei Zhiruo realized that each of them was encircling this pond as its center. This puzzled her more than it answered her questions.
"What is this shape – it tells a story, for sure. There is a law in it, a strange rhythm of sounds. A magnificent piece, but all too artificial. It's hardly any different from a man-made structure, but if so, could the mortals here draw such complex structures and with so many resonating laws in them? Are there really native Rune-makers in this world too? How much more advanced are they from those of the Middle world?" Greatly puzzled by this new discovery, she looked at it some more, comparing them to her own original Rune's.
As her consciousness prodded and touched the small agate-like pieces of stones embedded into the floor, examining them from all sides and grasping their runes so intrinsically carved over yellow texture, she realized that it was actually a [gate] or an [entrance] rune, functioning as a 'opening' to another dimension. After comprehending the meaning of the Runes, the next step was easy. Soon she touched their laws and found an entrance to the Runes fully functioning structure of synthesis, found a breach and entered.
But the next development was completely out of her expectation. She didn't enter the proper space led by those stone's Runes but was instead, stopped in another space interface in the middle of the transit -!
Her spiritual consciousness was cut-off by a strange force, and then she was surrounded in a strange field of energy! The sky was no longer the starry sky, the water was no longer that of a small pond – no, it was much more unfathomable, more ancient and majestic.
She found herself stranded in an ocean, sitting on a small canoe. The sky was full of swirling majestic Runes and clouds of vibrant hues looking chaotically similar to the cloud swirl of a nebula she had chanced upon in space. Equally vibrant and bursting with energy. The vortices of it looked so powerful, that her mortal body couldn't help perceive its unfathomable power without shirking in quakes of passionate fear. It took great discipline and control from her side, to not just jump out of her skin!
An ancient song seemed to appear out of thin air. Wei Zhiruo hurriedly looked up. The moon was nowhere, the sky a purple firmament. Next, she bent down to look at the water. Her figure was now completely leaning against the canoe's edges, dangerously leaning forward to face her shadow in the ocean water. It was a mesmerizing ocean of floating star fragments.
These were real star fragments —milky white and burning bright — and they were floating in the ocean like pieces of broken iceberg! But they were hot – actually too hot for the water to hold them without showing any reaction! When she neared some of them, she could feel their heat emanating from far away, yet when she was at a close distance to them, or when she touched them with her hands, she felt nothing. The same happened to the boat. Whenever those fragments touched the boat, they didn't do any harm to it; almost nothing happened, as if what the boat was wading through was just a sheet of some frozen fragments of icebergs floating in a real world ocean, leaving a clean black trail behind itself as it moved across it. Wei Zhiruo leaned further down to touch the ocean water itself- but she couldn't hold it in her hands however much she tried. The water just slipped right through her hands like a cold liquid, leaving no wetness on her palms!
Wei Zhiruo was no longer rowing the canoe, but it never stopped moving forward, pushed by the ocean waves. Wei Zhiruo fell back on her bottoms, her ears keenly filling themselves up with that hollow, primeval song. The black of the water, the white of the star and the purple of the sky – no words could ever claim to capture their grace, their magnanimity, the resounding majesty of nature, and what appeared in front of her eyes!
The song though - was strange, yet familiar.
You yourself might have heard its soft edges, its trebles and falls, its gratified rise and twisted maneuverings of passion, or encapsulated its emotions and its headiness in your reason. Yet, for unknown reasons, when tracing it back to its origin or from where it frothed, you'd have found its rhythm fading away and it appearing hollow like a carved flute. Emerging from the deepest, darkest corners of soul, yet so shallow and so flimsy as if it were made of a whim, or dream woven. So intangible that it seemed worthless to ponder over them. So, most people enraptured in such a euphoric melody seldom care for reason for their being even there. For one, Wei Zhiruo hadn't. In her case, her calm originated from her nagging doubt that it was just what she had read about - a piece of newborn world singing.
"Bright." Wei Zhiruo echoed suddenly, her mind finally easing a little.
That song swelled up in her mind, replacing her thoughts and fear of the unknown; her lips urged her to burst into them. A tune so, so mellow. Something familiar yet unfamiliar. But unconsciously, she restrained. She mumbled, hummed along that thrumming throbbing pulse in her red-blood and fed it back to heaven and her loosened thoughts. Unnoticeably, some strange runes started flickering in her blue eyes, the color of which lightened a degree, becoming an icy blue.
Ah, how she remembered.
「" There is a fond tale amongst travelers of the sky – that when it is night and right time, when the wheels of fate have just attuned to rhythm of the sky, when two realms overlap – in between them they synergize, they marvel and open up a space of their own, a space so volatile, so turbulent that no one dreams of staying longer than needed. But this space is a marvelous invention of true nature, a play of rules and heaven's grace. If luck accords you a chance to travel therein, you must beware of its enchantments, it's ensnaring – but also, stop a while, settle down and glimpse. Here the marvels of nature collude in a mystery, and here it sings a melody of order, primeval order and of life itself. If you capture those – you will be born anew." 」
Ages ago, she forgot most of the struggle of her life, but not the little pleasures she stole in her father's library. It was in one of its oddest-looking books she had found that passage.
At that time, her clan hadn't been exterminated and she still hadn't traveled up into space to flee to the Middle World, or gone on any of her adventures. In fact, it was way before her Awakening into a being, much, much different from a human, from herself of the past — a true blooded member of the blood-clan.
She forgot its title, but it was tucked in her memories as fresh as the rain of the day. Because it talked of strange lands and strange events – it was no more than a book of fantasy to her. But no, look! Here she was in that fantastical notion of her childhood! That five-year-old girl would have been so pleased after finding that, unknown to her, in some lands there did exist an enchanting reality, matching those fantastical tales she had read about.
Yes, a fleeting dream, or fantasies should be transient. Washed off by the next wave of the ocean called reality. But it just doesn't sound pleasant enough. And for her, whose fate had never ebbed to set or froth at its edges – reality was always the bitterest bite to her - fantasies of strange worlds had always been a constant numbing medicine. It lulled her aching heart to sleep. When fate left her to grapple with the deepest, darkest secrets all at once, she could always cut herself away by remembering one of these 'strange tales'.
Her...blood-seed had always had its own thoughts about things, and he liked to read things and people around her. With his help she too had found several 'enchanting' books and scrolls.
Especially since she shed her human layers, it was more overwhelming than ever as her abilities surfaced and took over her life like a storm and there was no moment to breathe in peace and quiet. And in those moments of reorienting herself to her new identity, there too, books had helped her a lot. In the middle of a strange world full of 'thoughts' she was acquainted with even stranger creations in the book.
What was the bird feeling today, and what did the westerly wind convey? Did the blade of grass like the warm sunlight, or the cloud humming a strange rhythm sounded full of life, or particularly sated today? She was full of their wandering 'thoughts'. What was left of her own musing was how to chase a decent 'stream of thought' and stick to it, to appear normal in front of others. It was hard enough to hide all her abnormalities from others' peering eyes, on top of that she also had to hide the existence of her blood-seed. In those chaotic days of struggling to stay afloat, some tales were her spiritual sustenance. Having them affirmed felt strangely fulfilling - as if she had succeeded in entering her own kind of world.
She wasn't portraying her abilities as 'evil' or a source of all her pain. No, they weren't that at all! She had learned many, many things from them which she could never in any book of the world. All she had always been lacking was just restraint…or a way to reign them in to quieten them down.
With so much surveillance and constant disregard of her own opinions, all her childhood she was never given a chance to study restraint, or find if such restraining techniques even existed. Later, the clansmen all died– her sole purpose thereon became revenge. For it she fled her birth world, found refuge in a foreign world and spent all her time studying, fighting, and struggling to survive under completely foreign rules. Learning restraint? How could she spare time for that?
"But it all ended with death." She knew she wasn't eternal and she knew that for a fact. Although her bloodline allowed her to enjoy the same long life span as some stars –but it did nothing to make her undefeatable in front of others. If others killed her, she would just die. But before her actual death, it still felt so far away from her.
She had seen death, played with it, felt its fangs and nurtured many bitter wounds. So many days she had woken up to attempts at assassination rather than to a birdsong, or a mother's sweet chidings that she had lost count of such encounters.
When she returned to Cuiping World – she came back with a realization that she could die at any moment. She had spent hours and hours deliberating each of her actions, fearing that even one of her missteps would lead to the most humiliating ending. Many hours she had spent arranging little games of revenge between her maternal clansmen and others. She played well – in that game of power, of control, but she also lost too many times. Each time was more humiliating than the other, each loss more dangerous than the previous one had been.
Not being a human was no longer a statement of pride, but rather a chain for others to control her, a constant reminder of her 'fallings' that she had been turned into a pariah, the other to their altruistic selves! The 'key' to the world's fate must live —but on what terms? That was completely under the control of the winner. And her clan had died defeated. There was no one left she could turn to for refuge! The burden of revenge was solely her own inheritance!
Apart from killing her – all of them could do anything to a 'war criminal' like her – whatever they wanted. Sacrificing her pleasures was called a duty. She was sanctified, going against her was sacrilegious in front of the crowd – yet, only she knew she was there to bear that assigned role of an all-forgiving, dignified 'fake saint', who had no power but to swallow all pains and harm they caused to her. A symbol of their influence and a trophy of their victory. Just because she wasn't a human, she wasn't one of them, she didn't even deserve basic dignity.
She played their games. She played till they in turn became the pawns in her hand. She wasn't petty and returned what was due at the right time and in the right amount. What should come to them was only a matter of time. But in all this, she had never imagined her own death.
In a world where her wishes were perfectly realized, she would have been wandering in space, like many of her ancestors had, with no abode, no destination in sight – eternal as time. But she was chained and drowned, and drowned so well that all her plans couldn't catch up with those people's sinister cold hearts!
She had forgotten how close it was – that fang named death, how closely it had always placed its forefingers over her jugular veins. She had died so inconspicuously that it was funny and ironic.
"Ha -"
Nothing should have mattered anymore, now that she was dead. The moment she ceased to be something she was, she lost the remaining reason to pursue the past. Some of the threads of her past had been severed, cruelly cut off by an invisible hand, and she now lay gasping for breath like a drowning man, with not a shred of will remaining. The storm she had seen coming had come and gone long ago, but her battered self, it had no respite. She wanted to ask someone, was this the end? Was this the honor she was promised? How could she dare take a deep breath of relief when she didn't get any closure? What about her dreams? What about that 'hope' that had defined the majority of her past life – what about the grand 'future' her clansmen had painted about her saving the world from decline and reinvigorating its magic? Why couldn't her blood-seed save her or himself at the last moment?
Why wasn't it still with her? Leaving her behind to fend for herself?
"Look, father. This is the result of your painstaking dreams - how pitiful! Your hope, your people's dream of reinvigorating a dying world ended just like that...some people were too greedy to let me live. Too greedy to let your people live. My blood and everyone's hope, like dust, has settled in some past land. It's so strange…"
The song continued.
She could try. Try to forget the agony, the powerlessness of watching her clansmen die one after another, butchered in cold-blood. She could try. Try to sleep off the past tiredness. Try to forget, a life spent on a knife's edge, with lingering fear of being pushed down the cliff at any moment by her own sheer ignorance.
Forget that piece of earth washed red, with her soles drenched in innocent blood as she screamed and begged an unknown god for help. Forget the shame, forget the pain and innocuous laughter of her enemies – those burning fortresses and those wailing of her infant cousins, the wailing of that infant's mother and the lamenting silence of that aftermath – her demon, her nightmare.
Shouldn't it be high time to let it all rest? Her past life.
'Should I forget?' A tiredness flickered on her face, muted in anger. She closed her eyes as her heart opened to that ancient rhythm, burning it in her soul, in her human blood. "Why? Why must I forget that shame? Although my revenge is already finished and made into a thing of the past– but does that wash away the pain left in the aftermath?" What a joke! Should she suddenly stop being herself if she had died once? For each day of her life, she will remember those faces - and curse and pray for each of those departed souls of her friends and enemies! She had a right to that.
She might no longer be the Crown princess of her dynasty, the last of her lineage, but she will always remain burdened under a weight of past memories. Here, she was Wei Zhiruo. But she was a Wei Zhiruo who hadn't forgotten her past life! This life could only carry that extra burden of a past life's memories and hatred.
She didn't know why she came to this world. But she did know that every fate has its bearer. If fate has brought her here, then she must be needed here. Or had intercepted someone's fate who was needed here. A fate, like a spider, was weaving invisibly and she was already affixed in its web.
Although a rotten stench surrounded the air as if telling her, she had stolen someone else's fate, that this life was not a life of her own keeping; someone's fate was left unfulfilled to awaken her own. She wasn't Wei Zhiruo who should have lived. But it was Wei Zhiruo who survived! If there was any stealing, it was a matter of chance. Her intentions were never included in any event – as far as she was concerned, that made her innocent of charges of body theft!
She had no qualms in occupying a body that was not done with her own initiative. And who could surely tell that she wasn't Wei Zhiruo born in this soil, just that her soul was from a foreign land? At least, none of these humans she lived amongst could do that, just by looking at her face. Maybe after spending some time in her company, a seed of doubt may grow in their hearts, but no one in their right mind would ever come up with such a scenario of an 'alien' soul replacing the original owner's soul, as the first reason for her strange behavior!
Some doubts still came trickling down. She had seen the workings of her own mind in this strange situation– a strange set of Runes had sealed some of her own memories. She was sure, only she could have done that, written that piece of rune flickering so brightly over her soul. So here was the question? If she had just occupied this body, only this morning - then what could explain those Runes over this body? Why would she do such a thing, and erase all memories related to it…it couldn't be because of guilt, right?
Wei Zhiruo smote the tingling doubts in her mind. No! She wasn't so unprincipled to shamelessly overtake someone else's body. She should have some faith in herself.
The song came upon a turn.
It swelled like in the breast of a swallow, awakened at dawns-break. It was ready to prance, to emerge and spring forth the most luscious of bushes and amongst the greenest of boughs.
Suddenly the canoe jerked to a stop, awakening Wei Zhiruo from her stupor. Her eyes turned round in surprise.
All around her, wherever her eyes could reach, she saw an expanse of surface covered in more and more fragments of shining crystal-like stars or was it ice now, she wondered. She started sealing all these images in her mind and burning them into its deepest recesses. These were all virgin rules, and Runes... so primitive and violently chaotic that there was nothing on par with them; she might need the rest of her human lifespan to just comprehend even a couple of these successfully! If she lost this chance to capture their essence, she will not get another chance like this again!
She was swift in her actions. She opened up all the apertures of her soul and mind together, and then unsealed the highest level of sense perception that a human could allow in her own apparatus. With her roaming Spiritual Senses, she first mapped out her surroundings, then sealed the birds-eye view of the star fragments into a corner of her memories to ponder later. She repeatedly sealed, and sealed and collected without feeling any tiredness. In fact, a strange feeling of fulfillment brimmed in her heart replacing all the uncertainties of her new future, her loneliness in a new, and foreign world and that…faint loss of having left behind everything she had ever known.
What she didn't know was, unknown to her, her blood-seed sleeping inside her soul was also absorbing and burning all that it could find in the patterns in the sky, in the waters and the clouds independent of her consciousness. It worked like a thinking being, merging the highest rules and mysteries in itself – as if sealing a memory!
There were several of them, uncountable patterns to observe –these fragments danced, swirled and floated over the water like the clearest, brightest and most resonant pieces of stars conjoined in visible constellations. She exerted and stretched the limits of her consciousness, reaching as far as possible while taking in all that she could.
But her blood-seed was faster than her, quicker at perceiving than her and more far reaching than her.
While Wei Zhiruo had seen and captured but a small encirclement of those rules, her blood-seed was already touching the edges of the ocean, the horizons where the purple firmament and the black sea merged into one and had even extended its filament down below towards the ocean-bed! Unconsciously, Wei Zhiruo's blood-seed had escaped its restrictions and overreached human conception. It was like a hungry and thirsty beast, crawling on all fours, struggling to reinvigorate itself-! Pushing boundaries after boundaries as if it was its last struggle in face of an imminent death!
The bloodline sang along the ancient rhythm, merging and manifesting its music in itself – becoming one with that ancient behemoth. Soon it was full of rules and runes. Wei Zhiruo's blood-seed had successfully recaptured those traces of patterns and etched it in itself, preserving the spectacular phenomena; those mysteries of time and space, the rhythm of the dawn of time, the marvelous infant runes with no parallel in the world and several incomprehensible laws! Everything, while she remained ignorant of blood-seed's existence, or even the fact that it had survived!
The heavenly song erupted once more, swelling sweeter and sweeter, with a heady affect over its listener. Its rhythm got mixed up in the waves, in the lolling of the canoe adrift a behemoth ocean, and those unknown fragments emanating light. The star light from her surroundings, though, reached her strikingly, filling her body with warmth and cherishment and a fulfilling sensation. She comfortably smelled of home, of belongingness in the mellow whiteness of the star like ice fragments, contrasted brightly with black water current. If she spent the rest of her time wandering in space, would it be as blissful as this moment? So fulfilling? Would she have been free like never before, accompanied just by her blood-seed -?
"Plop!"
Another sound jolted Wei Zhiruo into wakefulness. Something else had fallen into the pond – the actual pond. She was back into reality before she could do anything, blowing in the cold wind. She didn't know how much time she had spent wandering in that space. She didn't know what had caused that splashing noise, but couldn't help feeling frustrated at being disturbed at such a pivotal moment.
The song had died down abruptly, with no sign of awakening again. Wei Zhiruo couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. Her connection to the mellow power of those stars though– was still there!
"What…" She felt a strange connection between herself on the earth, and the stars above in the sky. As if she was drawing their light into her body, melting them into herself!
Her connection with the outside heaven, with the stars...
She jerked back to attention. 'Yes,' clear headed now, Wei Zhiruo stiffly closed her eyes, as if the mountain had descended over her shoulders, pushing her downwards.
'My affinity with the stars…is still there. The bloodline!'