This body did not want her.
Zijiang Zhenyu knew it the moment she opened her eyes that morning.
The first breath she took felt like shards of ice piercing her lungs.
The Lianyu Pavilion was cold and hollow; even the sunlight seemed reluctant to touch it. Mist clung to the windows, and the scent of damp earth, uncleaned floors, and forgotten days seeped into every corner.
Her hand moved slowly, trying to grasp the bamboo bedpost.
But her muscles were unresponsive, her joints stiff as if bound. Her heartbeat unfamiliar and erratic throbbed like a river struggling to flow between fractured rocks.
This body was resisting her.
This body was not hers.
This body… was a battlefield.
"I know this was your body," Zhenyu whispered inwardly, trying to calm her rising panic. "But I also died to get here."
A voice answered in her mind, soft and cold.
"You occupy a space that was never empty."
Helian Qingyin. The original soul. She was still here and not surrendering.
"I won't leave," Zhenyu replied, forcing herself to sit up, though her body collapsed again against the hard, cold floor.
"And I won't yield," Qingyin's voice whispered, drifting like early morning mist.
Zhenyu closed her eyes. Her breathing was unsteady, but she couldn't stop now. Not after being given this second chance even if in a nearly broken vessel.
Then, everything changed.
The air thickened. The cold seeped deep into her pores.
The dim candlelight suddenly vanished without a breeze. And from the corner of the room, on the surface of an old, black-framed mirror a crack appeared.
But the crack wasn't from the outside.
It came from within.
As Zhenyu stared into the mirror, the world around her shattered.
The pavilion vanished, the floor crumbled, and the wooden ceiling dissolved into silence.
She didn't fall but drifted into a boundless void.
No walls. No sky. No light. Only herself and the murmuring dark.
From within the haze, a figure appeared.
A girl in white, her long hair cascading over bloodied shoulders. Her face was pale as a dead moon. Her eyes… empty. Yet Zhenyu recognized that face.
Her face.
Or rather, Helian Qingyin's.
"You truly won't leave?" Qingyin asked.
"No," Zhenyu said firmly.
Qingyin's form was fragile, but the despair wrapped around her was suffocating like smoke from incense burning too slowly.
"This body cannot bear two souls. One must give in," Qingyin said.
"Then what shall we do? Fight? Erase each other? Or try something never done before?"
Qingyin paused.
Beneath them, ground began to take shape.
Veins of stone spread in a circle.
At the center rose an altar, etched with glowing red characters:
Two souls.
One body.
One must merge.
The other must surrender.
"I don't know how to merge," Qingyin whispered.
"Neither do I," Zhenyu replied. "But I won't give up my life to anyone. Not to you. Not to this world."
They both stepped toward the stone altar.
Both pressed their palms to its surface.
The cold stone pulsed.
A surge of violet light shot skyward, slicing through the darkness like a bolt of fate then everything disappeared.
---
Zhenyu jolted awake, gasping. Sweat drenched her body, strands of hair stuck to her temples. Yet her heartbeat no longer thrashed. Still heavy, but no longer chaotic.
The mirror was still there on the floor. But now its surface gleamed black and glassy, like deep water in a forgotten well. And within the reflection… two silhouettes stood side by side.
Rongxu Jing.
A name formed in her mind, written by unseen hands.
The mirror that binds two souls. A bridge between spirit and vessel.
The wooden door creaked open.
An old man stepped inside, his steps silent. He wore plain grey robes. His silver hair was tied in a neat knot. His face like aged jade was firm but not cruel.
"You've opened the first gate," he said calmly.
Zhenyu stared, still seated on the floor.
"Who are you?"
"Xun Chengyan. Healer of Xunyue Cottage. Once a servant of the heavens before men stole the throne."
"You… can see us?"
He did not answer immediately. Instead, he knelt, placed two fingers gently on her wrist, and inhaled deeply.
"I see two flames in a single ember. But neither strong enough alone."
"What does that mean?" Zhenyu asked.
"This body resists because it doesn't know you. But the old soul isn't whole either.
You are both shards of the same wound.
If you wish to survive… one must overcome their pride."
Zhenyu lowered her gaze. She understood. The healer wasn't telling her to surrender he was telling her to unite.
---
That day, Zhenyu could only sit.
A young maid, Meilan, entered with a bowl of too-thin pumpkin porridge. She didn't meet Zhenyu's eyes, only whispered,
"My Lady Helian… you look different today."
Zhenyu said nothing. But in her heart, she knew
She was different.
She was no longer Helian Qingyin. But she wasn't fully Zijiang Zhenyu either.
She was the fusion of two worlds' pain.
And this world would soon know her…
As something never born before.
---
Night fell with a sky still painted gray. But this time, the Rongxu Jing glowed softly in the dark. The two shadows within no longer stood apart.
They had begun to move closer.
Outside the Lianyu Pavilion, beneath the old plum tree,
a woman in violet robes stood silently.
"She's still alive," she murmured, crimson lips curving coldly.
"Then it's time… for the fifth poison."
---