A gaunt face suddenly appeared eliciting a scream from him.
“Xiao Ye,1Xiao (小) means ‘little’ and is an endearment used towards someone close, typically younger.are you hurt? Did they get you this time?”
The voice sounded restrained, almost as though it was resigned to whatever answer he was expected to give.
Struck dumb, Huo Ye could only nod, clueless to whatever was going on. A soft sigh escaped before she regained her composure. A scrawny hand reached out, stroking his coarse hair.
“You know you shouldn’t make me worry this much. You probably provoked them this time too.”
With a pointed stare, it seemed as though she was looking right into his soul. The bewildered Huo Ye once again nodded.
Pushing away from the bed, the girl, who was much too thin, walked with little grace to retrieve a bowl from a table which had been pushed into a corner. The table wasn’t in a better condition than any item in the house.
Huo Ye sat up, sneaking glances at the patched up roof and the worn out curtains. He gulped as a ladle was suddenly thrust into his mouth. He had sunk low at many points of his life, but never had he had to eat something so revolting.
Seeing him choke on the very first bite, the girl leaned over and casually thumped on his back as though she was very experienced with such matters. The threatening ladle loomed in front of him the second he had caught his breath. Every muscle on his face tightened to form a look of apprehension. The gruel wobbled atop its perch before being retracted.
Pushing him gently down onto the bed, Ling Su stood up and grabbed an empty bucket from the table.
“I’ll go fetch water for a bath.”
She retreated and exited the humble abode.
Rivulets of sweat trekked down his face as Huo Ye tentatively sat back up.
What he had taken to be his imagination was now interacting with him so confidently. The feeling he had was vastly different from what he had felt before. He had full control of his body and any traces of ‘Ling Ye’ had been erased.
He tried hard to recall the memories from before but could barely grasp anything. This girl must be ‘his’ sister, Ling Su. Like a dam being broken, he suddenly remembered Ling Su in full detail. All other characters were grainy, almost as though they had been censored. It must be that ‘his’ memories would have to be triggered.
Seeing images in his head was quite a novel feeling for Huo Ye who had never had such an experience. He lay quietly on the bed as he tried his best to interpret the memories. The sense of calm he was experiencing made it easy for him to understand the life of Ling Ye, a thirteen year old boy he would describe as nothing but a brat.
He forced himself to stop rationalising whatever was going on as he felt the best response now was to scream. He wanted to be mad. He wanted to be sad. He wanted to feel just anything instead of this sense of normalcy.
Minutes went by and Huo Ye felt his vision go blurry. It took him a second to realise that he wasn’t breathing. Ironically, he was having a panic attack because he wasn’t panicking. He lifted up his arms with a bit of effort and tugged his shirt over his head. Surrounded by the darkness was when he felt the most comfort. Breathing in through his nose and out the mouth was a bit effective in calming him down. The nauseating feeling was forced down and his skin no longer felt too tight for his body. Huo Ye then poked his head out, feeling he could cope now.
Remembering the runes Ling Ye had carved into his skin, he quickly moved to examine his body. Mysteriously, the scars from the ritual seemed to have faded. The only sign of it ever having taken place was the dried blood crusting his skin. The paralysing pain he’d felt slowly faded away.
He stretched out his limbs one at a time to test out his mobility. Apart from a bit of soreness, everything seemed fine.
He refused to let panic consume him as he clambered out of bed to investigate his current predicament. However, his confidence was shattered in the next moment as he landed facedown on the floor.
Being unable to move would severely hamper him. He needed to find something, anything, before Ling Su returned.
Swallowing his anxiety, Huo Ye inched on the floor on his belly, squirming as he thought of what the grime coating the floor was made of.
The only other piece of furniture in the room apart from the single bed and the table was a three-legged cabinet, propped up by a stone.
The cabinet had four drawers. In the first, he found a just-as-bad-as-the-one-on-the-bed blanket, a change of clothes which was so ambiguous he could not tell to whom it belonged.
He looked down at the skinny youth he currently possessed. He was even thinner than his sister who had the advantage of her feminine curves. He didn’t look to be much taller, barely above 160cm.2About 5’3” Huo Ye puffed in frustration.
This Ling Ye had better be handsome to make up for all his shortcomings. Fate can’t be too cruel to a person to make him both deranged and ugly.
Finding nothing of significance, Huo Ye shut the drawer pulling open the next. A single sheet of paper was all to be found.
He tried hard to feign disinterest as he nonchalantly flipped the folded paper open. He struggled to read the hastily scrawled script. A couple of the characters could not be recognised by him, although he got the gist of it.
The document was succinct, centred on people born without meridians. In all his years of reading novels and maybe watching whatever the most popular cultivation animation was at the time, he had never heard someone who was born with no meridians. Anyone who had a problem with their meridians only needed a chance encounter with the protagonist to be restored to prime condition. It was always that the person had suffered a qi deviation3A change in the direction of flow of qi in the meridians to a path which is not ideal for cultivation. It may leave cultivators crippled and is sometimes fatal. This may happen when one is attempting to breakthrough or too much qi is taken into the body or mentally disturbed. or that their bloodline was too special thus causing their meridians to go wonky. How was it possible to have no meridians at all?
Ling Ye should have been poisoned at birth, right? That’s always how it goes. He can’t just have something wrong with him for no reason.
He could not figure anything out by himself and so went on to the next drawer. A comb, a bronze plate as a mirror and what he assumed to be a tub of lard rested at the bottom, making him wonder why ‘his’ sister looked a bit unkempt.
He could not help but smile as he grabbed the mirror. He hadn’t yet had a third-person view of Ling Ye and so was brimming with curiosity.
The mirror was encrusted with who-knows-what. Using his sleeve, he rubbed the mirror fiercer than he would rub a magic lamp. He only succeeded in smudging it even further.
Determined to win against the inanimate object, he spat a few times on the mirror, polishing until a significant portion had been cleaned. He stared aghast at the reflection looking back at him with distorted shock.
