“This isn’t a dream.” Yung regained the memories of his past life as Jung, six inches away from being skewered by a voidfiend. He was talking about the influx of memories and not that he was about to be devoured.

But both facts were worrying. So Yung continued to do what he did as a soul orb a lifetime ago.

Om in, Om out. Assess the situation instead of panicking!

Yung hummed his mantra.

He had come here to do some regular grave cleaning this morning. The incense at his grandfather’s grave had to be changed, and he needed to check if the tombstones for his mother and father required the yearly repairs. Then he had to investigate the shrine to see if the runaway land god had returned. It was all laid down on his to-do list.

Head back to the clan. Get the inventory from the engraving hall and head to the market square. Take up my shift at the jade slip store. Carve some transmission and capturing tokens, then spend the rest of the day cultivating. 

Yup.

Being eaten was not part of his itinerary.

But then, a dozen wretched hornbeasts: voidfiends from the nearby forest, attacked as if to raise complaints against his schedule.

How did they get into the clan orchard? The branch family graveyard was located near the mid-north of the clan’s large mulberry plantation. It should have been protected by clan warriors because of its economic importance… past economic importance.

Okay, funding issues. Changes in clan business policy.

Not a weird reason to die by any stretch. Not an immediate concern either.

Badump! Badump!

Yung’s heart kept beating like war drums. Erratic, rhythmless.

The wretched hornbeasts were grotesque, rabbit-like creatures with long, jug-like ears and pointy, whisker-tipped snouts. Their decaying fur was mottled black and grey, and their eyes glowed with an eerie putrid pink light. Rusty bone swords protruded from their forehead, knees, and ankles, giving them an even more menacing appearance. They emitted a foul odour of spoilt flesh, with a hint of sulphur in the air. Their tails were exposed, curled in ribbons, and their black claws dragged along the ground. All over their body, they had sickly purple and green streaks, crisscrossing like evil circuits feeding violence into their veins.

The hornbeasts jumped up and slammed against the barrier. One of them bounced off and skewered its ally, but neither minded and got ready for another salvo.

Right, the barrier.

The Yung from ten minutes ago was a typical lingqi cultivator. Class: Teenager, Age: 15. Garbage talents, still at the 1st stage of the qi refining minor realm after five years. A barrier of light was not a spiritual art he could either cast or sustain.

But it appeared the moment the first voidfiend leapt at him, after which a weird chirping voice asked him to make a ‘Soul Contract.’

He agreed; the light shield popped up, and he got Jung’s memories back.

“By Gaia!” Yung tripped backwards, hitting his head on the torso-length shrine as he fell. A voidfiend had cracked through a lower bend of the barrier. But before it could wiggle its grimy way in, the barrier regenerated, and the rabbit was booted out of the safe space. The three-thousand heartbeats he missed in that one second he will never get back.

“Kyu!”

Yung found the owner of the chirp. A brown foxmoth, the size of a human palm. It had mossy-green patches along its body, large compound eyes, and fuzzy fur. On its back were moth wings and two long antennae on its forehead, and it hugged the underside of the shrine with its six stumpy paws, trembling with fear. Its soft chirps and quaking were like a musical whisper of a scared kitten, barely audible over the sound of the wretched hornbeasts slamming against the barrier.

“Lord Yaoguai!” Yung exclaimed. The land god had returned after five years. It looked just like the posters. He’d have to report back to the clan.

Before that, though, “Save me!” Another wretched hornbeast broke through the barrier and barely missed Yung before being expelled again.

“Kiiii Kyuu!”

Crack! Crack!

They did not have much time. The palm-sized foxmoth yaoguai pointed at Yung with a fuzzy paw and made circles. Yung did not understand yaoguai sign language.

“Kyuuuuu!”

Yung suddenly understood this yaoguai’s sign language.

He realised that the deluge of Jung’s memories muddled him so much, he missed the crucial fact that his cultivation base had utterly transformed.

Even though Yung was barely a qi refining 1st stage cultivator, he should not have been so clumsy. But the measly store of lingqi in his temple palace dantian was gone. In fact, he couldn’t feel his upper dantian at all.

The moment he made the soul contract with Lord Yaoguai, the heart palace dantian, in other words, his middle dantian was activated, filled with another strange kind of qi.

Xinqi.

Or ‘Heart Qi.’

Yung had no time to ponder the whys any longer.

He ignored the fiends and sat cross-legged beside the shrine, circulating the xinqi according to Lord Yaoguai’s instructions. He kept humming a tune, but of a different song. One that helped him find stillness in motion.

Yung sailed and sang with the whales.

“Ki, Kii.”

Or the foxes.

“Kyu!”

The barrier glowed brighter, and all the cracks mended. The xinqi flowed through the safe space, making it impenetrable once more.

“Goodness.” Yung released a sigh of relief. His job was to guide the xinqi into the barrier, but the original source of this esoteric qi was Lord Yaoguai himself. And looking at his newly contracted partner, the poor critter was on the verge of depletion.

“Weird.” There were threads of gold coming out of Lord Yaoguai’s temple. Yung looked around. There were threads of gold everywhere, connecting everything to everything: the heavens, the earth, the mortal objects.

It reminded him of Moira.

Moira!?

“I transmigrated,” Yung muttered aloud. “I… Holy hells. It worked. I’m moving!” He brought his trembling hands up. He could move his hands. He could feel the cold air and the soft grass under his buttocks.

He could see!

He could hear the rhythm of his heart go up and down like a roller coaster.

He could hear himself hum! Not to feel the vibrations, but to listen to the sounds. To the songs!

Yung’s vision grew blurry, and pearls of tears rained uncontrollably on his trembling palms. He would die if he and Lord Yaoguai could not figure a way out soon, but the slight moment of safety had given Yung’s repressed feelings all the ammunition they needed to burst out.

Clank, clank, clank!

The voidfiends battered the light shield.

The foxmoth yaoguai had settled onto Yung’s shoulder, looking at him and the fiends with worry.

“Kii?”

“Thank you.” Yung appreciated the yaoguai’s concern. “These aren’t tears of fear. You can rest in my dantian.”

Yung did not know how shen cultivation, the cultivation of xinqi, worked. But he instinctively realised that if the yaoguai entered his heart palace dantian, they could sustain the barrier longer.

Lord Yaoguai gave him a once over again, and with another kii, he complied.

—Just as a shadow broke through the orchard canopy.

“It vanished?” Yung heard an annoyed voice.

The hazy, all-encompassing threads outside the barrier parted, and through tearful eyes, Yung saw a golden maiden touch the glimmering shield of light.

“Moira?”

No. 

Flowing blond hair braided at the very tips into curls, not threads. A fair, human face. Fox ears and a tail. A racy two-piece outfit ridiculous for everyday use, but ridiculous unlike Moira’s oversized witch hat and wizard robes.

And all that gold decorating her like a trophy.

“Who ever is Moi La?” The maiden said.

Yung rued his unmindfulness. The last time he had such fleeting attention was back when he was a… teenager, ugh. To his defence, he’d never been attacked by zombie rabbits before.

The maiden was not alone. More shadows entered the graveyard clearing, sporting features of fox yao.

“We are Su Nanya.” She continued, examining Yung with glowing eyes. Her vertical pupils reflected a young man with a crumpled face welling up in tears.

She sighed, and Yung noticed many neon golden threads materialise, connecting him to all the newly arrived cultivators. No doubt they were.

“Lower the barrier. We mean you no harm.” Su Nanya said. Commanded. Yung touched the thread connecting him to her.

Curiosity.

Confusion.

Pity? 

Like jolts of electricity, foreign emotions entered Yung’s psyche. A clump of xinqi disappeared from his middle dantian with every feeling felt.

Su Nanya’s feelings.

“I hope you like the gift,” Moira had said. “It might take a while for you to remember, but please trust me! You’ll guide yourself to yourself.”

This was Moira’s gift. And Yung realised his trust in Moira wasn’t betrayed.

Yung sent a thought to Lord Yaoguai, but the land god refused to comply. He also complained to Yung that his dantian was cosy, but the fox lady was not. Yung tried touching the golden thread connecting him to Lord Yaoguai and sensed the intense feelings of dislike radiating from the little critter. At me? No, at Su Nanya.

But why? There was a thread connecting the yaoguai to the fox maiden. Yung touched it too. Nothing. He could not read the emotions.

One tall fox clan cultivator swiped the air with her fan, and blades of azure crescents flew out in beautiful arcs. Twelve blades for twelve fiends, and the fight was over. The zombie rabbits now lay decapitated and very much dead.

Thump!

Yung’s heart crashed like asteroids breaking the stratosphere. It was loud, painfully so. The calcified Jung could handle death with barely a reaction. But Yung’s feelings were flooding. Was it the impact of Jung’s vast memories? The near encounter with death? Su Nanya’s domineering presence? Or all three.

Barely ten seconds had passed, but Yung was so distracted that he had forgotten entirely about the fiend situation until the fox cultivator sent them down.

He wished he could convince his heart it need not worry about that anymore.

She says she means me no harm.

Yung trusted Moira's gift. He overpowered Lord Yaoguai's complaint, not only because he was convinced that these fox clan cultivators could break this flimsy sheet of qi in half a second, that it was futile to resist, but also because he sensed no malice in the thread connecting him to Su Nanya.

He hoped his trust would be rewarded.

“Well done.” The fox girl smiled. It was the second most beautiful smile he had seen after Moira’s. Yung realised it might be the halo effect that made him trust beautiful women. Not rational judgement.

“What a curious boy. A barrier such as that should be beyond your… We are shocked. Such pure xinqi!”

Su Nanya walked closer.

It took all of Yung’s neurons to stay mindful of the situation, or those swaying hips and fluffy blond tail would, without doubt, enthral him. But what could he do? He could feel the rush of adrenaline waning. His muscles ached, Su Nanya was probably not legal, and a portion of his willpower was spent placating a panicked yaoguai with each step the fox took.

“You appear a madlander. No, a half?” Su Nanya said. Yung was too tired to stand up. She held a finger, “Something we lost is within these forests. And we sensed its aura vanish right as we saw the sight of you, a newly awakened shen cultivator. Such a curious happening, is it not?”

Moira’s gift is wrong. This vixen wanted something, and Yung was powerless to resist the finger inching closer to his temple. Was it Lord Yaoguai? Is that why he was so panicked? Darn, he should have trusted his new partner more than his hormonal, teenage gut instincts.

Poke—a soft graze.

A large portion of lord Yaoguai’s xinqi processed into zhenqi in the blink of an eye, and Yung felt his newly acquired shen cultivation base rise like a rocket.

Moira’s gift is right! Su Nanya was god-sent and meant him no harm. She raised his cultivation by just touching him. Hurray hormones!

The god-sent maiden snapped her finger away like a spooked kitten and scuttled back with a suppressed moan all the way to the other end of the clearing. The other fox clan cultivators got into formation behind her before her feet landed. Three more fox yao clad in shadows appeared out of thin air around Yung and placed their swords in a boxed triangle at his neck, mere fractions away from severing it.

“Stay your blades!” Su Nanya shouted, and Yung was amazed to find his head still attached.

“We are well. That boy is ours to question.” So she says, but the fox maiden’s visage blushed a deep red. Something had gone wrong with that touch. Su Nanya found something other than what she was searching for, and it confused her greatly by the looks of it.

Noted, maybe Moira’s gift is more nuanced than being only right or only wrong. Yung could barely keep up with the turns of events. He wanted to sleep. I need to figure out how these ‘emotion threads’ work. I need some time to… to process all this.

Yung heard a ruckus rapidly approaching the clearing from the north. Another large group of cultivators broke past the foliage, spears and swords at the ready. They were dressed in black robes with golden motifs, all bloody as though they had fought through a horde of fiends.

Perhaps they did.

They were cultivators from Yung’s maternal family: The reigning power of Dim gold city, the Youjin clan.