“What a shame, that child.” Su Yafeng spoke to Nanya with a sound transmission token. The tall, diligent maid continued fanning the opulent palanquin.

It was a humid spring day, yet the heat was unlike warmth and nurture. No, this was the kind where the air grew weary of its own weight and tricked travellers into seeing objects where there were none; where the numerous butterflies and moths, trees and flowers forced the foxes to sniff the ungodly ticklish smell of pollen.

Nanya disliked such spring weather. She disliked the mulberry flowers’ glittering spores. And she disliked such proximity to the ocean. But not enough that she failed to notice the slight twang in the usually inscrutable maid’s voice.

“We concur. That is a complexion not even pingtian grade lustre-rouge can fix.” Nanya was genuinely regretful. “And the boy is such an interesting mix of audacity and vigilance. Such a shame indeed.”

“M’lady. I didn’t mean that.”

“Then his nose, mayhap? We did perceive it as slightly crooked. Nothing body cultivation and yuanqi of sufficient quality can’t fix. Though we doubt he can awaken his navel palace dantian with the yaoguai contracted. What? Speak your mind.”

“I think m’lady might find better prospects if she looks at more than appearances.”

“How rude! We shall correct maid’s misconception here and now.” It would not do for her entourage to have faulty education. “Look at that boy’s height; barely more than five and a half feet. In which land would you curse a maiden to find prospects in that.” Her last sentence was a statement, not a question.

Su Yafeng threw Nanya a sideways glance. “M’lady is about the same height as the child, if not an inch or two shorter.”

“A gentleman should be much taller.”

“That child had at least scant talent as a lingqi cultivator, looking at his temple palace dantian. For xinqi, how can he possibly cultivate enough faith in this remote city?”

It was subtle, but to Nanya, the worry on Su Yafeng’s face was as clear as her true intentions.

“How dare you change topics so abruptly. Shall we have you carry the palanquin?”

“This was my initial concern. It was m’lady who went straight to his skin colour. Going by that Youjin elder, madlander refugees aren’t so welcome in these parts. There aren’t Buddhist temples on our land bridge either.”

“Fine, have it your way. The boy shall join the Confucians to cultivate his faith and xinqi. Was there not a clan in this village? What ever was the name, we wonder.”

“City, m’lady. Dim gold is a city, and the clan is the Zheng clan. Confucians detest madlanders as unschooled barbarians. I highly doubt they will take him in.”

Nanya flicked a lock of golden hair behind her ears. This body was barely beginning to cultivate after many decades of stagnation; it would take much longer to mould the flesh’s beauty in a stately elegance not disturbed by the likes of humidity and windstreams. “Then the issue is simple. He shall have to fight his way to supremacy. That is the way of true men. Fear qi or faith qi, both are xinqi. And mo cultivation is easier at the earlier levels than shen, though we shall have to slay him if he chooses to harvest fear. But we digress; he shall simply gather followers by force and again force them to worship him.”

“True men?” The scorn in Su Yafeng’s voice was as dense with redness as the blood boiling in her veins. “And how did that turn out for you, m’lady?”

“It occurs to us how strange it is that you can express such rich emotions with so few words. Yet we find it endearing that you would seethe on our behalf. ” Nanya rolled over on the palanquin and looked her maid in the eye. “A sample of merely one is insufficient for us to conclude that all ambitious men are tainted. Our truth still holds. It is our one standard, beauty and ambition.”

“That’s two.”

“It is a notional singular. The meaning of the phrase is more significant than the number of its components.” She could see the wall beyond the canopy. They had reached this village’s entrance. “We tire of this game. What was it called, beating around the bush?”

Crack!

“That fan is a xiantian 1st grade magical artefact. We shall deduct your pay.”

It wasn’t as though Nanya was against what Su Yafeng wanted. There was also the matter of that electrifying touch to think about. It had done strange things to her jingqi, things only reserved for her oh-so-treacherous lesser half.

Nanya went straight to the topic.

“You want us to help that boy because his situation reminds you of your younger brother. Ziyou Yung also shares Su Yung’s name. Such a curious coincidence, is it not? But you shall fret no longer. We, such beautiful a being, promise you that we shall save that poor soul once more from fate’s folly—”

“Nyanya.”

“You dare!”

***

It was like a superstar stopping by a backwater village. The whole Dim gold city was uprooted over the sudden royal visit.

Yung barely had time to take in the scenery by the roads before he was stuffed into a stuffy room with maids stuffing him in stuffy clothes.

Meetings were held, and audiences were granted. Important people talked about important matters. Many a decision was made. None concerned Yung.

Yung wasn’t important people. So he was delegated back to the stuffy room with a stern warning not to bother the Honoured Fairy Su Nanya over trivial nonsense. In fact, he should not tell anyone anything and stay in his room like a good madlander.

Su Nanya didn’t like that.

She promptly sent her expressionless maid to retrieve him. They left the clan citadel compound for a giant hotel-inn-restaurant thing in the city centre. A letter from the Youjin clan came the same day. The warning had changed; now it was in flowery languages and magical fonts boiling down to, “COME BACK YE UNGRATEFUL RAT!” Caps included. Yung doubted the letter was from the current patriarch. More like the old patriarch’s faction taking liberties.

After that, a few more letters came in, basically telling him to plead with Su Nanya that he would rather stay with his family. He, of common sense, didn’t want to.

Why would he let go of such a sexy thigh to hug, so soon after embracing it? The owner of the thigh seemed content with not letting the Youjin clan get their way too.

It was consensual. Perfectly legal.

***

Yung stood in front of a large mirror. This hotel room was less stuffy since it wasn’t a retrofit storeroom. The mirror was made of some reflective metal, but not any Yung was familiar with.

Speaking of appearances.

“I look the same.” The confused teen muttered. Today was the first time he’d gotten a detailed look at himself. Maybe he should have done that before doing it to the fox girl, but priorities.

Yung looked totally like Jung did when Jung was fifteen. A healthy body, Mediterranean bronze skin, curly brown hair, and a crooked nose. Height: 165 centimetres, probably. He had to measure with his fingers.

“Wait, does this mean this is where….” My growth stops in this life too? He scratched his scalp. “Bummer.”

The fact that he could breathe, eat, sleep, and shit without some machine strapped to his innards was so fascinating that he had completely forgotten to check his physical features out.

Other than little Yung under the belt. Yung had broken down in jubilant tears the moment he had confirmed he had a johnny now, and that it wasn’t the calcified snake-mummy thing that had to be removed wholesale on his thirty-fifth birthday.

Moira had given him a second life. She had saved his family from inevitable demise. She was his new favourite person as of three days ago.

“You’ll guide yourself to yourself,” Moira had promised. And Yung found Jung when he made that soul contract with Lord Yaoguai.

Moira, the goddess of the fates. What grand series of coincidences led Yung to that exact place at that exact time, opening his past life memories? He could not possibly fathom. But he would bet his five gold coins, Grandpa’s will, and spare jade slips that Moira did it.

Moira, or her gift, made sure that Yung’s personality and psyche partially developed like Jung’s. Not Jung at fifteen, unlike his physical state, but Jung at thirty-nine, the age he sort of died on Earth. On Gaia.

Otherwise, it was impossible for Yung to rationalise how two separate beings from all the infinite universes, who grew up in vastly different mental, social, and physical environments and made completely different lifestyle and dietary decisions, could grow up to be so similar down to the strange mole on his left buttcheek.

And why the memories and personalities of two lifetimes could transition and combine so seamlessly.

Yung pulled his pants up.

It’s a doozy, that’s for sure.

He left his pondering. No doubt such philosophical thoughts would surface in his head again within the next half an hour.

Yung sat cross-legged on top of a cushion on his temporary king-sized bed. Ten minutes of mindful breathing later, the world around him receded, and he awoke in darkness—his sea of consciousness.

The sea was encased in a translucent barrier on all sides that shimmered like a wave of crystalline mist with intricate symbols and swirls of light. It served as a cloister, safeguarding Yung's consciousness from external forces and keeping its purity intact. It pulsated and undulated with an otherworldly glow, casting a soft light that illuminated the sea, giving it meaning and movement. Yet the barrier itself was a thin, gelatinous membrane, both firm and flexible, and partially transparent yet opaque. Its surface curled and rippled like waves, creating a captivating yet unsettling contrast, like a night-tinted wall of glass that changed in hue from sapphire to azure, much like the tumultuous shades of an ocean. Its black, curving lines and waves were like a map of the world's waters, etched on the void of the grand dao beyond.

These etches were the scant dao insights Yung had gained in his fifteen years of life. Yet there were more etches now, from Jung’s life cast over Yung’s like reflective shadows.

The anomalies did not stop there.

In the air swam a cage of interconnected golden threads forming an extensive array of letter-like constellations.

And these golden threads were not just a mere web of light, Yung sensed, but an ancient language itself, written in strokes resembling primordial Chinese characters and numbering infinite. Interlocked with chains and magic, the characters pulsed with an unearthly energy, with the red, green, and blue hues forming an intricate tapestry of golden hieroglyphs, pictures that seemed to breathe and live. Despite their primaeval appearance, the characters were lucid, the very embodiment of the culture and language of the infinite cosmos, speaking to Yung in a voice that transcended time and space. Alien, mysterious, yet so familiar.

Like a flying kiss.

Yung observed it all with glittering eyes. He had already confirmed that this constellation cluster was behind his newly gained abilities. Seeing those ubiquitous golden threads, emotion reading, and…

I assumed it was only Moira’s gift, but perhaps Lord Yaoguai is also behind it? The constellations do look like the dao aspects I’ve read about… But dao aspects are only forged in the xiantian 1st realm and this one is… kinda big.

That was an understatement, but Yung let the thought go. Foreign objects in his sea of consciousness were certainly a worrying matter, despite the boon they brought. He decided to worry later.

Beneath his feet was a small pond shimmering with neon liquid; his zhenqi. Every now and then, this neon liquid would fall from the dark space sky like rain. It was his body passively processing Lord Yaoguai’s xinqi into zhenqi.

Yung looked around and found the little critter relaxing on the pond like a rubber ducky.

“Lord Yaoguai, I’ve been calling you for an hour. Please help me with some tests again!” Although Yung said please, the foxmoth shook his head.

“It’s important! Paramount to our survival. You don’t know when the big bad fox lady will come and snatch you up. We gotta prepare ourselves.” Lord Yaoguai shuddered, then reluctantly nodded.

Heh, works every time. This creature, purported to have lived centuries, was not any brighter than Yung’s youngest niece in his previous life. Oh, how lovable she was, so easy to trick with candy. Before her bubbliness, all other airheads were but fakes. She was the real dizzy blond, and everyone adored her for it.

Lord Yaoguai’s mental state was barely that. Most emotions Yung read from the critter were echoes of thoughts driven mainly by instinct. Lord Yaoguai was definitely sapient, but he was dumb like a kid.

Outside, on the bed.

“Are you ready?” Yung asked Lord Yaoguai. The critter nodded, albeit not really. “Okay, here we go.”

Yung concentrated xinqi in his eyes. He couldn’t explain how; it mostly felt like muscle memory which he had trained for years. He, in fact, had. But with lingqi.

The world changed with an influx of golden threads connecting everything to everything. Yung noticed another kind of thread too. Transparent as glass, but there. Far more numerous than the golden threads but seeming to do nothing, seemingly creating the fabrics of reality.

“Oops, too much.” Yung dialled the input down, and most of the golden threads disappeared in the background, with only the threads connecting him to things of relevance, such as Lord Yaoguai and the fox girl and her lot three floors above.

After some days of fiddling with this strange ability, he could control the intensity. And he had found other uses for these threads.

“Here it comes. Lord Yaoguai, remember that I’m still here. Our soul contract won’t disappear, ‘kay?” The critter had tears in his eyes. Yung touched the thread.