The pain had completely disappeared as if it was a lie. What didn't disappear, was the confusion. Her mind was in an utter mess.

Contradicting thoughts, emotions and memories were violently clashing inside her head, like two brawling drunk men.

She couldn't concentrate at all. She stood up, walked around, sat back down closed her eyes and stood back up in an endless cycle.

Only after half an hour, as if the two men had suddenly come to some kind of consensus, she suddenly calmed down. She sat down in lotus position, her hands on her knees and closed her eyes.

Taking a short breath through her nose, holding it and breathing out slowly through her mouth, she relaxed and started to concentrate.

Mystic-pond mirror-reflection-meditation. It's said that outsiders often see more than those concerned, and this technique worked just like that. It allowed a person to shut out all emotions and look at their own inner workings from an outside position through pure logic.

-This is... There are two people? One is... Alice Gardener twenty-two years old. Lives in America. The father is a scientist and the mother a primary school teacher. She finished Highschool as the best of her year but didn't have many friends before she went to college. She likes to read a lot and has the habit of trying to learn everything about a subject she got curious about so she spends a lot of time in the library.

The other is Xu Ran. A fifteen years old, Chinese girl. She lived with her parents who were farmers until the age of ten before she joined the closest branch of the heavenly Pheonix sect. There she learned martial arts and Qi cultivation. When she reached the middle stages of the Qi-collecting stage after three years, Instructor Wen found her to be quite clever and she got taught the basics of forging techniques before she could start practicing after reaching Qi-circulation stage. And now that she had been cultivating for five years, it wouldn't take long before she could attempt the breakthrough for the first time. While her cultivation speed was a little on the slow side, she was a very fast learner, especially so with the help of her meditation technique. In addition, she had a rare bodily constitution that gave her fairly good resistance to heat and high resistance to the lightning element, one of the strongest in direct fights.

While their lives couldn't be more different, they were surprisingly similar. They were both the curious type of person and both hard-working in their respective fields. Not because they were forced, but because they had fun doing so. The same went for their social life, they were both kind personalities, who treasured those close to them, although Xu Ran clearly had an easier time socializing than Alice.

It was also similar for their bodies. While the people from Xu Ran's world seemed to mature a bit faster, the fifteen-year-old Xu Ran had looked remarkably similar to Alice when she was about sixteen years old.

She had big eyes, a small nose, cute mouth and long black hair with a beautiful luster. Her body wasn't very tall, more on the smaller side, for her age and while she was more on the slender side, her chest was just big enough that no one could call it small. The only big difference would be the deep purple eyes Xu Ran had. Something that was caused by her special bodily constitution.

Even though she wasn't the kind of beauty that men and women would risk their lives for without even knowing who she was or would ruin countries, one had to be lying if they said she wasn't pretty.-

And then, there was still a third set of memories, one that seemed foreign to either persona and was much to „pure", almost like a set of computer data.

Luckily, the girl could recognize most if this „data" based on Alice's memories.

-These are the books on how to build computers and programming starting with the operating system up to artificial intelligence.

But these are...-

The girl went through the memories for a moment.

-A book about bio-mechanical Engineering, a thesis on nerve transplantation and a book about Chinese acupuncture and energy circulation and... historical records on the development and acceptance of sexual fetishes...

The first two are useless for the time being, but the one on acupuncture and energy-circulation could come in handy! I could try to use this as the basis for my breakthrough!

The last one... Fifty Shades of Grey... I think I can ignore this one...

But the question is, where did these come from. Even if I disregard the process... Ahh! That man, now that I think about it, he seemed pretty well trained at handling injured people. Maybe a student in the medical department? Could these have been his books? Anyways...

Now, here is the big question, who am I?

It seems like both minds were connected for a while after Alice hit her head and I have clear memories of both, so at least for a short while, I was both Alice Gardener and Xu Ran at the same time.

But now? In terms of memories there is „more" Alice Gardener than Xu Ran, she lived almost seven years longer already after all. But since the body is Xu Ran's. And other people will also still call me Xu Ran, so I will have to use that name, and I obviously can't claim that I'm twenty-two years old, people will call me crazy, its the same for other personal information.

But, well, as they say, it's important what's on the inside and not what's on the outside...

So, is it Xu Ran or Alice Gardener? Or am I both? Or none of them?

Both? No, more like an entirely new person...

I really need to sort out these memories. I never expected that the Mystic-Pond... Is it because of Alice's memories? I really need to change the name of this meditation technique!-

Xu Ran thought for a moment.

-How about... Third-person objective reflection meditation?! At the very least the name makes sense!

But now that I think about it, this technique is actually much more powerful than the old Xu Ran thought.

If I sort out all my memories like this, I should be able to stabilize my mind within a day, which I highly doubt would be possible otherwise.-