Qiu Ye had a dream that night. She found herself alone in a large room shrouded in darkness. When she looked down she realised she was back in her old gear, she had her spear and galactic lion armour. When eyes adjusted, she noticed a figure sitting down on the floor.

They sat on the floor with their knees hugged up against their chest. Qiu Ye couldn't see their face from the angle she approached from. She tapped the person on the shoulder to see who it was.

Suddenly the person spun around and pounced onto Qiu Ye, pushing her down on her back by her shoulders. The person knocked the air out of Qiu Ye, it took a few seconds for Qiu Ye's eyes to refocus and see the face of the person who assaulted her.

When her eyes stopped spinning, she found her own face staring back at her. Her mirror image spoke.

"Get out of my body!"

She used more strength to shake Qiu Ye by the collar, but now that Qiu Ye was prepared for it she defended herself and rolled away from her assailant's grasp.

"Are you me?"

"No! I'm me!"

Qiu Ye held up her hands defensively to signal for the other her to calm down

"Was that you back when I activated time difference?"

"What are you talking about, just give my body back to me."

Qiu Ye knew how strong her will was so she knew she wouldn't be able to simply suppress this other her in her mind.

"Please I need to use your body, I'm still technically you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Please trust me, I'm doing this to save everyone you will come to befriend and love. I come from the future, well not this future but another reality's future. You want your family to live right?"

"Of course but you can't just barge in and take over my body like that."

"I'm sorry, really but I need to get stronger as quickly as possible."

"If you're here… Will I disappear? I don't want to die."

Qiu Ye's reflection looked like she was going to cry.

"Well now that I know you're here, I won't force you down again. We can cooperate, how does that sound."

She looked reluctant but slowly nodded

"If it means my family won't die then okay."

Qiu Ye smiled and reached out her hand for a shake, her reflection walked over and shook her hand. A bright light enveloped the two and Qiu Ye woke up in her bed soaked in sweat. She glanced around to see if there were any external forces which caused her encounter with herself, but it seems like it was legitimate.

Now that she was wide awake, she wanted to use the time to continue training. She was nearing a quarter way through the first stage of Eternal Pulse Sutra. Suddenly a soft spoken voice appeared in her mind.

"What are you training in?"

Qiu Ye's eyes opened wide as she glanced around wildly.

"It's me remember? You said we could cooperate, two minds is faster than one."

"Do you not have access to my memories? When I was transported into this body your memories melded with mine so I assumed you would have mine as well."

"Well 15 years of memory is much easier to digest compared to 4 centuries."

Qiu Ye rolled her eyes and nodded.

"Fair enough."

"So what is it?"

"This is the Eternal Pulse Sutra, a skill which develops our heart and reinforces it."

"Shouldn't you be focusing on learning martial arts or something first? What's the point with reinforcing your heart if you can't fight back against anyone."

Qiu Ye sighed.

"I had the same ideology when I was your age, it ended up getting a lot of people killed. Think of this as the base foundation of a sky scraper. You can't properly build on something if the foundation isn't solid. Right now our body is extremely weak, if we jump straight to practising the destructive skills our body will not be able to handle it. Plus there are special benefits to this skill which will help a lot."

"What benefits?"

"Well first obviously our heart is reinforced, and I mean that literally. Imagine our heart being plated with hardened steel. Fighters often either aim for the heart or the head, if we reinforce both we will be able to survive strong attacks."

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"I guess that makes sense, but why not just reinforce our body as a whole."

"Start small first, when all our organs are strengthened, our body will naturally become stronger. Blood pumps from the lungs to the rest of the body and powers it right? So if our heart becomes stronger, we get more energy faster."

"So our heart is like an upgraded engine?"

"Exactly, though it will take a bit of time before we reach the level where we essentially gets infinite energy, you will see a lot of progress once we just pass the first tier of the skill."

"I see, but still it looks like it will take a lot of time. Don't we need to increase our strength as well?"

"Don't worry, once I earn some credits we will be able to purchase the resources needed for me to speed up our cultivation and progress."

"Oh right you have memories of the future, are you going to bet on lotteries and other stuff?"

"No, even better. I'm going to destroy the market."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see."

Qiu Ye imagined her reflection pouting in her mind.

"Hey, I can't keep calling you well you, what can we call each other to not feel weird."

"Well if we're both Qiu Ye I guess we can slightly change our name."

"You're technically the original in this world so you can choose."

"Hmm… How about this. If you're Autumn (Qiu Ye), then I can be Winter (Dong Ye)."

"I like the sound of that, so I'm Autumn and you're Winter?"

"Yup."

"Well now that we got that sorted out. Winter, are you just a voice in my head or like an actual entity?"

"Why ask?"

"Well as you said, two minds is faster than one. That could be literal, if we both trained out will and minds, wouldn't we have double psychic and soul strength?"

"Well I don't know, how can you try?"

"Hmm. If we're two souls inhabiting a body, you should be able to control the body if I let go of the reigns."

"How will you do tha- woAH."

Suddenly Qiu Ye's body temporarily slumped and then sat up again. She glanced around and waved her hands.

"How does that feel, Winter?"

"Weiiird, it doesn't feel any different but I can hear you talking in my mind."

"So that confirms it, I guess the 7 deities transported me by sending my soul."

"If that's the case, it sort of makes sense why we have total affinity to all elements. This is a blessing in disguise."

"When we think at the same time, do we use the same brain? Is there like a maximum Ram our brain has?"

"I really don't want to think about that, but since we've found out we're both real souls. We can train at the same time."

"Then our training speed will double!"

"Maybe not a perfect double since you don't have full access to my memory and understanding. But that's fine, little investment into teaching you will go a long way."

"This is awesome, we are going to become so strong!"

"Don't celebrate too soon, lets not waste any more time and get started on training."

For the next 30 minutes, Qiu Ye taught Autumn the Eternal Pulse Sutra. Since she understood the way she learnt, she was able to pass the knowledge on pretty simply. She didn't need to explain every thing since they were just practising the first tier of the skill so it didn't take the same length of time Qiu Ye had originally taken to learn it. With the increased learning speed, Qiu Ye was more confident in being able to do what she was sent here to do.

For the rest of the weekend, Qiu Ye and Winter practised the Eternal Pulse Sutra day and night. What would have taken a week non-stop only took 2 and a half days. Once Qiu Ye reached about half way through the first tier, she started submerging herself in a tub of water while practising. After every session, the water would be dyed a brownish colour. Her body started shedding a lot of dead skin and her sweat looked like it was dirty.

At the end of the first tier, Qiu Ye felt terrible and had to sit in the bath tub submerged in ice water for a whole hour as her body changed coats over and over again. But when she cleaned herself off, her skin had a beautiful and smooth sheen on it. All the scar tissue she had before were all gone as well, her hands looked as if she had never worked a day in her life.

The process was honestly very gross but Qiu Ye felt multitudes better with all the waste out of her system. Her new found beauty was a solid bonus as well.

"Wow we look gorgeous."

Winter chirped out as Qiu Ye examined her body to make sure everything went fine.

"By the way I have a question."

"Yeah?"

"So you were a guy in your world right?"

"Yeah and?"

"So if we share a body, we're going to have to share y'know like romantic partners."

Qiu Ye sighed.

"Crap I didn't think about this."

"I've had free time to think of things when you were working."

"Course you did."

Talking with Winter was more enjoyable than Qiu Ye first imagined, she felt weird essentially talking to herself but the similarities they shared made them connect easier yet the slight differences in personality made it seem less like she was talking to herself.

"We're loners at this point but you have 4 centuries of experience. So I'm guessing you're into girls right"

"Yeah I'm straight if that's what you're asking."

"So I've always been a tomboy type, but I don't think I've had any excessive attraction towards girls compared to guys y'know what I mean?"

"Yeah sure I've had a feel guys that I thought were pretty attractive but it's not like I would date them."

"Yeah yeah so… well. Ugh this is so stupid. Since we share a body, are we going to go for girls? or guys? or both? Now that we're in the market up there with the 8/10s we might as well settle down on a choice right"

"Well I would obviously rather stick with being with girls, there's this one person that I have my eye on in the future but now that you're coming along for the ride I guess you should give your input."

"I mean I am totally on board with being with girls just wanted to clear things up with you."

"Honestly didn't think much about this but I guess girls it is."

"So you said you had your eyes set on a girl in the future right?"

"Well honestly I never stuck around with a single person in my past life, y'know how things are. Situation was dangerous and I couldn't stay in one place for long."

"Wow you were a player, who would've thought."

"Shush."

"So anyways, are you sure they would be into girl on girl action? Although we do look pretty handsome we are still undoubtedly women."

"Hmm… you're right. Well we'll cross that bridge when we get there, who knows my tastes might've changed with you around."

"So now that we've finished the first tier, are we gonna continue training Eternal Pulse or move on to something else?"

"Honestly I didn't expect to finish this quickly, since lectures start this week I think we should get started on fitness training to get ready for hunting the week after."

"Makes sense I guess, so do you have some sort of training system?"

"Just going to practice archery, slowly increasing the weight of the bow. There is the agility machine in the gym which has gravity control, that helps too. Also going to start practising the Divine Body Forgery skill."

"What's that?"

"It basically treats our body as a piece of unrefined metal, through continuous physical practice, the skill forces out flaws and allows the body to keep growing without the usual bottle neck physical training has."

"That sounds great!"

Qiu Ye finished cleaning herself up and made her way to her first class of the school year.