With the short enlightening exchange between themselves, Wei Zhiruo and Marr got busy with their respective duties.

Marr slipped away to restore his tired state, while Wei Zhiruo started reading the text —or more like tearing it apart into bits and pieces, and into easily correlating chunks of information bits and mapping a graphic chart out of them.

Wei Zhiruo couldn’t afford to lose too much time on doing this either.

Tethered inside and outside of her body, transcending inexorable distance in her imagination, her own 'thoughts' began to overrule and marginalize other chaotic noises, softening their hardened edges and then completely submerging herself in the world of her own. She decided to enter what she herself called, the 'black box'.

Black, because no imaginary, fictional or real light could penetrate inside here and reach her. While the space was fashioned into a cube, box-like structure so it became a 'box'. In this space, in this state of herself, she was one with everything and she owned her own thoughts entirely. For once.

It was a difficult condition to maintain in normal times, but occasionally it served as a good meditative tool. Since it used up unimaginable determination on her part, she seldom locked herself in here. Another reason that stopped her from doing this constantly to evade alien thoughts was that she was always at risk of never waking up from it.

Nevertheless, here she was.

The willow tree was wondering about her sudden appearance beside itself, and those few stray, yellow crested warblers looked at her amusingly observing her wayward antics– but once she was inside this 'box' she wouldn't be sidetracked by their musings and hard to understand emotionally charged exchanges which felt like hard symbols and incoherent, cryptic noises on its own.

In her normal state, these vibrations entered her mind uninterruptedly and were hard to ignore. But not inside the box. Everything ceased to exist in this small black space, no sound, light or sight could infiltrate these cold walls.

“It’s just… too many risks. I wish I could use this all the time.'

She felt herself submerging downwards and floating. Nothing appeared in her Inner mind as it lost its meaning, Marr was inaudible in here, and the outward body —everything was a figment she had separated with and shed like snakes shedding their skin.

She got started immediately.

Wei Zhiruo first repeatedly revised the technique’s introduction that was still fresh in her mind. She dissected and bunched together all the strange terms she didn’t recognize. This process made it much easier for her to guess what some sentences were actually saying. From what she could understand, she created a mental map and imagined how it would work if the whole technique ran inside her body.

By the end of it, her mind space had crafted a human shape which completely copied her current body's various meridians. The thin meridians overlapped with vitality flowing veins which were made of millions and millions of fine threads reaching out everywhere else in her body from her soul - this was the life-essence that determined her lifespan.

Wei Zhiruo also highlighted some four hundred points she had discovered a while ago. The supposed position of 'Star-point' didn't overlap with any of them.

'Ah, a completely new aperture? Interesting…' Wei Zhiruo shelved this discovery to think about later.

Since there was no Spiritual energy in the air to truly feel what the actual technique felt like, she started with the fact that her body could absorb starlight.

The amount and absorption rate in her previous life could be summed up in two words —meagre and almost negligible. A whole day's worth of starlight absorption when circulated well enough could form a constant, visible white thread-like line inside her blood veins, but that thread was fine like a spider’s weave. And it hardly stayed inside and soon trickled out of the body after a while, when not managed by her Spiritual Consciousness.

Not much changed in this life, but her body's retaining ability had definitely increased much compared to before.

If it was to be used in this specific technique, it must first follow the breathing art mentioned in the margins. What will happen next? The breathing rhythm will dictate an order, and the starlight will revolve in the opened up 'Star-point', rotate, tumble and aggravate their nature to make them willingly subdued in a fixed pattern.

There was nothing to base her unfounded hope, no outward phenomenon she recalled from her past life could prove that she was right. She just had instincts and they urged her to do this. That's all. But the moment she saw her mind finish creating this three-dimensional figure, she instantly fell into a strange kind of meditative realization.

The patterns inside these star-points emerged and overlapped, broke and remerged. There was certainly a specific order in which the breathing technique fashioned these starlight’s to rotate and behave which created a mystical rhythm, almost musical in nature, inside her body. She recorded each swirl, each swell of the turning wave, leaving nothing to her imagination.

Next, she started looking into method's introduction. Here she met with harder to deal with imagery and allusions. But strangely enough, as she delved deeper and deeper into the mysterious state, the lost meanings found ground and her ability to understand increased in leaps and bounds! She recalled a new piece of information related to the technique and strangely enough, she couldn't remember whether Marr had shown this to her or not!

「Introduction of the method:

This method mainly focuses on one's use of life force to open six-points at specific areas. A mortal can enter Qi cultivation using this introductory soul cultivation technique, as the points will join together and form an Array formation inside the body after being filled with Spiritual energy and keep running until the Qi is inducted. After induction, this technique requires constant supply of sufficient amounts of Qi from surroundings. Filling a single 'star-point' alone will help one enter the third level of Qi cultivation, and each consecutive opening of the ‘star-points’ will raise the cultivation level a step further—that is, if one were at fifth level of Qi cultivation, when starting this technique, the first point will push them directly to eighth level of Qi cultivation –and then each successive points will keep pushing a level forward, stopping shortly before the Foundation establishment. The technique has no effect on Foundation, and cannot help establish one, as it is essentially a Soul cultivation technique.

As such, the method requires one to sit in a Spiritual energy gathering array so that they can get a constant, plentiful supply of Qi. But the technique's main attributes help to strengthen one's soul energy. Absorbing the Qi of heaven and using it to convert into life-essence of the soul.

The formation itself is not permanent and innate, and can collapse at any time, if disbalanced. The moment the Qi circulation in these points break, or the chain breaks, the formation as well as technique will be null and void, and the cultivator will in turn face immediate backlash, with his cultivation level falling back to where he had started.

To make the formation innate and permanent, requires one to overlap the opened six points with six-star diagrams as mentioned before from the twenty-eight mansions and two other constellations, engraving them over these points. With the aid of breathing technique, one has to intrinsically etch the individual rhythm of the constellation into the 'Star-points’. To seal the Formation, and make the breathing rhythm locked inside the Star-points, one needs to use an additional Array Talisman attached underneath. 」

Mentioned underneath was the so-called ‘Array Talisman’ which seemed like weirdly written Runes. After pondering them for a few minutes, she felt her head splitting with a headache and had to stop analyzing them instantly. Instead, she focused more on her own memories of its small sections, its shape, size and structure.

A little casted in shadows, the memories itself were still legible and didn’t start inducing headache outright as they were just some smaller chunks of the whole image. In this way, she read and analyzed them —found a few places of familiarity in the twisted, curved lines of the written Talisman, and soon confirmed that these Talisman's were indeed a kind of Rune Formation she was familiar with.

In fact, runes were no different from ‘words’ with an inherent meaning and sound, but when they were used, they ‘manifested’ the fundamental meanings. If she was to speak [Shield] a thin film will protect her from a single attack of her enemy, but that was that.

For it to even work, she first had to completely understand what that simple rune ‘shield’ had actually meant! It wasn’t the manifesting white screen that emerged from her imagination in the end, it was the seed she had planted in her mind – the concept of ‘barrier’ and ‘armor’ conjoining to form a [shield]. This was an easy example. Many ‘words’ didn’t even have their original meanings intact! Some had lost their original meaning in the passage of time – and no! No new meaning could act as replacement of the original.

For a Rune-forger, an eye to see past the mist and dust of history, and glimpse the past traces and meanings of a word was as essential as a bard's need to spin a beginning and an end in the order of his tale.

“Peculiar, indeed. The underlying principle that makes a Rune magical is that they carry a specific element from the ‘First language of the world’ or the ‘Tongue of Gods’. Either a link of inscribed Rune includes their meaning, structure or intonation, or it just copies some other elements of God speech. Do these talismans also function in this way? I can see that some characters and ideographs of some of them definitely carry a striking similarity in their core formation. But how much –? Let’s see…”

The cultivation skill was written in her own bloodline language and that was why she had easily read through it. However, these Talisman’s were completely copied from what it seems like their original language! Wei Zhiruo read labels explaining these ‘Talismans’ written like a note using the bloodline language.

「Array talisman’s: Place a [Life Comprehension Talisman] over heart, [Death Comprehension Talisman] over the bones , [Comprehending Spirit of the Word Talisman] over Sea of Consciousness, [Time Configuring Talisman] or in its place [Talisman of Body Enlightenment] for better results over the artery. Place [Soul Enlightenment Talisman] on soul and [Five Element Configuring Talisman] over the Sea of Qi. 」

Taking a deep breath, Wei Zhiruo read all the names of the Talisman and memorized the places where they should be engraved. By the end of this ordeal, she felt her head almost splitting into two pieces! She felt light headed and her mouth felt completely dry.

Some key-words flashed in her mind though, attracting her attention to them.

Those Array talismans seemed to require a very, very high level of cultivation…how high, she recalled the last time she felt this kind of aggravating, ruthless pain. It was when she was learning Origin Runes!

“Origin Runes…?” What about them? It was so painful to peer through a single one of them that she took a hundred days just to glean the meaning of a single character by studying a single character by dividing it into microscopic bits and pieces– that’s how hard she had tried to just see what was in them. Being able to use them was a different set of ordeals entirely.

It was a blessing that she didn’t just burst out like a balloon in the end, and instead, because she had her bloodline inheritance, was actually able to use some of the bloodline language to ‘understand’ God's speech.

The God-clan’s own language, which was left to every race in some or the other form was no small matter. In the hierarchy of Runes it took the highest seat with no other contender! Many tried to decipher its essence with no result in her times, and those who succeeded hardly let others ever get any of them. She succeeded because of a cheat.

When she Awakened in her past life, although Marr didn’t get the full bloodline inheritance, its language was completely passed down to her.

It was in the days after escaping to the Middle world, when she was desperately searching for a cultivation method that suited her when she found Runes. At that time she had tried everything and found nothing suitable- magic didn’t work for her, neither craftsmanship nor blacksmithing could work without mana, and even the smallest jobs required one to have some or other kind of elemental affinity. She didn’t have any Mana beads to internalize magic.

Then she found Runes which looked so similar to her bloodline language. Later, when she was being shown the mystery of God language, she found how strikingly similar it was to ‘God's own tongue’!

As she grew up, she started collecting these small traditions from wherever she could – from the Cuiping world she collected some fifty Origin Runes, and in the Middle world…a complete, original text which was first owned by a witch Rune-forger, containing some five hundred thousand of them.

Collecting was collecting, learning their essence was the actual part. Understanding a Rune, then using it to create some other artefact was the actual test of one’s comprehension. She hardly had any time left to grasp them fully…so what she actually knew and mastered was just some fifty, well-known 'God speech' character's she’d found. Now that the inheritance of that witch was totally lost in the last world, she only had these few Origin Runes that she had actually learned…

As if her mind had opened up to a new window, a very interesting possibility flashed inside her mind.

Could she also replace those Talisman's by substituting them with her own Origin Rune's? Although she didn’t know the principles of these Talismans, she had spent years and years pondering over the existence of Origin Runes and one thing they succeeded in doing without much effort was stabilizing ‘artefacts’ on which they were engraved. If her body was a tool, she was forging right now using the Runes, wouldn’t they act as good, even seals, meant to stabilize a specific area?

“umm…is it possible?” What could be higher in hierarchy than an actual God’s language? Even if the dimension was different, their inherent power was undeniable. If she linked Origin Runes, instead of those Array Talismans at these specific six points, and conjoined them, will she make this technique innately her own?

Till now, much of what she’d comprehended was just guesses. She hardly understood this foreign style of cultivation which she was seeing for the first time. Not to mention, this method was so esoteric that she found her own level of grasping the details always short of actual requirements—she couldn't grasp the degree of obscurity in between the lines which made her feel that she was always trying to create a castle over clouds, empty and baseless!

But despite all her doubts she didn't want to just stop here. Her instincts were telling her that this was something good.

Wei Zhiruo tore herself away from the 'black box'. The nausea hit her hard, as well as the sudden feeling of falling down from a height.

However, she didn’t stop for too long to settle her mind. Inscriptions, Runes and some bloodline words…all of them floated in her vision, as she filtered the best out of them. Red words, golden words and flashing silver inscriptions…

“The names of these Talismans feel like some distinct descriptions, if I am correct. Can they be picked up superficially? Death, life, spirit of the word, time, body enlightenment, soul and five elements… Does this world also follow the concept of five major elements forming all other things? Fire, water, wood, earth and metal? And their placements… They look so symbolic. Pretty descriptive, aren't they?” Wei Zhiruo muttered to herself, writing down the Talisman Array names into the soil.

She circled the words that sounded like the foundation of each Talisman, and assessed their relation with the position on which they were supposed to be carved.

“Six points corresponding to six main features of the body. If the body is a ‘vessel’, then what is it formed of? First, the bones are pillars supporting the structure. Star-point over the back-bone…let’s take this as the supposed symbolism. Then, naturally, the one over the artery is to represent flesh and blood, a manifestation of the physical body…then, the one on the Sea of Consciousness represents mind or spirit, one on the heart is for the core of human sensibilities, the soul is self-explanatory – the essence of the very being. Finally, what is this Sea of Qi? Let’s reconsider the whole structure again.”

She used her wounded palm to rub away the names carved in the dry soil. In its place, she drew a figure of a man with his arms and legs outstretched and marked the position of the Sea of Qi and the Sea of Consciousness.

For mages in her world, the first and most important qualification was affinity with the outside elements. If one had affinity with the elements outside, he could then lead them into his body and form the body's own Mana. This internal energy was stored in the body, tempering its level and abilities, and this was the basis for casting any form of magic.

But where was it stored –? Wei Zhiruo drew another circle in the position of the heart, putting a dot inside it.

The energy was stored inside an innate Mana container or a bead-like structure which existed inside the heart. It constantly filled itself up and emptied when used, enduring constant changes to its capacity. The beads capacity to hold Mana was fixed at each level.

If one were to go on and suppose that there exists some similarity in the essence of these two systems, the one purported in [The Heavenly Star Formation] and the Middle world’s magic system…Spiritual energy or Qi could stand in place for Mana, right? Doesn’t that make the Sea of Qi, the natural container of the Qi? That means, the space below the navel is definitely something like a Mana bead!

‘It all makes sense now. But here, I cannot use Mana or Spiritual Qi. So, I came up with replacing it with starlight. But, can that be really internalized?"

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She actually had a flash of inspiration when she was talking with Marr. Now that she had straightened out so many concepts, she went back to her previous inspiration.

Wei Zhiruo felt that the starlight could be a great substitute for Qi or Mana. After all, they were one of the celestial forms of energy, present all over the universe and they flowed inside her body like Mana used to do! She couldn’t hold the Mana without the Mana bead, and the Mana usually behaved just like these starlight’s – they filtered in and then they trickled out.

‘But suppose, if these ‘Star-points’ were completely new aperture points, wouldn’t they act like mana beads when this whole operation was done? This is like creating a special point to store mana in a sense, which, after following a specific – undiscovered – principle will start to strengthen the soul by giving it vitality. I have never seen anything like this before– it’s like a technique to earn more lifespan!’

There were actually two myths related to starlight in her clan. One was that the starlight absorbed, could be directly turned into Life-essence by full blooded blood-kin in the ancient times. Running in the similar vein, there was the myth that if a bloodkin has the purest of Bloodline’s, he can feel the starlight working on his physical body in a different manner. She didn’t have the purity level to bet that this specific thing will work for her, but the first information should almost be correct right?

Wei Zhiruo sobered up. ‘Other creatures cannot absorb light, but I can. If those myths surrounding ancestors were correct then after establishing a proper system, the absorbed star-lights might be converted into life-essence directly with this technique. All I need to do is to find some basic principle on which to lay the foundation, and then follow. This breathing technique…its rhythm…will it work?’ The obscure idea formed a clear pattern, and she started to devise a method that could work for her.

What if she looked a little bit ambitious? She had this golden opportunity and she just didn't want to miss experimenting.

Wei Zhiruo didn’t want to go out wandering in search of another way to strengthen her wounded soul and she most definitely didn’t like the sound of the words ‘temporary’ and ‘easily shattered’ attached to this skill. The drawbacks of using this skill, without actually using the Array Talisman, were too many.

Who could always make sure that they can always be in good condition, surrounded by endless energy? What if she fell in a space crack and then couldn’t find any light there? What was she going to do then? Face the backlash and die immediately? If that was the result earned by entering this method, wouldn't it be much better for her to leave her body alone as it is right now?

A skill must be permanent and not require her constant attention in maintaining them. If not innate, at least they must be permanent enough.

In Wei Zhiruo’s mind, she chose some random Origin Runes to experiment at first and then used them as anchoring points at specified ‘Star-points’. She needed these Origin Runes to settle down in such a place, creating a chained link in her body forming a special field.

Wei Zhiruo imagined the Formation link to be an unbroken line, originating in the Sea of Consciousness. This line will then run through the body in an orderly manner– one point over the Sea of Consciousness, then descending downwards from there, the second point will be over the carotid artery, third in heart, fourth at the center of the spine, and fifth one in the Sea of Qi, and finally, ending in a circle with the last point engraved inside the soul! A closed, unbroken channel which looked like a straight line running from head to her pelvis bones.

Now, all she needed was to rule down actual Runes she was going to use. What would serve as the best substitutes on these highly symbolic points? For one, their semantics must have a kind of link, sharing a part with each Talisman.

Wei Zhiruo wrote down six words, all aligning to one aspect she noticed in the Array talisman’s general explanation. [Life] was the first rune she wrote on ground, which contained the meaning of both ‘life’ and ‘birth’, that was taken from “Life Comprehension Talisman”. [Death] was another straightforward Rune, which denoted ‘death’, ‘decay’ and ‘destruction’. It came from the first word of “Death Comprehension Talisman”. Next, she wrote – [Words], [Time], [Soul] and last of all [Origin] to stand for “Five Element Configuring Talisman” indicating the link between five elements and the world.

From what she grasped, ‘life’ was budding in the heart. The skeleton was a symbol of ‘death’. ‘Time’ eroded the flesh and blood, and ‘soul’ remained eternally what it was before, a soul. If the five elements were the same as her own world – the fire, water, earth, metal and wood – then the term ‘Origin’ was the best substitute for it, because all these elements were essentially the basis and origin of everything else. Tying it to Sea of Qi seemed to hold a specific connotation that she couldn’t yet grasp…

Finally, She chose [Words] to represent the ‘Spirit of the Word’ and Sea of Consciousness, because being conscious in a way, meant being able to express and state, and put names to things.

It really all tied up in a neat order in the end. She still felt like she was going nowhere with this castle created over the clouds – there was a ‘wild’ idea working and tying together every thing in a meaningful sequence…but how much this was going to work, she hardly had any idea.

The wind felt milder and the surroundings much clearer as if she was seeing everything for the first time. Her brain was refreshed, and energized and she felt particularly keen and insightful.

Following the technique, she could first open six star-points at designated places. Then to reinforce it and make it innate; she will have to copy the six constellations at specified points and then add another Origin Rune over it, acting like a lid or seal…Thinking about the bloodline– could she also include Marr’s tree-roots in this Formation?

Suppose, if she asked Marr to send its roots around each star point, wouldn’t he be able to use a greater amount of life-essence?

Wei Zhiruo thought of all the innate Bloodline techniques which she never got the chance to use because Marr was way too weak to attempt any of them and felt her pain fleeing instantly.

“Marr, wake up.”

“Aa...um…What happened?” Marr appeared in the outside world, rubbing his eyes with his paws. He yawned, showing all his sharp front teeth sparkling in a row, and started rubbing off his white whiskers. “You're done so early? We still have fifteen more minutes till the second phase ends…let me look.”

Wei Zhiruo didn’t stop him, but instead used her fingers to try to carve down a copy of the respective Origin Rune right in front of herself in the soil.

She remained lingering in the aftertaste of that sensation for a minute, and then heard Marr saying –

“Hum…this looks fine. I can see where it will tie together.”

“Do you think so?” Wei Zhiruo smiled softly. “It would have been better if we got some sunlight directly over here. But the leftover amount should be enough, right? You have so many in your leaves. Direct them to these points following the breathing technique. Should we start?”

“I am ready if you are.” He climbed over her body and rubbed against her face before vanishing again.

Having made the model and mental map in her own mind at first, Wei Zhiruo knew precisely where and when to place all the six-star formation nodes.

First, she experimented whether these points could be created.

For this, she used the life-essence as a knife and hit hard aiming at a specific point in her Sea of Consciousness. Nothing happened. She kept hitting, till a small opening emerged in the fabric. The edges separated and a single aperture opened and fixed itself like several other aperture’s she had seen in the meridian - although this was completely floating on its own in an independent space.

Done!

“It’s working. It forms a small space of its own!”

Seeing this, she started the next step immediately.

Following the ‘breathing technique’, she guided the starlight to float in a specific pattern. The rhythm inside the body followed in tandem, creating highs and lows of a specific frequency, creating an order in which the starlight entered the point. She pushed and directed them without letting a single of these sparkling dots from getting out of control. It was hard at first but eventually she got used to herding the aimless starlight.

She went on to the next step.

Haishan was a four-star constellation. She directed the starlight to concentrate in a specific pattern and saw the constellation settling down into the point as some starlight clustered together in order. Once she felt that the starlight wasn’t going anywhere else, and the structure was stable enough to consider the final step, she started using her life-essence to write down the Origin Rune [Word]. She stopped and observed.

The point had organized itself in a mini-orbit. It formed a concentric circle of three circles. The center-most held the Rune [Word] engraved over it, then next one included the star constellation embossed in a circle, and finally, the last one had strange graphic etchings that looked eerily like words, but indecipherable.

“They do – they actually do reinforce each other. Look at that concentric circle…the center holds the Rune, the next one the constellation like a door encircling the seal. I hope they are as permanent as they are supposed to be.”

She opened five other ‘Star-points’ using her life essence, then forced the starlight’s to collect at these points forming constellations and then sealed them with Runes. The fifth one, Xu Star-Formation, only had two stars and even the Rune [Origin] didn’t feel much difficult to engrave. Then she heaved in a deep breath, and then looked inside the core area. The last one was to be engraved over the soul, tying the whole Array to a close.

“After this we will see if it works…or we get a backlash.”

“I think it will work.”

When the last stroke of [Soul] fell down, she felt a strange fulfilling sensation filling her heart and even lessening her pain...but then it stopped abruptly as if cut-short.

The seals rotated on their own, not letting any of the starlight escape from their orbits. And they all formed a link. Running from the head to the navel, up again, it shone brightly and then each seal settled down in their own places not letting any of the starlight escape from their midst. But that was it. Nothing outright magical took place.

Nothing happened.

“I guess it's…done? Direct all the starlight to fill them up and see if it's stable.”

By this time, she was completely drained of the last bit of her Spiritual Consciousness and was directing the light spots by dragging on despite her head aching for her to stop, and her Spiritual Sea thundering with increased tumultuous waves. She was seriously overdrawn.

Marr used up every bit of the starlight in the body to fill these six points but couldn’t even fill a single one of them. “They will need us sitting out in the sun for hours and hours to even show us that they do actually work. But don’t worry – there is no backlash, so this is a success.”

“There really is no reaction. Nothing changed…it’s not going to be an instant gratification, is it? We will have to spend a lot of time inhaling the light from now on.” Wei Zhiruo replied. “Now Marr, try sending those roots of yours to these seals. Don’t destabilize them by entering inside the apertures themselves, but try to feel their fields outside. Once we are done Awakening, we can experiment with whether this thing works or not by sunbathing for the rest of the day.”

“It sounds good.”

But she didn’t have enough time to chatter idly. Neither did she see whether Marr succeeded in his attempt, as finally the last step of transformation started. Both of them left all distracting thoughts and focused on reciting the clan's meditation chants. No outward sound should distract them at this moment and they both must be as aware as they can be…

In fact, this chant was something a nearby relative should perform for them, or a priest of the clan, while they focused on each word of the chant trying to engrain its essence on their soul. But since there was no one else here, she had to support her tired body and soul, and also recall all the couplets from her first Awakening.

They didn’t come in a single coherent line too – but slow paces as if a master craftsman was proudly unveiling each of his crafts threadbare as if to say –

“It is a tale as old as time itself. When curious eyes should rest awhile, they find their grooves beneath. In cold waters, in heated springs, in bubbling brooks, in coming springs, and worlds of endless glory, mesmerized. The eye itself is the beholder, the mind itself the craftsman. Don’t receive – craft and be.”

It was something of a hymn. Praising the eternal way, who guided them, and always showed them the 'way'. The path was here. The vehicle - the body. It walks over the path. And the soul is being carried inside the vehicle of the body on this right path.

And the vehicle is righteous, the soul is good, and the path —the only path. All ways lead to the same destination, but not all destinations were her own, nor all destinations were righteous, not all destinations the one her righteous soul should take. There was only one way, and this, here, was her one and only path.

Her realization wasn't deep enough, long enough…but she felt she had understood something about her own kind for the first time.

And she had. There, a Seal emerged on her soul. The Seal of Recognition of bloodline.

There was no word attached to it, no explanations. But neither of them, Marr or Wei Zhiruo, felt strange at seeing this thing appear; although neither of them had known such things existed before. They both looked at the seal which looked like a shape of a creature, but which was too jumbled up to be legible. A new Inheritance sounded in both their minds.

「For the one who earned the blessing, and knows the 'Way.'」

And then…she knew.

Why didn’t the inheritance feel complete in the previous Awakening?

Why was she…such a divided being…

She felt she understood it better.

Every bloodkin, since the first Ancestor, had the same lineage, the same path, the same way. All those who Awakened this 'seed' of the bloodline, they earned the Seal of the clan. This was the actual inheritance. It carried all the countless experiences of their kind, sealed inside it, and only the Real and worthy inheritors could get a chance to get a part in the Sacred lands. But what earned them the right to inherit? Only the realization of the way – and its keys had always been in the small couplet singing the praises to an unexpected ‘way’. Strange.

This seal was her identity, her token which she had earned by just a few minutes of realization...but which she missed because the time wasn’t ripe. Could any bloodkin who got his inheritance from Awakening at the age of five, ever realize these complexities? Wouldn’t he most likely lose it like her, thinking that piece of ‘chant’ as a process, not the actual destination?

"I never realized that even the order of thinking must be different to actually be different. I usually murmured and pondered that I was different from other races, but never realized how much my thoughts remained in the same mold and order as my childhood self. I was like a human living in a bloodkin shell. Emotions, heritage, loyalty...many things were jumbled up, and it didn't help that there was no other similar kind to show me the 'path'. It's no wonder...I never gained the recognition of the Bloodline, and the seal never appeared..." Wei Zhiruo sighed slowly. “ Things changed. Many things have changed since then till now…”

Marr had come outside of her soul. He sat over her head, equally ponderous. They both felt this sensation for the first time and started thinking about all the clues they had missed.

Wei Zhiruo stilled her body, lingered in the pain and now enjoyed this sensation. Ten more minutes and she will be done.

The pain was good; the pain meant she would soon be no longer a human and regain her own self completely. No longer will she stand atop the swinging bridge between two creatures on both ends, distinctly different in their origins and nature. She couldn’t go back to her human ways…but she will finally have a destination to move forward to. A destination she had no idea existed as a choice.

This wasn't an empty tale of glamour and mystery…it was a way of life distinctly different from anything she had ever known. Not a myth now, but her life.

The willow tree seemed to have sensed her happiness, as she felt a thoughtful nudge of reciprocal joy coming from it. Marr too, was slowly enjoying the subtle changes still napping over her head. He was indeed tired as she was.

They had both spent all their energy on finally wading through the last hurdle. The soul transformation looked fine on surface, but it also ate up much more energy than previous transformations. Now, all the spare energy inside Marr’s leaves were gone and she too had spent too much life-essence, almost ten year's worth of her human life, and all her Spiritual Consciousness. She needed rest, so she sat down still and meditated.

In the meantime, she and the Willow tree shared their 'thoughts'.

The talk between souls was hardly comprehensible – it was all flowing in sensation; what you felt you conveyed, and all emotions were heightened and formless. Happiness felt like sadness, sadness like nostalgia and like this moment, she received the warmth and compassion from the age-old tree which felt really similar to being pitied.

But Wei Zhiruo never questioned such pure emotions – any ‘thought’ conveyed to her was good for her. Like right at this moment, she felt the tree reminiscing its old days and ‘saw’ and experienced its emotions as it grew from a sapling, grew its first new leaf, grew higher and higher, ate delicious food and nurtured its roots. The seasons appeared in constant interchanging intervals; yet not a moment was the same. The autumn, winter, spring and summer rolled into each other, yet their feelings left behind in their separation and arrival was always a new found sensation, as if living in mind.

The willow shared her life, and how its leaves felt in all of them. Interestingly, the tree liked the winter best, because then she will have no companion other than her closest companions like the chattering Purple Berry trees, and sweet spoken Ginkgo’s growing nearby and they chatted and slept, and slept then talked some more, till buds started growing on her branches.

It was poignantly different. Ethereal.

Wei Zhiruo was so immersed in the trees chattering that she didn’t even feel the time slip away. Two hours came to a close and soon, the ordeal ended. If it wasn’t for the sudden needle-like pain on her back, she would still be immersed ‘talking’ with the tree – but the pain woke her up.

“Marr, can you see what this is?” She asked him.

"What happened?" He raised his head.

"It feels like something is growing over my back? I cannot explain the sensation...it feels like needles piercing at points which are close together. And they are trying to write something…am I correct in my assumption?"

Marr flew behind her back, and Wei Zhiruo connected her sight with his. She opened her lapels and let down her clothes.

“Is this the bloodline seal?” Marr asked after examining it closely. “Yes – it is. It has just started unravelling. It shouldn’t make sense in the beginning, but later they will form a seal or clan totem which has the most resonance with you. It’s just an outward manifestation to recognize other clansmen. We would hardly need this thing here…”

Wei Zhiruo waited for some while till the image could begin to make sense. By the end of it, her whole back was covered in a life-like tattoo of a Broad-striped black-veined butterfly.

It was beautiful. The butterfly spread its wings spanning all over her shoulder blades. It looked quite life-like. The black was unambiguously visible against the white of her skin, and she could almost feel the numbness settling over, as each new stroke appeared and completed the tattoo to perfection.

“Is it really that?” Wei Zhiruo didn’t wait for an answer and hurriedly put back her hanging clothes. “What if there are other clansmen here? Didn’t we think the Middle World will have no bloodclan descendants, and then we met those two brothers? Their bloodline purity wasn’t good but they were family.”

“I don’t know…just a feeling.”

To this she didn’t know what to reply. She just looked past the mottled canopy, shielding all the light. The darkness covered her features and made her ease her troubles in solitude. They just enjoyed the peace and quiet of the moment, each other's silent company.

A few minutes later, Wei Zhiruo used her Inner eyes to feel all the changes from start to end.

The skeleton, including the spine on which she had carved the seal had differentiated, becoming stronger, with a pearlescent sheen over it and all those dark elements plaguing it before were nowhere to be seen. The hearts, lungs and spleen were not the same as before too. There was no trace of their earlier vulnerability, nor its earlier diseases.

Instead of being as thin as hair, or spider gossamer, now her meridians all looked wider and stronger, and the principle twelve of them had even grown in size. A little, but definitely widened.

The blood…it was still red, but felt a different red than before. And she saw it. Marr had changed too. His leaves were shining more brightly despite being emptied of all starlight. And there it was — his first bloom, also a gift from the seal.

It was just a bud at this moment, but now, the whole red tree had this soft, golden bud shyly growing at the peak of one of the branches.

“You’ve grown stronger.”

“I have – just like you. I can feel you changing Amaranthus. I can’t put my fingers on it, but something very essential did change in you.” He nuzzled his nose with hers, trying to let go of the strange sense of loss he felt.

If the previous her had been the sea brimming with tumultuous rage, then now, she was the vastness, the emptiness. She had settled down. Maybe she let go of a number of sad things inside her?

Wei Zhiruo cuddled the sad cat in her arms and said, “Not true. To even reach this step, I climbed a hundred steps in my previous life.” So, it wasn’t a day’s change.

This was the culmination of all her trials in her last life.