“It’s a path, daughter. The path of someone who survived all the trials and tribulations needed to ascend to Jade.” She quickly spoke over the confused look her daughter gave her, the questions no doubt bubbling in her daughter’s mind. “No, Shui Shui. We have no time for twenty-questions or adolescent scorn.” She gazed at the door, unable to hide her flinch. “I have stretched grandmother’s concessions to the absolute limit, and her eldest son, who has always despised us, senses things evolving beyond his control. That’s a state he never could tolerate. We are already running out of time.”

Shui Jun’s features froze, good-natured bemusement immediately becoming a focused intensity Alex recalled being more than a bit intimidated by, at least once before.

Ah yes. She was the relief pitcher! A girl who hadn’t taken too kindly to the softball snark from Alex’s smack-talking teammates. Not that she had been anything but exquisitely polite to them all. Before closing the final inning with a series of fastballs that had left Alex and everyone else eating dirt.

Something to laugh about with his mother when they had gone in for his checkup the next day.

It was the last game he had ever played.

“How the hell are we running out of time? What does that even mean?”

Her mother solemnly shook her head, gaze growing strangely intent. “Two paths lay before you, daughter mine. To wake up in the arms of a mother who will love and cherish you, to begin a life of privilege, prestige, wealth and good-fortune. A life utterly free of worry and care. A life where you might even unlock cultivation’s glorious promise and potential, and ascend no further than sheer whim and fancy takes you, and even that will lead to a pristine spring and summer of youth that will last for decades, if not centuries.” Her mother gave her an oddly comforting smile. “Not because you don’t have the potential for more. Far more. But you will feel no need to push yourself to embrace the bitter. Not when your entire life is destined to be sweet! That life, and countless other lives. A dozen dozen lives of luck and good fortune. Yours to savor for millennia.

Shui Jun’s eyes had widened at those words, a trembling hand reaching to stroke her mother’s tear-stained cheeks, as if only now realizing the divine potency radiating from the woman who cherished her beyond all others. “Mother, what happened?” The girl began to tremble. “Am I… am I even alive?”

Her mother’s smile didn’t waver. “The other choice is to embrace the secrets within this pearl of Jade. I cannot tell you whose it is, only that their memories will become yours. Their experiences will become yours.” Her mother’s gaze grew strangely intent. “Their pain, bitter struggles, the fierce determination and monstrous obstacles overcome to forge themselves to the cusp of Jade will become your own. And when you eventually perish, as all creatures must, those memories will be forgotten and you will be reborn as one spirit among countless trillions, with no golden lives to look forward to, save those you make yourself.”

Shui Jun’s eyes widened, her look of dismay slowly turning into a determined glare. “If I take the promise of dozens of happy, cancer-free lives… will I remember you? Will I remember Father?”

Qing Bai’s eyes filled with tears. She solemnly shook her head.

That was the moment Qing Bai flinched and turned around and Shui Jun visibly paled, as if risk of fading right back to oblivion under the sudden awful pressure bearing down on the room. Even Alex could sense the furious killing aura through his reverie.

“Qing Bai! I sense the twisting of Fate’s threads as my son twists and writhes under the torments of your bastard lover and his wretched disciple! You will open this door and reveal the secrets of your soul to me, and you will do so now!”

Alex was dismayed to see Shui Jun fade to near incorporability, a powerless spirit being blown to oblivion by bitter mercurial winds that she had no power over at all.

Yet it was nothing for Alex to sooth the winds around her, and brace her before she could completely blow away.

Though he wasn’t expecting Qing Bai’s gaze to transform from horrified dismay to awed disbelief, somehow looking right at him. Even if he was clearly daydreaming… night dreaming upon a caravan meandering through endless desert sands.

“We have no time, my daughter. No time at all. You must make your choice!”

Shui Jun’s ghostly hand stroked her mother’s features. “I’m so tired of hurting, mother.”

A crack resonated through the room entire, Alex sensing oaths shattering and bitter prices of karma that would be ignored by the divine tyrant a heartbeat from forgoing all grace and propriety and storming the room.

Shui Jun, so close to fading away with fortune’s promise, grew suddenly vibrant, her form immediately filling out, now radiating such potent presence that the room itself seemed to fade to insignificance as Shalu’s monstrous screams could be heard faintly above their head.

“Shalu!” Zheng Yi cried, storming back the way he came, his pounding feet shaking the floor beneath them all.

Shui Jun, now radiating the river’s power, seized the Jade pearl in a hand that no earthly force could deny. A hand that an eyeblink later was just that of an uncertain highschool senior once more. The farthest thing from a cultivator, or anyone capable of channeling death’s waters. She flashed her mother a nervous yet determined glare. “There’s no way I’m forgetting you or father. Not ever! So, I’m claiming the bloody pearl.”

Her glare turned to a hopeful smile. “Was this a test? Did I pass it?” She swallowed, suddenly anxious before her mother’s implacable gaze. “Does that mean I get to stay?”

Her mother solemnly shook her head, words cold and implacable with fate’s decree, even if her eyes radiated a mother’s deepest regret.

“No, my child. It means you must embrace the bittersweet centuries that our enemies thought you too stupid to reclaim as your own. And it means we can never see each other again.”

Shui Jun’s mouth opened in furious protest, only to bulge almost comically when her mother calmly plucked the jade core in her daughter’s unresisting hand before shoving it down Shui Jun’s throat.

Shui Jun’s eyes widened in inconceivable horror as she crashed to her knees. Glowing with the furious heat of a nuclear eruption, she opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out save pristine spiritual energy as the girl’s flesh began to blaze with silvery flame, consumed and reforged by the terrible currents now reforging her, body and soul.

A thousand year’s worth of insight and broken memories, in the time it took her great grandfather to storm to the rejuvenation pods above.

When next she spoke, it was with the ragged voice of a girl forced to endure unspeakable torments, and the voice of a woman who had forged herself through countless fires that few could even conceive of, let alone dare.

“Mother!” The words was a cry, a plea, and an acknowledgment.

Tears were streaming down Qing Bai’s cheeks as she sensed her innocent beloved teenaged daughter fuse with the memories and terrible insights of a thousand year old monster.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Until there was no difference between the two.

Two reflections of a single soul, fused into one.

Yet the way Shui Jun kowtowed before the quietly sobbing god wasn’t that of a daughter greeting her mother, but a cultivator honoring her patron god after countless centuries of reverence.

“Lady Qing Bai...”

“Call me mother, silly child.”

It broke Alex’s heart, to see the girl of moments before flinch. “I wouldn’t dare such a thing.” She flushed. “Any more than I already have.”

Qing Bai refused all formality, gathering her now trembling daughter into her arms. “My final gift to you. Even if we had to tear free your diamond ascension, our enemies trapping and damning you for countless millennia after making it clear that they’d throw every single game for a thousand years, so long as it meant none of your father’s kin would ever join our pantheon, twisted and dysfunctional as it is.” She broke down in sobs, and suddenly it was Shui Jun holding her mother. “Those bastards have done all they could to ruin you, the first Terran ever to cross the gulf between worlds, and all your kitsune sisters. But we still managed to rescue your Jade peril!” She bit her lip. “Even if you only have the power of a recently broken through Jade. Not one who ascended through so many ranks that you’re just a half-step below divinity, and so ripe a target for my twisted grandfather to do all he could to destroy!”

Shui Jun visibly trembled under the weight of her mother’s words. “And yet… I remember it all.” Her smile grew pained. “Even if most of it is dreamlike, and I’m as much a varsity pitcher as a girl who would defy the very heavens, crushing entire kingdoms under the fires of my resolve. I sense that things will start to come back very quickly.”

Her mother gave a fierce nod. “They will.”

“And that I will rapidly lose my connection to my first life. That soon the memories I taste will become more me than the first seventeen years that passed in the blink of an eye.”

Qing Bai wordlessly nodded, holding her close. “But at least you will remember your father and me. Even if we become distant memories, our love for you will always find its place in your bitter Jade heart.”

Shui Jun chuckled. “Because all of us who would dare ascend past Gold’s promise and prosperity are bitter, driven creatures, aren’t we, mother?”

Qing Bai sighed, caressing her daughter’s cheek with her palm. “In truth, I wouldn’t know, love. All your other sisters were content with quiet lives with their families, savoring a Silver’s power at most. Very few even dared Gold, wanting only to hide from the malice of gods and men.”

Shui Jun paled. And how it sickened Alex, sensing such desperate, awful fear, even from a Jade. For just a heartbeat, before her fierce resolve overcame mortal emotions entirely.

“And what’s to keep my monstrous in-laws from stripping away all my hard-won power and damning me a second time?”

At that her mother calmly held up her daughter’s wrist, revealing a tattoo of Shadow and Spirit.

Shui Jun’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “This tattoo means that I will be blind to the heavens. That I’ll never be able to ascend again… or even speak to you or father, ever again!”

Her mother choked back a sob, and nodded. “It also means that you will be eternally out of our enemy’s sight. That once you choose to fall from this chamber to the earthly realms below… you will never be able to ascend again. Not in this lifetime, or any other.”

Shui Jun’s eyes widened with impossible hope. “So all those bastards who stole twenty thousand years of my life...”

“Will never be able to cross paths with you again. Not even their priests will sense you. And any mortal agents that serendipity might put in your path...”

Shui Jun flashed a wicked smile. “Are challenges I can surely handle.” Her gaze grew pained. “So this is goodbye forever, then?”

Qing Bai smirked. “Not unless you would chop off your own arm and return with me to my garden, where you could finally meet your sisters before slipping through gentlest shadow into your new life.” She flashed a gentle smile. “But then you would be reborn as Kitsune. Terran no longer. Capable of Jade and Divinity no longer. Though you would have the comforts of your family and our garden between all your future incarnations, and my blood would be just as strong through your spiritual veins.”

Shui Jun swallowed. “I have no interest in chopping off my own arm. Not when I’m already sacrificing so many perfect lives for the chance to be myself, with my memories intact, once more.”

“Good,” her mother sighed. “Because with you no longer forced to guard the river’s waters, the land below is at last realizing how very much they owe you.” She waved away her daughter’s look of alarm. “You’ve more than done your duty, for millennia longer than anyone had a right to ask you. And a new Shui Jun will guard those waters. One who was born for the river and is more than content with her path. Even if she will take centuries to mature.” She gave her still dazed daughter a heartfelt hug. “Now it is time for you to go.”

The girl blinked. “How?”

Her mother gazed at the shimmering golden cord winding from her navel down to the world below. “By following the karmic cord between you and the one who saved you from eternal damnation.”

Shui Jun’s eyes widened. “Wait… I no, how could he be… mother, who is this person?”

Her mother shook her head. “Your father’s attempt at redemption, at undoing the disaster that had claimed your life for so many millennia. WiFu’s second Eternal Disciple. I suppose you could call him your little kung fu brother.”

Shui Jun laughed at her mother’s words, before she abruptly blanched. “Mother… I feel… wait, he’s from Earth? Like me?”

Qing Bai only smiled in response. “Make me proud, child. Embrace the life you most wish to live.”

Shui Jun swallowed, then dipped her head. “Thank you, mother.” Her eyes widened when distant roaring could be heard once more.

“You would dare to defy fate yet again, granddaughter? When I find your abomination, I will take her head!”

Qing Bai’s gaze grew frantic. “Now, daughter. You must descend now!”

The last words Alex heard before he sensed the karmic cord between himself and Shui Jun grow impossibly tight. Then tighter. And tighter still. As if his very soul was being torn from his flesh as a meteor was sent hurtling down from the heavens above.

Alex choked back a scream before jolting upright in a sweat-covered panic, looking around him in a frantic daze before taking a deep ragged breath of the cool nighttime air, chuckling at the stars above, realizing it had all just been a dream.

Then he abruptly stiffened, jerked to alertness by the sense of something… strange.

Something off, as he heard the snort and soft bray of the massive camel-like spirit beasts that tolerated the desert sands so well, as their wagon’s soft rocking jerked with the feel of suddenly anxious beasts eager to be anywhere but here.

Alex was suddenly wide awake, ignoring the pounding of his heart as he cast Qi Perception as far as he could into the inky gloom. His nostrils dilated as he tasted the air.

There was nothing living that Qi Perception could pick up on, not for 80 yards at least.

But a chance shift in the mercurial desert breeze...

There. There!

He cursed softly under his breath when he recognized the scent.

Death.

A scent he could never forget, after spending so long trapped in the River of Souls.

His interface went from frustratingly blank to brilliant with red blinking dots blinking so ominously his gut twisted in panicked knots as he glared in the distance for some visual cue… seeing nothing but shifting desert sands… and then, little more than silhouettes in the strange white mist alien to this desert, were the jerking, shambling silhouettes of that which should never have been allowed to cross into this realm.

Glowing eyes an awful shade of rotting puce pierced the fog as a distant cry from one of the caravanners could be heard. And Alex jerked himself free of the awful sense of drowning dread that had momentarily frozen him, forcing himself to stare out at the encroaching mist once more. Daring to catch the deathly glares fixated on the caravan of now thoroughly spooked spirit beasts and too-silent drivers, Alex refusing to be afraid.

Refusing to fear the fled remnants of a river he had once mastered.

Even if it had been a lifetime ago.