A few days’ pass and the newly created soul begins to awaken. It has no experience or memories and acts on pure instinct. As any new being would be, it is curious of everything. When it feels that there is a connection to something else, it decides to investigate.

While the soul was investigating, its search went further than just the bond itself. The new soul utilized the bond to delve into the memories of the other soul. Through the memories it was viewing it learned language and words, also that the other soul inhabiting the gem was a female and that her name was Rosanne. While the new soul was gaining knowledge through Rosanne’s memories, her soul began to awaken.

Feeling this, the consciousness was startled and retreated to his own soul.

“Uhhhh… Where am I? Is this the afterlife? It feels dark and empty. Wait, wasn’t my soul shattered?” Rosanne was confused, she felt whole but something was off. It was as if her soul was smaller somehow.

The new soul noticed that Rosanne had awoken and thought that it could pull a prank on her. “Hello and welcome to the afterlife. I am the god of the dead and your new ruler. What I say goes and if you disobey me, you will be punished!” As this soul had no gender, the voice it emitted was gender neutral yet adolescent.

Upon hearing this voice, Rosanne was understandably panicked and in a fluster replied “I don’t know what I can do for one such as yourself sir, all I can promise is I will try my best to oblige your request. Please don’t punish me!” By the end of her desperate speech, tears were falling down her cheeks waiting for the inevitable reply from the child like presence.

Hearing her response, the new soul couldn’t contain its laughter anymore. “Hahahahahahahahaha… I can’t take it; this is just too funny.” It continued laughing after it finished talking.

Once it had calmed down it took a look in Rosanne’s direction and noticed a confused look on her face. “Uh, what’s going on here? Aren’t you the god of the dead?” She asked puzzled.

“Yeah, about that…” the new soul returned. Rosanne hearing this, became furious. “Do you think you can play me for a fool? If you aren’t the god of the dead, then who the hell are you and where are we?”

“Me? I’m nobody really. I just woke up myself, I don’t have a past. As for where we are, I can only guess we are in my body. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty comfortable. It feels like I’m meant to be here.” It answered unsure of the truth.

Rosanne, while still pissed about what had previously transpired, managed to ask in a calmer manner. “If this is your body, what are you? I can’t see anything, there are no smells to speak of and I feel nothing around me. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know; I think I’m a gem but from what I can tell there aren’t any others like me. That’s according to your memories anyway.” It answered in an offhand manner.

“Hold on, what did you just say? Did you say you were looking at my memories?” When Rosanne heard this, she felt violated like her privacy had been invaded.

“Yeah, but because you woke up I didn’t get a good look. I’m intrigued about the world, mind if I take another peek?” The soul asked candidly.

“Not in your lifetime, I won’t let you look at my memories. Ever heard of privacy, you could always just ask about the world you know?” She replied hastily.

As she finished her response, Rosanne had a realization. “You said that you think you’re a gem right? If that’s true you’re some type of treasure. Maybe of some value which means if you’re caught and refined I will be as well seeing as I’m also stuck in here with you. Okay, we are going to have to figure out a way to defend ourselves.”

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“But I want to know more about the world, come on tell me, tell me!” The new soul whined in a relatively bratty tone.

“Fine you win, first lesson. In this world there are people know as Cultivators. They can be immensely powerful. They have the power to destroy mountains or rip the sky apart if they so choose. They can even become immortal. Cultivators are extremely greedy though, when they find any sort of treasure they will refine it to gain more power or make a weapon or armour of some sort. This means that if they find us they will refine us and kill us. Do you want to survive? Because I sure as hell know I do! We need to find a way to gain more power and use it.”

“Ahh!! I don’t want to die. Tell me how do we get stronger?” The newly created soul said with an obvious panic in its voice.

“Well the first thing you need to do is sense the energy around us and draw it in. Since you don’t have a Dantian and your body is a gem, it shouldn’t matter where you store it. Give it a try.”

The young soul was hanging off every word, it tried sensing the energy around it. At first it wasn’t able to feel anything but after a few minutes it was able to sense a faint sensation, it was small but substantial enough to feel. It had a comfortable and familiar feeling. It tried to draw it in and it was able to do so with relative ease. As the energy entered the gem, it began to change. Although the change was slight, it was a difference nonetheless.

“I did it!” It shouted, excited about its success.

“Wait!! It hasn’t even been ten minutes yet. It should take weeks at least to sense energy, never mind drawing it in.” Rosanne said shocked at what had just transpired. In her experience it had taken her around a month to learn the very same thing.

Although it did make sense, the soul was formed from fragments that had originally belonged to a cultivator and had been exposed to large amounts of energy in the first place. The body was also that of a gem so it had a high affinity for energy.

Seeing how easy it was to draw in the energy, the soul tried again. Upon doing so it felt a splitting pain like its soul was tearing.

“You shouldn’t try to absorb too much at one time. Let me guess you had an intense pain just then right? That is called a Backlash, it happens when you can’t support the energy you are drawing in with your own power.” Rosanne was gloating at this point as she knew what would happen from previous experience. “When a cultivator circulates the energy through their Meridians they filter it into their own Qi energy causing it to increase, since you are a gem I guess you don’t have to follow that procedure really.”

When the new soul heard this, it continued to absorb energy. After some time passed it became bored with simply absorbing the energy. “What do I do with this Qi?” It asked eager to understand more about this power it just discovered.

“Personally, I have no idea. You are the first gem I have encountered with a soul inside. I haven’t even heard of something like this before. You should really make certain you can control your Qi before you try using it in any way. It won’t end well for us if you stir something up and we are found.”

Disregarding Rosanne’s warning, the new soul decided to send its Qi into its surroundings attempting to sense anything around the gem.

Although this decision may seem small at first, it caused a chain of events that started everything.

When the gem was absorbing the energy, it changed that energy into Qi, it became a certain type of Qi. One with a somewhat parasitic effect. This Qi invades non-living things such as rocks and dirt. It also takes over living things with no active consciousness such as grass and trees. The Qi energy forces these things to form a bond, claiming it as part of its territory.