The caravan crested a gentle rise as evening bled into the perpetual dusk of Shadow Qi's dominion, and White Horse Village emerged from the gloom that had swallowed the world whole.
The small settlement huddled around a modest hill, wooden walls dark with age and weather embracing the settlement in a protective ring. Their timber planks were damp, catching the amethyst light in streaks that made them appear slick as oil. Beyond those walls, buildings clustered around a small hill that stood at the village's heart, their roofs barely visible through the roiling shadows.
The village took its name, so the merchant Wing had mentioned some days ago, from a white horse statue that crowned the hill's summit, a guardian carved from pale stone that watched over the homes below. They could not see it now. Shadow Qi had ruled the Celestial Cycle for over a week, smothering the world beneath its purple-veined sky, and the statue remained hidden in darkness.
Mingxuan walked near the rear of the formation, Xinyi beside him with Yang nestled against her chest. The kitten's golden eyes tracked the swirling shadows with wary attention. Yin wove between his feet, her black fur rendering her nearly invisible save for the occasional glint when her gaze caught the amethyst light bleeding from overhead. She, at least, had regained her confidence.
The yin spirits had not approached since the primordial creature fled before Mingxuan's Death Qi. But they had not left either.
He felt them in the darkness. They watched from places where shadow pooled deepest, behind gnarled trees, within the hollows of irrigation ditches, beneath the overhang of abandoned shrines. Shapes that slithered and drifted, hungry things drawn by something in the caravan like flies to rot. The fox spirit's appearance had been an anomaly, a playful interloper. These others bore no such levity. They circled and observed, waiting for weakness, for the moment vigilance faltered.
Someone here is cursed
, Xiaoling had said. The words echoed through Mingxuan's thoughts as his gaze trailed over the caravan.
Ahead, torchlight flickered atop the village gates, small flames that seemed to struggle against Shadow Qi's thickness, their orange glow barely penetrating beyond arm's reach. A figure moved there, silhouetted against those flames, and as the caravan drew closer, a voice rang out across the darkness.
"Stop there!" The silhouette reared up, torch held high, its flame guttering though there was not a breath of wind. "Identify yourselves!"
Ping, the more talkative of the two merchants, pulled his cart to a halt with visible irritation. "Merchants and travelers!" he called back. "Use your eyes, fool! Do we look like spirits?"
The guard—Mingxuan could see him more clearly now, a tanned man perhaps forty years old with a long, dark beard but short-cropped hair—leaned forward over the wall's edge. His face emerged into the torchlight, gaunt with exhaustion and fear. "There are things in the darkness that wear human skins. Things that speak with borrowed voices and smile with stolen faces. We've learned to be careful."
Mingxuan privately acknowledged the wisdom in that caution. The fox spirit had proven how flawlessly such creatures could mimic humanity. Without his death sight, he would never have known, its illusion flawless until Yin's mew had shattered it.
Wing joined his partner's protests, his smoother voice carrying an edge. "We have important business in Ironhold and cannot afford delays. Shadow Qi has dominated far longer than is natural, and we've risked enough travelling under it. Let us in before something worse than spirits finds us out here."
Fear laced through his words. It was a fear Mingxuan recognized in all of them. Shadow Qi typically ruled the Celestial Cycle for mere hours, a rare element that flickered through existence before surrendering to more stable qi types. That it had persisted for days now was unprecedented. Wrong in a way that made the world feel unbalanced, as though the natural order had tilted on its axis and might at any moment spill them all into void.
"I don't care if you have business with the Jade Emperor himself," the guard shot back. "You could be walking corpses for all I know. We've dealt with our share of infiltrators already."
"This is absurd!" Ping's voice cracked with strain. The merchants had been growing more agitated with each day Shadow Qi held dominion, their usual taciturn composure fraying thread by thread. "Look at us! We have children, for the ancestors' sake! Would spirits bother bringing children along?"
"Prove you're human," the guard cried, and Mingxuan heard the apology buried beneath the demand. "Please. Just... prove it somehow, and I'll open the gates. But I can't risk it. Not after what happened to Old Jin. Not after what wore his face for three days before we realized."
"We understand your caution," Yuzhen said. She stepped forward from the family's cart, little Shufen clinging to her robes. "But please, my children are frightened. We're just a family hoping to reach Ironhold safely. We're taking over my husband's father's teahouse. The Golden Chrysanthemum, perhaps you've heard of it? We've been on the road too long already, and this darkness..." She trailed off, swaying slightly, one hand pressed to her chest in a gesture of exhaustion that needed no embellishment.
"Mama?" Shufen's voice piped up, small and wavering and so perfectly, heartwrenchingly human that Mingxuan saw the guard's resolve crack. The little girl looked up at the man on the wall with tearful eyes. "Please let us in. I'm scared of the shadows."
The guard's torch dipped. For a long moment, he stood frozen, caught between duty and compassion, between paranoia and kindness. Then his shoulders sagged.
"Right," he said, voice rough. "Right. Of course. I'll..." He disappeared from view, and moments later the sound of heavy bars being lifted echoed through the quiet. "Go straight to the inn. Don't wander. Don't... Just stay together, alright? And if you see anything strange, anything at all…"
"We'll report it immediately," Zhiqiang assured him, relief flooding his voice.
The gates soon groaned open, revealing the village beyond. Orange torchlight spilled out to meet them, though the shadows swallowed most of it. The caravan moved forward as one, oxen and horses and people all eager to escape the watching shadows, to put walls between themselves and the things that swam through darkness.
Mingxuan let the others go first, maintaining his position at the rear out of habit and caution, and watched as the caravan moved ahead, carts creaking, oxen lowing their relief at the prospect of rest and fodder. His gaze tracked each member methodically.
Two merchants: Ping and Wing. Secretive about their trade goods, fearful and irritable in equal measure.
One family: Zhiqiang, Yuzhen, and their three children, Zonghan, Yahui, and Shufen. Ordinary people fleeing toward new opportunities, burdened by hope and uncertainty.
One farmer: Enlai, bound by perceived debt and duty to transport a demon-touched girl to Ironhold.
And somewhere among them, according to Xiaoling's assessment, walked someone cursed. Someone whose soul carried enough sin to draw curious spirits and worse things.
Mingxuan had been trying to determine who it might be. But the primordial spirit's retreat had prevented further observation. The spirits, frightened away by his inadvertent display of Death Qi, had maintained their distance. Without being able to see which specific individual they gravitated toward, he possessed no way to identify the cursed party.
The problem gnawed at him.
A curse of sufficient magnitude to attract supernatural attention posed danger to everyone nearby. Misfortune didn't confine itself politely to a single target. It spread, contaminated, pulled others into its orbit through proximity and association. If they continued traveling together without understanding who carried the curse and why, they risked sharing in whatever catastrophe pursued that individual.
His gaze drifted back toward Enlai's cart, where Xiaoling sat among the grain sacks like a ghost. Shadow clung to her despite the proximity of torchlight, refusing to relinquish its claim. Her ice-blue eyes met his across the distance.
She offered him the smallest of smiles. Sad and knowing and resigned all at once.
oOoOo
They had stood at the caravan's edge, Mingxuan and Xiaoling, while the others huddled close in packs; the family together, the two merchants on their cart, Enlai between his oxen. The primordial spirit's visit had shattered whatever fragile sense of safety the caravan had maintained, and its departure had only deepened the unease rather than soothing it.
"What did you mean, cursed?" Mingxuan asked, staring wide-eyed at Xiaoling.
She had regarded him back with those pale eyes, head tilted as though puzzled by his confusion. "Exactly what I said. Someone in this caravan carries significant sin on their soul. Enough to draw attention from yin spirits, who have a sense for such things. They're creatures of darkness and misfortune. Cursed souls call to them like blood calls to sharks."
Mingxuan had felt his death sight pulse at the edges of his awareness, showing him endings and futures that branched in a thousand directions. But none of them had offered clarity on this. "I don't understand," he'd admitted. "When I hear the word ‘curse,’ I think of malicious spells cast by cultivators or demons. Things imposed from outside."
"Those exist, but what I'm referring to is different. More fundamental. There are two major forces of karma that govern existence: merit and sin. A soul accumulates merit by performing deeds aligned with the natural order, and accumulates sin by performing deeds out of alignment with it. Simple enough, yes?"
Mingxuan had nodded slowly, though simplicity felt distant.
"The Celestial Cycle dictates much of what constitutes alignment or misalignment," she had continued. "During a Wood Qi cycle, for instance, growth becomes meritorious and destruction sinful. Planting trees gathers merit. Burning forests accumulates sin. Different elemental phases prioritize different aspects of reality—what might be meritorious under Fire could be sinful under Water."
"But there are constants?"
"Universal ones, yes. Generosity typically gathers merit regardless of cycle. Theft accumulates sin. Though even these bend slightly depending on which qi dominates. Shadow Qi, for example, values secrecy. Sharing secrets becomes sinful under its rule, while keeping them gathers merit." Her smile had flickered, wry and bitter. "Convenient, isn't it? The universe adjusts its morality to suit the prevailing element."
The cynicism in her tone had resonated with something in Mingxuan's chest, but he had pushed past it. "And someone who accumulate enough sin become cursed?"
"Exactly. Souls that accumulate significant merit become Blessed; fortune flows toward them. Opportunities present themselves. Dangers turn aside. People feel drawn to them, trust them instinctively, want to help them succeed. It's subtle. Not some obvious divine favor, but rather the universe itself gently tilting circumstances in their direction."
"And those who accumulate sin?"
"Become Cursed. The opposite occurs. Fortune flees. Opportunities slip through their fingers. Dangers find them more readily. People instinctively distrust them, avoid them, sometimes even hate them without understanding why. It manifests as what mortals call 'bad luck,' but it goes deeper than chance. It's the universe itself recoiling from them."
Mingxuan's chest had felt cold. He'd thought of Seventh Stone, of villagers crossing the street to avoid him, of doors closing and voices falling silent when he approached. Had thought of the way even kind-hearted folk had looked at him with barely concealed unease, as though something about his presence made their skin crawl.
"You're not cursed," Xiaoling had said, reading the question in his expression. She'd actually laughed softly. "Trust me, you'd know if you were. Blessings and curses become far more visible for cultivators. The effect magnifies as you advance through the cultivation stages, becomes impossible to miss or ignore."
She'd leaned forward, and the amethyst sun had caught in her ice-blue eyes, making them seem to almost glow. "In fact," she'd said, voice dropping lower, more serious, "taking life for the sake of greed is one of the most sinful acts possible, regardless of which element rules the Cycle. And Death cultivators..." She'd trailed off meaningfully.
Mingxuan's hands had clenched at his sides. "I don't take life for greed. I harvest what's already ending."
Xiaoling had waved away his protest with one pale hand. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm explaining why Death cultivation is considered the worst heresy by orthodox sects. Methods of accumulating power that inherently accumulate sin will always be condemned and hunted." She paused, studying him. "Most Death cultivators become deeply cursed. It's one of the many reasons they're feared beyond all other types of heretics. Aside from possessing abilities that are, ah, rather difficult to defend against for even the most powerful cultivators."
"I… see."
Mingxuan turned his attention back to the rest of the caravan. They had withdrawn to a cautious distance during his exchange with Xiaoling, clustered around their carts like prey animals seeking the illusory safety of numbers. When his gaze swept across them, most looked away like they had been caught watching something they should not. Only Xinyi remained nearby, watching them with concern.
The fear rippling through the caravan felt different from what Mingxuan had endured in Seventh Stone. There, it had been the visceral recoil from otherness, that primal hatred of the strange thing they could not comprehend. The fear had worn faces twisted with suspicion and disgust, voices raised in accusation, hands that reached for stones and farming tools turned into weapons.
Here, the fear held a tremor of awe. They had witnessed Xiaoling stand against something vast and primordial. Had heard her chant in syllables that made the air itself shiver with recognition. Had watched a faceless horror fade back into shadow at her command, or what seemed like her command.
To them, she was power made manifest. A girl who could face down the darkness and walk away unscathed.
And Mingxuan realized that they had likely heard Xiaoling's declaration afterward. That casual mention of the qi flowing through his meridians, the claim that the creature had fled before him rather than her efforts.
He had been speaking quietly. They both had. But fear sharpened hearing in strange ways, and the caravan had been holding its collective breath, straining to understand what had just preserved their lives.
How much had they caught? Enough to know he was a cultivator, certainly. Enough to understand that something about his cultivation had frightened away a being that could wear reality like an ill-fitting coat.
Had they heard the word "death"? Or had Xiaoling's discretion held through that crucial moment?
Mingxuan studied their faces, searching for signs of the horror that label would invoke. But he found only bewilderment threaded through with that strange, terrified reverence. They feared what they did not understand, but not yet with the bone-deep revulsion that his path inspired in those who knew only its name.
A small mercy. Though he suspected it would not last long if they continued traveling together.
"How do we determine which of them carries the curse?" Mingxuan asked, pitching his voice low enough that only Xiaoling would hear. His gaze tracked each member methodically, searching for signs his death sight might have missed. "The merchants seem the most likely candidates, but I have no way to be certain."
Xiaoling's ice-blue eyes followed his attention across the caravan. Her expression remained placid, almost dreamy, as though discussing cursed souls required no more emotional investment than commenting on the weather.
"Discovering such things is a special skill," she said. "One I do not possess, unfortunately. Merit and sin leave their marks on the soul, but those marks exist in dimensions most cultivators cannot perceive without specialized techniques or artifacts." She tilted her head, considering. "The Heavenly Sword Pavilion trains seers who claim to read karma. The Five Elements Temple is said to employ divination mirrors that reveal a soul's balance. But for those of us without such tools..." She shrugged. "We can only make educated guesses based on behavior and circumstance."
"And it becomes more complicated," Xiaoling continued, wry amusement flickering across her features. "Merit and sin can be transferred through various techniques. Quite complicated and esoteric techniques, mind you, requiring resources and knowledge far beyond what any of these mortals would possess. But theoretically possible."
Mingxuan frowned. "Transferred? You mean one person could take on another's sins?"
"Or another's merit, yes. There are rituals. Blood sacrifices that split karma between participants. Ancestral ceremonies where descendants inherit the spiritual debts of their forebears. Even certain demonic contracts that trade merit for power, or sin for protection. Though I suspect none of our traveling companions have engaged in such practices. These techniques require either deep cultivation knowledge or access to beings who possess such knowledge."
"Then the curse stems from their own accumulated sins?"
"Perhaps." Xiaoling paused, and something shifted in her expression. A subtle darkening, as though clouds had crossed an already overcast sky. "But there is another complication you should understand. Merit and sin transfer through the cycle of reincarnation as well."
The word seized Mingxuan's attention like a physical grip. His pulse quickened, blood rushing in his ears loud enough to drown out the murmured conversations behind him. Reincarnation. The mechanism that had carried him to this world of cultivators and elemental cycles. The mystery that had haunted him since the moment of his second birth, when he had gasped his first breath beneath a sky bleeding crimson and felt Thanara's presence recede beyond reach.
"The cycle of reincarnation?"he asked, careful to keep his voice steady despite the urgency clawing at his throat.
Xiaoling regarded him with those pale eyes, and for a moment, something knowing flickered there. As though she sensed the depth of need beneath his question, the desperate hunger for understanding that had driven him to cultivate death itself in hopes of finding answers.
"The precise mechanics are hotly debated," she said eventually. "Scholars and cultivators have argued for millennia about how it works, what transfers and what is lost, whether there is purpose or simply pattern. But there is a popular theory. One that most educated cultivators accept as at least partially true.
"It posits that there is a finite amount of vital energy in the universe. Pure qi, life force, the fundamental essence of existence—call it what you will. This energy is constantly being shuffled around, distributed and redistributed across all living things. Every creature, from the smallest insect to the mightiest immortal, is simply one tiny manifestation of this greater whole.
"When an individual dies, their consciousness, their experiences, their sense of self, and so on and so forth, all returns to the Great Dao. The cosmic consciousness that encompasses everything. But their vital energy, the spark that animated their flesh, disperses back into the universe. Eventually, that energy coalesces again, becomes new life. Plants, animals, people. The distribution is random, or at least appears so to our limited understanding."
"And the merit and sin?" Mingxuan asked gravely.
"Travels with the vital energy." Xiaoling's smile turned wry, bitter at the edges. "The Great Dao exists above the concept of karma, beyond such mortal concerns as good and evil, merit and sin. But the universe itself requires balance. The karma accumulated by a particular measure of vital energy cannot simply vanish when that energy disperses. It must go somewhere, attach itself to whatever new forms that energy takes."
She paused, and her gaze drifted toward the merchants huddled behind their cart. "There is a story," she said, "that illustrates this principle. It happened long ago, when the cultivation world was still young and the great sects were establishing their dominions."
Mingxuan felt Xinyi drawing closer, her curiosity overcoming her caution. Yang stirred in the sling, golden eyes gleaming as though the kitten too sensed the weight of what Xiaoling was about to share.
"They called him the Great Sage of Fire. A cultivator who achieved True Immortality at an age when most practitioners were still struggling through Foundation Building. His mastery over Fire Qi was absolute. They say he could ignite mountains with a thought, transform deserts into seas of molten glass, burn through dimensional barriers themselves to walk between realms."
Mingxuan's imagination conjured the image. A figure wreathed in flames that did not consume, power radiating from every gesture, the very air igniting in his wake.
"But more than his power, the Great Sage was known for his merit." Xiaoling's expression softened, something almost like reverence creeping into her features. "He spent his immortal life defending the weak, establishing orphanages and schools, teaching the cultivation arts to those society had abandoned. He hunted demons because they preyed on the helpless, never sparing a thought for glory or reward. He mediated conflicts between sects, preventing wars that would have slaughtered countless innocents. For thousands of years, he walked the Elemental Realm as a living saint, accumulating such vast quantities of merit that his soul blazed with it, visible even to mortals as a golden aura that surrounded him wherever he went."
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"What happened to him?" Xinyi asked quietly, drawn fully into the story despite herself.
"He chose to die. After eons of service, he announced that his time had ended. He gathered his disciples, distributed his possessions to the poor, and walked into a sacred volcano on the day of a Fire Cycle's peak. They say the entire mountain lit up like a second sun when he released his final breath, and his passing was so dense with accumulated life force that it could be felt across the entire continent even to those unattuned to Death Qi."
She smiled, and it was a strange expression.
"In the decades that followed, the Elemental Realm experienced a massive population boom. Birth rates tripled, then quadrupled. And a remarkable number of those newly born babies displayed strong affinities for Fire Qi, far more than statistical probability would suggest. Something beyond affinity—an almost supernatural talent for cultivation. Children who should have been ordinary rose to become powerful cultivators, establishing new sects, defending their communities, performing acts of startling generosity and courage."
Mingxuan felt understanding bloom in his chest. "His vital energy. His accumulated merit. It distributed itself among them."
Xiaoling's approval was evident in the slight nod she offered. "The scholars called it the Era of Fire. A golden age that lasted a hundred thousand years, powered by the dispersed essence of a single cultivator who had lived his immortal life with such dedication to merit that even his reincarnation blessed the world." Her gaze grew distant. "They say prosperity followed those children and their descendants for generations. The merit he had earned in life continued to shape reality even after his consciousness had returned to the Dao."
The idea that actions in one life could echo forward through countless incarnations, blessing or cursing those who carried fragments of your vital energy, felt simultaneously beautiful and terrifying.
"So when you said someone here might be cursed..." he began.
"It is entirely possible," Xiaoling finished, "that their sin comes from a previous life they cannot remember. Perhaps they were a merchant in their last incarnation who cheated countless customers, accumulating massive sin through years of greed and dishonesty. Or perhaps a soldier who committed atrocities. Or even someone who lived a mostly decent life but committed one terrible act near the end, something so sinful it pushed them past the threshold into cursed status."
She gestured vaguely toward the caravan, where the merchants had begun whispering to each other, voices too low to carry but body language radiating barely contained panic.
"And in this life, they might be relatively innocent. A modest merchant trying to make an honest living, or a farmer fulfilling an old debt, or a mother protecting her children. They might have committed only tiny sins in their current incarnation. A small lie here, a moment of selfishness there. Just enough to push them over the threshold that the accumulated karma from their previous life had already brought them close to."
"That is..." Mingxuan struggled to find words adequate to the concept. "Deeply unfair."
"The universe has no obligation to fairness. Balance, yes. Justice of a sort. But fairness? The Dao grants us no such mercy." She laughed, and the sound held no humor.
"For what it’s worth, though, plenty of people have agreed with you, over the ages. Hence those rituals we mentioned earlier. Turning your unfairness into someone else’s unfairness by saddling them with your sin or merit seems rather hypocritical to me, but who am I to judge?"
Then Xiaoling shrugged. "Of course, it is also entirely possible that I am wrong and no one here is cursed at all. The primordial spirit may have been drawn by something else entirely: Shadow Qi's unusual persistence, or a confluence of elemental energies, or simple curiosity about the strange collection of mortals and cultivators traveling together. The yin spirits we have seen lurking could be following us for any number of reasons unrelated to curses."
Her ice-blue eyes met Mingxuan's directly. "I have no way to know for certain. I can sense the presence of regret, can feel the way it seems to gather around this caravan like storm clouds. But determining the exact source, identifying which specific individual carries enough sin to warrant the label 'cursed', if any of them at all?" She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "That knowledge lies beyond my capabilities."
oOoOo
The days between that conversation and their arrival at White Horse Village had stretched taut with tension that never quite snapped but never loosened either.
The caravan moved with renewed haste despite the spirits no longer approaching. Shadow Qi made distance difficult to judge, made time feel elastic and strange, but still they pushed forward. The merchants drove their oxen harder than was wise. The family's cart rattled over ruts that should have been avoided. Even Enlai's steady patience frayed at the edges, his hands tight on the reins, his shoulders hunched forward as though anticipating a blow.
And everyone began avoiding Mingxuan and Xiaoling.
Conversations died when either of them drew near. Gazes slid away rather than meet their eyes. The merchants had been the most blatant in their avoidance, steering wide berths around both of them as though proximity itself might invite misfortune. They barely dared glance in Mingxuan's direction, and when they looked at Xiaoling—who had more prominently displayed her power during the primordial spirit's approach, chanting in languages that made the air shiver—their expressions held a kind of naked awe that may as well have been fear.
Only Xinyi maintained her steady presence. She had weathered an entire village’s scorn for Mingxuan’s sake; this was nothing to her. Still, his appreciation for her redoubled, and he spent most of the remaining journey by her side, finding comfort in her steady presence and the kittens' uncomplicated affection.
But Xiaoling didn’t have anyone like that, and so Mingxuan found himself drifting towards her as the road wore on. They were kindred spirits in isolation, he supposed. Two people walking paths that made them pariahs, carrying power that others found easier to fear or admire from a distance than understand. Even if she insisted, with that wry half-smile, that she was never truly alone thanks to Duanyuan's constant presence whispering in her thoughts.
"Even in isolation, I have my passenger. My unwanted guest. My reluctant companion. My darkness, my yin, my inevitable end." A pause, then softer: "Though I suppose 'unwanted' isn't entirely accurate anymore. Familiarity breeds... if not affection, then at least acceptance."
She never seemed surprised when he appeared. Just made space for him with the smallest shift of position, acknowledging his presence without demanding conversation. Sometimes they talked about cultivation theory, about the strange behaviors of shadow-touched creatures. More often they simply sat in companionable silence, two outcasts finding brief respite in each other's company.
Mingxuan had understood. Loneliness took many forms, and sometimes the presence of another being—even one that shouldn't exist, that fed on regret and whispered forgotten memories—was better than true solitude.
And then, on the very same morning before they reached White Horse Village, as the caravan prepared to depart, little Shufen had approached him. The girl moved with the furtiveness of someone doing something forbidden, glancing back toward her parents' cart to ensure they didn’t notice. She'd stopped just close enough to whisper, her voice barely audible over the ambient sounds of waking camp.
"Thank you," she'd said, eyes wide and solemn and filled with the kind of courage that only children possessed, the bravery that came from not yet understanding all the reasons to be afraid. "For saving us from the scary thing. From all the scary things."
Then she'd bowed, proper and formal despite her age, and fled back to her family before Mingxuan could respond.
It had warmed something in his chest. One small kindness, freely given, worth more than a thousand forced courtesies.
oOoOo
Mingxuan exhaled slowly, watching his breath puff white in the torch-lit air despite the lack of true cold. Death Qi had always made the world around him just slightly cooler, just barely more still.
Around him, the caravan settled into the courtyard White Horse Village's modest inn. Voices rose and fell, negotiations with the innkeeper proceeding in that careful dance between travelers desperate for shelter and proprietors aware they held all the leverage. Coin changed hands. Rooms were assigned. People began moving toward the promise of walls and roofs and the comforting illusion of safety.
Only Mingxuan remained in the square, staff planted and thoughts churning like water caught in a whirlpool, circling the same questions without finding solid ground, returning inexorably to reincarnation. The concept had lodged in his mind like a splinter, demanding attention even as it defied easy extraction.
Every living thing, according to this theory, was just one small fragment of a greater whole. One tiny spark of consciousness broken off from something larger, something that transcended individual identity:
The Great Dao
. The fundamental principle underlying all existence, the source from which everything emerged and to which everything eventually returned.
When someone died, their experiences—their memories, their choices, everything that made them
them
—those things flowed back into the Dao. And their vital energy, the raw stuff of their existence, scattered. Dispersed back into the universe to be gathered up and shaped into new life.
Mingxuan pressed his palms together, feeling the cold pulse of Death Qi in his meridians, and considered the implications.
The mechanics suggested a universe that recycled everything, wasting nothing, transforming endings into beginnings in an eternal cycle.
But Mingxuan carried fragments of memory from a life that had taken place in a world fundamentally different from this one.
He remembered walking white corridors, sitting vigil beside dying patients, offering comfort in final moments. A world without qi or cultivation, without magic of any kind that he'd been aware of. A world of machines and science and structured certainty, where consciousness emerged from biological processes rather than cosmic forces.
The memories were fragmentary, incomplete. Faces without names. Conversations whose context had dissolved. Emotional echoes that resonated without clear origin. But they persisted with enough clarity to confirm their authenticity.
If Xiaoling's theory held true then the implications staggered imagination. His life force had somehow traversed different universes entirely. The scale of such a system defied comprehension.
What purpose could something so vast serve? Why would the shuffling of vital energy extend across multiple realities? Was there some greater pattern, some cosmic design that required souls to experience existence in fundamentally different forms?
The thought made his head ache. Made the universe feel simultaneously larger and smaller than he'd imagined, both more comprehensible and more mysterious than any framework he'd previously considered.
And what did it mean for his cultivation? For the path he walked?
Death Qi responded to endings. He harvested it when things died, when consciousness separated from flesh and vital energy began its journey back to whatever cosmic reservoir waited to reclaim it. He'd always thought of it as witnessing. As standing vigil so nothing faced oblivion alone.
But maybe it was more than that. Maybe by engaging with Death Qi, by making it his element, he was actually interacting with the mechanism of reincarnation itself. Touching the process by which energy moved from one form to another, from lived experience back to potential.
Did that make his harvesting meritorious? Was he facilitating a necessary transition, easing the return of vital force to the greater whole?
Or was it sinful? Was he interfering with processes that should unfold without human involvement, claiming for himself energies meant to be freely redistributed?
Xiaoling had suggested Death cultivation inherently accumulated sin because it involved taking life for personal gain. But Mingxuan had killed intentionally only a scant handful of times. The majority of his harvesting came from creatures already dying or already dead. He defended endings rather than assigned them. Wasn't there merit in that distinction?
Or did intention matter less than action? Did the universe's karmic calculus care whether he killed maliciously or simply gathered what death naturally provided?
The question spiraled without resolution. He lacked sufficient understanding of the merit-and-sin system to navigate its subtleties. All he knew with certainty was that his soul had somehow retained fragments of a previous existence, and that existence had involved work eerily similar to what he now pursued—shepherding the dying, understanding death's nature, finding meaning in endings.
Perhaps that itself suggested something about karma. Perhaps his path had been shaped by deeds performed across lifetimes, inclinations carved so deeply into his soul that they persisted through the dissolution of consciousness and dispersal of vital energy.
Perhaps he had always been meant to walk this particular road.
An idea bloomed in Mingxuan's mind. He turned from his contemplation of the empty square and sought out Xiaoling, finding her at the corner of the inn, her pale form barely distinguishable from the darkness that clung to her like a second skin.
"There's something I would like your help with," Mingxuan said.
She lifted her head. Her expression shifted, curiosity blooming across features that had been locked in distant contemplation. "Oh?"
oOoOo
The path to the hill’s summit spiralled gently upwards. Narrow lanes gave way to narrower stairs, wooden steps slick with moisture from the cold that came with a world of perpetual shadow. Torchlight grew sparse as Mingxuan and Xiaoling climbed, the villagers below apparently seeing no reason to illuminate a monument when darkness swallowed everything regardless.
The white horse at the peak was cut from pale stone threaded with black veins, weathered by decades of wind and rain until its edges had softened. It stood perhaps twice the height of a man, carved in a posture of eternal vigilance—head raised, ears pricked forward, one foreleg lifted as though perpetually about to step into motion.
Shadow Qi clung to it despite the stone's paleness. Amethyst light traced the statue's contours, pooling in the hollows where eyes should gleam and mouth should open.
Mingxuan felt the presence immediately. Something other inhabited this place. Something old and watchful. The statue radiated it, a spiritual weight that pressed against his skin.
"Do you feel that?" he asked quietly.
Xiaoling stood beside him, head tilted. "This is a spirit anchor. A focal point for protective energies. The villagers likely don't even realize what they have here. They see it as mere tradition, a monument to local legend. But the statue serves as a kind of... ward, I suppose. Drawing benevolent spirits while repelling malicious ones." Her lips curved upwards at one edge. "Though Shadow Qi's prolonged dominance has weakened its effect considerably. Whatever protections once emanated from this place are thin as a hair at present."
They settled before the statue, cross-legged, facing one another close enough they could reach out and touch their palms together. The position felt ritualistic, formal in ways Mingxuan couldn't quite articulate. Two cultivators preparing to touch something profound, something that required ceremony even if neither fully understood what form that ceremony should take.
Mingxuan placed his hands on his knees, palms up, fingers loose. Xiaoling mirrored the gesture.
"What exactly are we attempting?" she asked.
"You perceive regretful memories through Duanyuan's influence," Mingxuan said. "And I can see deaths, both future and past, when conditions allow. What if we combine these abilities?"
Understanding lit Xiaoling's features. "You want to look at the deaths attached to my vital energy. The previous incarnations that still cling to my soul."
"Yes." Excitement threaded through him, quickening his pulse. "If we can perceive the shape of accumulated karma, see the weight of merit and sin, we might identify who among the caravan carries enough curse to attract yin spirits."
"Ingenious. And potentially very dangerous. You're proposing to weave two fundamentally different cultivation methods together. Death Qi and… demonic. The energies could reject each other violently." Her half-smile became full. "The danger to me would be significantly greater, I feel compelled to note."
"Or they could complement each other perfectly. Both our paths deal with endings and memory. Both touch on aspects of existence most cultivators prefer to ignore. I think they might resonate rather than repel."
Xiaoling studied him for a long moment. "Very well. Let's see what horrors we can uncover in the depths of my soul."
They closed their eyes in unison.
Mingxuan drew breath, held it, released it in measured rhythm. Death Qi stirred in his meridians, cold and ancient and patient. He cycled it through the pathways as Liu Wen’s memories had taught him, feeling the energy respond to his will, coiling and uncoiling in patterns that had become second nature.
Across from him, he felt rather than saw Xiaoling's power rising. It manifested differently than any qi he'd encountered, threaded through with something alien. Duanyuan's presence pressed against the edges of perception, a demon's strength filtered through human meridians, transformed into something that existed in the liminal space between two types of being.
Mingxuan extended his awareness slowly, cautiously, reaching toward Xiaoling with senses attuned to endings. Her future deaths bloomed before his mind’s eye.
The lake again. That strange, recurring image that had haunted him since their first meeting. He saw it with greater clarity now, details sharpening as their energies intertwined. Water stretched to distant horizons, its surface mirror-smooth and reflecting a a sky the pink of cherry blossoms.
Two figures sat at the water's edge. Older versions of themselves. Xiaoling's hair had gone white as frost, her pale skin more translucent, as though time and demon possession had slowly rendered her incorporeal. But her ice-blue eyes remained unchanged, still bright with that awareness that saw too much and refused to look away.
And himself. Decades older, perhaps centuries older, face weathered by time and experience until the boy from Seventh Stone had vanished entirely beneath the man he would become. A staff lay across his knees, wood darkened with age and use. Death Qi radiated from him in visible waves, no longer something he needed to consciously cycle, simply an aspect of his existence, as natural as breathing.
Those future selves sat in companionable silence, existing in parallel, two solitary souls who had somehow found in each other permission to be alone together.
"I see it again," Mingxuan murmured, voice distant with wonder. "The lake. It's clearer this time."
"Describe it to me." Xiaoling's voice hushed, reverent. "Please."
He did as best he could. "And we're both there. So much older. Your hair has gone white. My face..." He paused, struggling to articulate what he saw. "I look like someone who has witnessed countless endings and somehow remained himself despite it."
"Do I— Do we
look
happy?"
Mingxuan considered the vision carefully, examining the set of those future shoulders, the angle of those distant heads, the quality of stillness that surrounded them. "I think... yes. Not joyful, perhaps. But content. At peace with whatever paths led us to that shore."
"Good." Xiaoling exhaled slowly. "That's good to know." There was a pause. Xiaoling’s power shifted, and there was a buzz in the back of Mingxuan’s skill, something probing at him, unspooling threads of his awareness. He could have stopped it with his own Qi, but he placed his trust in this strange new companion of his.
"I am no master practitioner of my art," Xiaoling began. "What few visions I can tease out are dreamlike, ethereal. Abstract, at times. Very rarely do they surface as distinct images; Duanyuan is as much interested in emotional echoes and feelings as the actual facts of a memory. Small ones are clearer, ironically. The demon gives them up more freely. A harsh word spoken and never retracted, a chance not taken. The larger the sorrow, the harder it is to pry from his greedy grasp.
"But from you, the first thing I see…" Xiaoling’s voice trailed off, confused. "A woman. You thought she was beautiful, but there was something terribly sad about her. Lonely. You… wished you could comfort her, show her you understood."
Mingxuan nodded to himself. "Nothing in my life brings me more regret than failing her at that moment. I should have been much more than I am."
Xiaoling didn’t pry any further. "Death is ever a regretful thing. The greatest flaw of life is that so few of us can come to terms with it ending. If any kind of regret can cling to a reincarnated soul, it’s that. Work with me, Mingxuan."
Their powers circled each other like cautious dancers, testing the space between them, searching for harmony. Death Qi and demon-touched regret. Endings and memory. Two types of darkness learning to move in tandem.
There came a shift in her breathing, a subtle change in the quality of her presence. They began to weave their cultivation together more deliberately, his death sight reaching into the dreamlike perception Duanyuan provided, both of them sinking into meditation so deep it felt like drowning.
"Deeper," Xiaoling whispered.
A tree wilting, its leaves curling brown and dry, roots shriveling in dry earth. The image held weight that had nothing to do with the tree itself and everything to do with the consciousness that had once inhabited that form, the slow awareness of diminishment as life fled.
A prey animal caught by a predator, terror overwhelming in the moment before teeth found throat, and the vision dissolved into red darkness.
Someone dying of illness, fever burning through flesh while family wept nearby. The memory fragmented before reaching its conclusion, scattering into impressions of heat and helplessness and the gradual dissolution of self.
Someone drowning, water filling lungs, consciousness clinging desperately even as the body gave up its struggle.
More deaths. Dozens, hundreds, cascading through Mingxuan's awareness in a kaleidoscope of endings. A soldier's death by sword. An elder's death by age. A child's death by accident. Each one blurry, indistinct, dreamlike as Xiaoling had warned, lacking the crystalline clarity his death sight normally provided but carrying instead this strange emotional resonance, this sense of lives lived and concluded and returned to the cosmic whole.
The visions accelerated, became a flood, a torrent of mortality that threatened to sweep him away entirely. It felt like the vast vision he'd experienced after fighting the demon in Seventh Stone, when he'd lost consciousness and met Thanara in that space between existence and oblivion. That overwhelming panorama of all the death in the world, every ending happening simultaneously, crushing in its immensity.
But this time, instead of drowning in the deluge, Mingxuan held steady. Let the deaths wash over him without trying to examine each one individually. And gradually, slowly, a pattern began to emerge.
It was not anything that could be rendered in three dimensions or described with conventional geometry. But a presence nevertheless, something he could only perceive with senses that existed beyond normal perception.
Xiaoling's soul, if such a term applied.
It was vast. Far larger than he'd anticipated, a great amorphous thing that carried within it fragments of countless existences. He saw the vital energy itself, that fundamental spark of life force Xiaoling had described in her explanation of reincarnation, and understood that it possessed a kind of memory even without the consciousnesses that had once inhabited it.
Each death had left its mark. Each life had carved grooves into the energy's essential nature. The tree's patient growth and slow decline. The prey animal's brief terror and briefer pain. The sick person's long suffering and quiet surrender. The drowning victim's desperate struggle. Layer upon layer upon layer, experiences accumulated like sediment depositing at a river's bottom, building something that transcended any single incarnation.
This was what persisted through the cycle of reincarnation. Not memory in the conscious sense, not awareness of who or what one had been. There was, however, a deeper imprint, a fundamental shaping of vital energy by the experiences it had carried, the karma it had accumulated, the choices made by consciousnesses long since returned to the Dao.
Mingxuan focused his attention, narrowing his perception. When he looked for it, one side glowed faintly, carrying a quality he could only describe as lightness, as though the energy there yearned upward, sought elevation, pulled toward something bright and distant. Merit, his mind supplied. The accumulated good of lives lived in alignment with the natural order.
The other side held darkness, a subtle heaviness that seemed to sink, to pull downward, to carry the burden of misalignment. Sin.
They interpenetrated, woven through each other like threads in fabric, sometimes dominant and sometimes recessive depending on which fragment of past life he examined. But when he pulled back, viewed the whole rather than the parts, he could see the overall balance.
For Xiaoling, they sat in rough equilibrium. Merit and sin distributed almost evenly across her soul's strange form. They weren’t perfectly balanced—such perfection likely never existed—but neither dominated. Close enough that she walked through the world neither blessed nor cursed, accumulating fortune and misfortune in proportions that averaged out to something resembling normalcy.
Excitement blazed through Mingxuan's chest, hot enough to almost disrupt the technique. He fought to maintain the trance, to hold onto this perception for just a moment longer, but it was a losing battle.
They'd found a way to measure the fundamental karmic weight of a soul, to perceive the accumulated merit and sin that followed vital energy through the cycle of death and rebirth. If he could do this with Xiaoling, they could do it with others. Could examine each member of the caravan and identify whoever carried enough sin to warrant the label "cursed."
"Now then," Xiaoling’s voice carried to his ears as if from far away, "why don’t we have a look at
your
past lives, Mingxuan?"