Mystique Soul: A Cultivator's Flame
Chapter 72

Chapter 72: Chapter 72

Darkness.It stretched infinitely, a void without end, without warmth.

Feng Jiao Xue had felt many things in her life, pain, fear, loneliness, but never had she felt this.

She floated within the abyss, weightless yet heavy, as if the darkness clung to her like an unseen chain. There was no up or down, no way forward or back. Just her. Trapped.

Feng Jiao Xue tried to look for a way out. She had always lived in darkness but... not like this.

She had known pain, death, shadows and darkness but not this intimately.

She tried to reached out, to run but it was nothing, wherever she looks, there is ablsosute nothing.

What was stranger was that her body was clad in her assassin attired yet as she felt to where she would ussually hide her weapons, there was none.

"Jin De!" Feng Jiao Xue calls in her out her voice echoing through the empty space.

Feng Jiao Xue truly felt the cold tendrils of fear claw at her heart as no one responded.

"He can’t hear you.." A whisper responded. Soft, trembling, it continued. "No one can hear you here"

"Who are you?!" Feng Jiao Xue asked coldy her head snapping to every direction anxiously. "Where are you?"

"Please... please don’t push me away."

Feng Jiao Xue’s breath caught.

That voice-

Slowly, she turned and then she saw her.

A girl, small and frail, curled up in the darkness. Her long, disheveled hair clung to her pale skin, her body trembling as if even the shadows were too heavy for her to bear. Her eyes, large and pleading, shimmered with unshed tears.

She was younger than Feng Jiao Xue had expected, her frame delicate, almost fragile. But more than that, what struck her most was the sheer emptiness in her gaze.

A person who had spent her entire life waiting for something, someone, to save her.

A girl... that use’d to be her.

"Feng Jiao Xue..." Feng Jiao Xue murmured stunned. "How..."

The girl flinched at her voice, hugging herself tighter.

’To curl on yourself is to make be a smaller target...’ Feng Jiao Xue’s heart ached for the girl. ’A learned habit to those who knows of real pain all their life’

"I... I never left" ’Feng Jiao Xue’ whispered with her voice hoarse, as if it hadn’t been used in a long, long time. "I couldn’t. We may be the same soul but... we arent of the same consciousness... I was already the Feng Jiao Xue of this world before... you and I became ’Us’"

Feng Jiao Xue took a step forward, the void rippling beneath her feet. "You should have disappeared."

"I know." The girl smiled bitterly, hugging herself tighter.

It was strange, to see herself so weak, so deafeted and yet as Feng Jiao Xue looks in those familiar eyes, she saw the the same fire that burns deep within her coils.

Flames that continues to ignite with the fight within her. The spark left that perhaps, this ’Feng Jiao Xue’ isn’t even aware of.

"Then why didn’t you?" Feng Jiao Xue stepped forward until they where only a step apart. "I thought... How are you still here?"

Somehow, it all made sense. The emotions, the voices, instinct, everything. The part of her soul that she thought was because of the previous her, left behind by her incarnate... have always been this ’Feng Jiao Xue’

Silence. ’Feng Jiao Xue’ looked her in the eye and replied softly "Because I don’t want to die."

Feng Jiao Xue stilled. "But your not-"

"I don’t want to disappear." ’Feng Jiao Xue’ continued. "And that’s scarier than dying" The girl’s fingers clenched against her arms, knuckles white.

"I don’t want to be forgotten." Her voice cracked, and suddenly, the dam broke. "I don’t want to be nothing! I don’t want to fade away like I never existed! I don’t- I don’t-"

A choked sob as tears fell down the little girl’s eyes. "I don’t want to be alone anymore."

Feng Jiao Xue stared, her heart tightening in a way she hadn’t expected.

This girl... she had suffered.

A lifetime of silence. Of being ignored, ridiculed, discarded. She had been born without talent, without worth in the eyes of her family, and so she had been treated like a stain, an existence better off erased.

She had spent her days waiting, hoping, wishing someone would reach out to her. That someone would see her.

Suddenly, as the sobs echoed and echoed huntingly in the frozen space, Feng Jiao Xue was crushed with her emotions.

How she had waited for her loving grandfather, longingly wishing, dreaming, of better days.

To continuesly wait for her ’Big Brother’ for Liang Feng to leave and she stays...

She stays where he left...

Continuesly waiting...

Endlessly hoping...

But no one ever had stayed.

And now, now even she was being asked to leave while this version of her lives the life she had always wished for upon the stars.

To give up her body.

To let someone else take her place.

No.

No, she wouldn’t accept that.

She couldn’t accept that.

’Feng Jiao Xue’ sobbed and choked as she clutched her wild tangled hair in frustration, in anger, indignation and defeat.

Feng Jiao Xue sighed running a hand through her own hair. "I’m not your enemy."

"But you’re not me" the girl whispered.

Feng Jiao Xue narrowed her eyes. "No. I am you. And you are me."She offered her hand to the girl that had always reached out hers. "We are one"

The girl shook her head violently. "I don’t want to disappear," she repeated almost like a prayer. "I don’t want to disappear."

The void trembled.

Feng Jiao Xue exhaled slowly, eyes darkening.

"So you’re going to fight me for control?"

The girl swallowed.

Then with trembling hands and jerking knees she stood.

And despite the terror in her eyes, despite the way her entire body shook-

She nodded.

"Then so be it." Feng Jiao Xue acknowledge her stance.

The void roared.

Feng Jiao Xue barely had time to react before the girl lunged.

It wasn’t like fighting in the real world.

There were no weapons, no techniques- only will.

The burning her of today against the echoes of the girl she once was.

The ’Feng Jiao Xue’ attacked like a wild animal, desperate, clawing, begging the void to answer her.

The darkness twisted around her, moving like a storm, trying to smother Feng Jiao Xue beneath its weight.

It was suffocating.

This girl... she had been trapped here for so long, simmering in emotions she never had the power to express.

The anger, the pain, the terror- it lashed out like a force of nature, seeking to drown everything in its path.

But Feng Jiao Xue was no stranger to battle.

She sidestepped, pivoting on her heel, countering with a force of her own clarity.

A surge of her willpower sent the darkness scattering.

The girl gasped, stumbling back.

"You were weak" Feng Jiao Xue said voice steady. "You let them walk over you. You let them beat you down. You let yourself become nothing."

The girl trembled but her eyes flashed with something raw.

"I didn’t have a choice!" she screamed her voice horse and cracking, as her veins pulsed on her neck as she screamed in utmost frustration and agitation. "I never had a choice!"

The void pulsed.

"I was born without power! Without magic! Without anything!"

Her voice was ragged, desperate.

"No one ever gave me a chance! I tried! I tried to fight! I tried to be stronger! But I-"

Her breath hitched.

"I never had a chance to be anything but pathetic." She collapsed on her knees. "I was never given the chance to be seen"

Feng Jiao Xue stopped her mental attack as well. Her fingers curled slightly.

"I was always meant to lose" the girl whispered her shoulder sagging as if all her strength left her.

"I’m not you"

The ’Feng Jiao Xue’ looked at her with eyes that mirrors that of the dead and a smile that is as hollow as a dried up well. "Not when your so much better"

Feng Jiao Xue took a slow breath. Then, for the first time, she softened. "And yet you’re still here."

The girl flinched.

"If you were truly weak, you would have faded the moment I arrived."

Silence.

"But you didn’t."

The girl’s lips parted but no words came out.

Feng Jiao Xue stepped closer, eyes unwavering.

"You survived."

A single tear slipped down the girl’s cheek.

Feng Jiao Xue reached out her hand again, slowly, carefully. "You’re not nothing."

The girl inhaled sharply.

"So stop acting like it." Feng Jiao Xue took her hand. "You have what I had lacked. Emphaty, emotion... a heart."

The void cracked.

A rush of warmth, a flicker of light.

And then,

The darkness shattered.

One Soul, Two Lives

When Feng Jiao Xue opened her eyes, she was no longer in the void.

She stood in a vast, endless space, filled not with darkness, but with light.

The girl stood before her, silent, unsure.

She was still trembling, still afraid.

But there was something else there now.

Something that hadn’t been there before.

A spark.

A quiet strength.

Feng Jiao Xue exhaled, stepping forward one last time.

"We share this body," she said softly.

The girl hesitated.

"We share this life."

The girl swallowed.

"So let’s live it together."

The girl, echoe of the Feng Jiao Xue that once was, shuddered.

And then, at last-

She nodded.

And as their souls finally intertwined, the light consumed them both.

"I am your strength" Feng Jiao Xue whisphered as the souls merge. "To fight what is ahead."

"Then let me be your weakness" ’Feng Jiao Xue’ echoed. "To keep those that we held dear"