Chapter 48: Twin Paths

Chapter 48: Twin Paths

I didn’t remember dying. The last memory I had was of being in my room, preparing for my test as my mind drifted on random thoughts as I procrastinated my time away.

But now I found certain memories drifting forth as I floated within the darkness. Faded blurring images came to me. Of screams, and of fire.

I heard a loud explosion and a burning hot sensation embedded in my gut. I remember looking down, feeling numb, as blood had poured out my gut. My classmate grabbed me and screamed, as I fell, and then there was nothing.

School shooting? I couldn’t tell, my memories were too vague, but dying from a bullet wound was not the way I’d expected to go out. I guess this made for the second time I had died in an unexpected way.

I looked down at myself and found a pair of familiar T-shirts and jeans covering me. I’d almost forgotten how it’d felt to wear regular clothes over robes. It felt nostalgic, yet also oddly foreign.

“What now?” I called out to the dark. No response came.

“Is this it? Just unending darkness? Talk about lame dude,” I said, as the silence stretched on. I kept muttering to myself nontheless. The words were more to keep myself sane than anything else.

Eventually, I began to walk. This wasn’t my first foray into unending darkness and floaty void expanses after all. Not that my first one lasted too long, or went particularly nice, but dying was just one of those things that happened when you went spirit delving.

But what if I wasn’t dead? Perhaps this was just a haze induced coma and I was still alive. It’d be odd after having the literal heavens shoot me with lightning, but I’ve heard of stranger things happening.

I looked down at myself and tried to feel at my core. Two broken halves sat within, shattered and split right down the middle. Guess there went my cultivation days.

“At least I may still be alive,” I muttered out loud, not feeling the relief my words may have implied.

Dying may be the better alternative over living as a cripple. Although I could probably still do science if I wanted to, yet there was something about the joy of exploring magic that I couldn’t replace. It wouldn’t be the same. Without Labby, Sheldon, all my notes on Alchemy, the pills I was working on. The spirit garden. None of it would be the same.

“Whoa whoa, no depression fest. Things might be recoverable after all. Should’ve thought of all this before defying the heavens and calling it dumb and stuff, too late for regrets man,” I said out loud to myself, trying to keep my spirits from sinking. I’m not sure it worked.

“It seems we’re more similar than I’d ever thought.” a familiar voice whispered..

My head snapped forwards and my eyes widened in surprise as I paused mid-step at the shadowy figure walking towards me.

My own face, a face that I'd grown familiar with in the last two months, headed closer. A frown covering his brows with an arrogant touch to his spirit. He wore the same outer robes I used to, but the clothes fit him much more than they had ever fit me.

I watched with a sinking heart as Lu Jie walked towards me.

“You’re... alive?” I asked, watching the boy walk closer. He held the same arrogance that I associated with cultivators, yet there was also exhaustion in each step he took.

“I am, or was. Until you took my name that is,” the boy said and I winced. I did do that, didn't I? I pretended to be him and lived his life in his stead. In my defence, I’d thought he was gone for good. Not that it’d have made me any more likely to give up... being alive.

I decided to put my moral quandary to the side.

“Well. Thanks for letting me borrow yours. I made sure not to tarnish your name too much, but a crazy young beauty thought you were into men. My bad for that,” I said out loud, trying to get a reaction out of him. Neither of us laughed.

“No? Just like that? You don’t want to be the one doing all the, you know, being alive and stuff?” I asked, surprised.

I would be suspicious of him but... somehow I knew he wasn’t lying. None of this was a lie. I could tell. I was him after all.

“I wish to, now that I’m awake again, the desire fills my heart once more. But I can’t. My spirit is still too weak, and I have changed. If I took over, we would both die,” Lu Jie said, his voice bitter.

“I’ve also had some time to observe you, and think about my life as you went about denying everything I’d lived for up until the very moment I’d died.” I winced once more. Self roasts sucked.

“I watched you through your journey, and I spent a lot of time thinking. I was arrogant, foolish, and frustrated. And I let my ambition and anger get the best of me. I had worked harder than anyone else, yet I’d found only half the result and ultimately, it led us to this,” Lu Jie said, extending his hand outwards and I watched the expression of muted sorrow cover his face.

“Well... yeah. You were kinda stupid honestly. Wait, I’m just roasting myself here, aren’t I? Damn it,” I muttered and was surprised when I heard a chuckle escape from Lu Jie’s mouth.

“I was, and I was a fool. That is another reason why I wish for you to return, instead of me. I wish to see just where your Path will take you. The insight that I couldn’t grasp within all these years, you managed to touch upon with such ease. Perhaps there is something within that yearning of knowledge and understanding, which separates us, but you have ignited my desire to see, and walk that Path with you,” Lu Jie said, as dark smoke whipped around him.

“Miasma... are you gonna go demonic batshit on me now?” I asked, trying to circulate my Qi when I soon realised the state of my dantian, sitting shattered in two.

“Odd for you to say that. Did you forget your own words? Energy is just energy. There is no good or evil within it,” Lu Jie said as he glided towards me.

“The insight I lacked. The reason why when you cultivate, you do so, not in one, but two cycles. It is me, and it is you. There are two of us, two that form the same whole. All my life, I’d cultivated only one half of my spirit, leaving the other behind. It is why it took me twice as long, and twice as much effort to get to where I was. But not anymore,” Lu Jie stared at me, and I found something in my spirit rising. I had an innate understanding of what I was meant to do here.

“It is time for us to be free.” Lu Jie said, extending his hand. Miasma rose around him, sizzling and hissing as it circulated the boy in a dark haze. And then the boy spoke, his words shaking my spirit.

“I am the Gu, the miasma, the poison, the death.”

“And I... am the Qi,” I whispered, extending my hand forwards. My spirit shuddered as I brushed my spirit against Lu Jie’s spirit.

The two halves of my shattered dantian split apart.

Miasma circled around me, mingling with Qi as two cycles formed. One flowing into the other, an eternal cycle that complemented one another.

The energies flowed, filling each half and complementing the other. The Qi filled mine, the Gu, Lu Jie’s.

Two cores shone within the darkness, revolving around each other like twin stars circling one another. One was black, filled with Miasma, the other, a pure white, filled with Qi.

There were the two of us, two halves of the same whole. And thus, so was our Path, made of not one, but two forces.

Something changed in my soul, in both of our souls. Words arose, from the depths of my being, marking themselves within my mind. The First Law within the path I walked, it revealed itself to me. And for the first time since I’d opened my eyes in this world, I felt complete.

The First Law of Cultivation: The Duality of Qi and Gu.

The Qi churned around me, mingling with the Gu from Lu Jie as a storm surrounded the two of us. I stared at Lu Jie, as he gave a wry smile, black hair whipping in the unseen wind as our spirits intertwined.

“I’ll see you soon, Lu Jie,” he muttered, as the storm swallowed us whole.