That place was inside the eastern compound of Wei’s inner courtyard. Called the Eastern wing, it was primarily used as residences of daughters and young masters of the family. 

Quietly tucked between falling walls and unkempt pathways, its position was ingeniously secretive. Surrounding it, that abandoned courtyard besides the pond, there were several linked courtyard houses. Each separated by small alleys and pathways, bridges and elegantly arched corridors supported by high pillars and overarching roofs with their eaves curled up towards the sky. At this moment, those eaves let down droplets of falling dew, pitter-pattering on the marbled paths. A puddle had long formed just under it. Pitter patter, pitter patter it sounded - that was the only sound that could be heard to-night, the only sound audible in such deep hours. 

At day when light flooded its premises aplenty, these buildings with their sprawling gardens and tall pillars lining along alleys and corridors and disjointed but commonplace pavilions, gazebos for resting and lingering around at leisure, all of them formed quite a picturesque escape from limpid, mundane feelings of everyday life into more idyllic recesses of comfort. But at night, with its vast empty spaces and darkness enveloping everything and anything and with no human to add a tale to its tall walls - it appeared plagued with a morbid sense of maligned mourning. As if its stone walls were crying. Its lamenting resounded in the wind, the anger in its emptiness; even the redness of festive lanterns of such a night that had passed couldn't ward off that melancholy. That emptiness.

Unsurprisingly, no one dwelled here. 

Despite the proximity with those more bustling courtyards of older misses and young masters, with their crowds of slaves and servants filing in and out at all hours of night and day close by - this specific spot seemed to be cut-off from all that liveliness. Day or night, it remained forgotten. In fact, its walls had long formed cobwebs like abandoned corners left to the mercy of time, and traces of dust settling down could be found everywhere. Its red pillars had their paints flaking off. The roofs were beyond repair, and moths and termites had visibly eaten away a chunk of its previous architectural glory. 

At a nearby shore, grasses were as tall as an adult man's thigh; their sharp blades making a slithering noise whenever the wind blew past the pond water towards them. To-night there was no such wind.  

The dawn had yet to approach. The red paper lanterns were still hung outside, dangling down the eaves glowing in the dark. Their red reflection falling on the walls were mottled, sliding, often flickering once, twice in the soft breeze.  One could even hear a crisp ringing of bell coming from somewhere inside the gloomy chambers. 

It must be the hour when the darkness is as deep as can be imagined – like blue ink softening into abyssal nothingness. Even the light of the lantern seemed to be being sucked off, an embrace all too clearly suffocating to its existence. And there was no sound. Apart from that haunting pitter-pattering that never ceased. No noise of crickets chirping, no rustling of the grasses. Only silence.

"Plop!"

Water. Cold and biting stung her. It was a torture to endure!

“Why? Why should I endure this? Why? Why-Why-Why this fate? Why only me? No, I won’t accept this!”

Someone had fallen into the pond - she was drowning. No one came to rescue. At the moment of fall, waves after waves washed up to the shore furiously, but soon all the rippling waves and tremors over the pond's black surface silently settled down like a tossed piece of pebble. The previous silence gripped the scene at chokehold, stifling it as before. It wasn't until a full fifteen minutes later that a pair of bony hands broke the pond's stillness again. 

A figure frantically broke through, came out panting and gasping for life. Her white hands pierced through the black waters, a head arose first then her shoulders emerged and then her nose emerged, choking over a mouthful of dirty water - all while frantically wading to stay afloat. Haggard and desperate, she remained engrossed in that heady adrenaline of having survived, panting for breath, then choking horrifically over it, and then gasping and panting some more while still pushing forward through the dark waters towards the shore. In a few minutes her white hands clenched the grasses over the pond’s shore and forced herself out. This brusqueness abruptly ended as she toppled over as if the last bit of protest had stifled out.

Kneeling, Wei Ziya let out a silent cry. No sound came through her strangled neck, yet her eyes were round and hazy and desperately roving in their places - forced to engorge, as the pupils dilated and wavered. Her whimpers finally reached her mouth and then like the most horrific song of a dying bird, her lips trembled and let out a cry. And what a cry it was - like a deer’s last breath at approaching death. And then, she kept crying…crying her heart out. She knew not why but she cried and kept crying.

When the sound of her desperate crying ceased it was a long, long while later. Tears still dribbled down warming her cold cheeks, her throat now sore like a piece of sandpaper rubbing together. Having vented much of her helplessness, Wei Ziya lay sprawled on her back gazing upward for an unknown amount of time.

Wei Ziya knew. Tonight, she got a bargain, she had saved herself. She had escaped a fatal point in her life. In her previous life - she remained undiscovered in that pond till the next morning, and when she was finally rescued it was not herself. She, no more than a dying soul, was easily replaced by that woman.

That woman took away her body, took her name and used it as her own. She still remembered those seemingly parting words - “Don’t worry over your karmas. I will take care of your family in your place and cherish them as you would have. Please go worriless on your journey to the netherworld.”  

But Wei Ziya hadn’t died completely. She couldn’t just go off to some netherworld on her own. She helplessly kept struggling on the verge of death, watching that alien soul pretend to be her. Watched her lie, kill and set fire to all things she loved! 

“Ha! What a Heaven’s daughter-!” Wei Ziya flinched, saying aloud. “All along it was her. That famed shell of heaven's daughter…it could only be me. A soul reborn in phoenixes fire, they called her, and what about me? That forgotten shell that was replaced by another occupier? Who could have thought- the pure white fairy of the immortal realm was nothing but a cuckoo overtaking a nest?” 

Heaven’s children. The blessing of any world. If one was lucky to be born in years of heroes and heroines, they could achieve anything! Become like those supporting characters in a tale and go all the way to ascension, or be like those pitiable cannon-fodders, dying the most ignoble deaths! Juxtapose with that, if someone fell into enmity with them - his only end could be death. As if the world was a piece of a bard's tale - and everyone else just puppets, waiting to bow down under the light of those heaven’s children. Only they were humans, everyone else a mere puppet in their story! 

Wei Ziya laughed.

But she didn’t care. Neither for their nobility or fame, nor worried for their struggles. They could dance their favorite dances all they liked; it didn’t matter to her. The world was full of geniuses. She didn't envy their fates; she just hated - hated them! Hated their entitlements, their selfishness. It was because of them, their indifference that this small realm had taken its final gasp - her Jinghai was no more. Her world in which she had been born and grew up, watched people laugh and cry, cheered along with them… this world was torn, shredded to pieces. Only because, this realm had long served it purpose with that woman’s arrival and entrance into cultivation realm.

That woman who called herself Ying Yueru, she clearly knew many things. Although she couldn’t peek into that woman’s memories, her actions had fully exposed that she could have done many things if she wanted to save this small realm. But she hadn’t. What about taking care of her karmas for her-self, Wei Ziya that helpless original owner of the body - that woman hadn’t even shied away from dirtying her hands while sharing those spoils of that final war. She hadn’t even flinched, hesitated just for a while, as she was piling up all that blood-sucked treasure in her coffer!

Nothing had mattered to Wei Ziya in those years, as everything she cared for was dead or destroyed. She couldn't remember why she was so obsessed with living on. But everytime she deliberated vanishing, she found it pitiable. As if a piece of her world was caressing her head, saying -

“O child, but don’t I dwell in thy heart? When you recall, I thrive. You see, after your death - there will be no one with my memory…alive.”  

With her death, that history of her defeated world would also vanish. As a silent witness of that year's war between humans and ‘gods’, as the lone survivor of her world's tragic end - wouldn’t it be a tragedy that she too died so pitiably? Wasn’t the best value of her, a silent witness of that atrocity, be that she reminisces about that piece of past forever? Forever echoing that final scene of death, of parting, that final flash of light when her realm shattered into arms of universe’s darkness? 

So, she had lived. But no one knew which clan she, Wei Ziya, belonged to. All relations dead, her birthplace blasted to bits - and she herself only able to watch like a bystander as someone carried on a happy life using her body; she was like a lone star dwelling in endless darkness. Not tonight - that alien soul from another world, let’s see how she comes to this world this time around!

“Oh, what a loss to the world would be her majestic love, her endless fame and her lore. No one will recount her legend anymore - with nothing there to recall. Because she, that parasitic ghost couldn’t replace a fainted soul. Tonight, tonight she dies as I died. I Wei Ziya, mother goddess have lived a proud life, as you asked. Then as a gift, let me relive that past of shame, of defeat…let me remember it…all alone.”

What about children of heaven? It wasn’t her own heaven’s rule to begin with, nor this world’s. Heavenly rule of this realm died the night this realm collapsed. Then why should it be her, who had to sacrifice her soul and body to hold that woman’s soul – the ‘chosen one’ of those invaders? For glory – but whose? Clearly not her own, nor of this world!

Whether it was the so-called ‘heaven’, or that alien soul from ‘another world’ - what do they have to do with this small realm? Nothing! And it wasn’t like there couldn’t be another chosen child of heaven if a single Ying Yueru dies. Someone will replace a mere Ying Yueru, right?

“The master who played with the world is no more.” She said and laughed which ended in a coughing fit.

As Wei Ziya coughed, she recalled with tears in her eyes the exchange between those two lovers in the final year before their ascension. 

“Ying Yueru-! It is only a matter of time, just a few more years.” That man had embraced Wei Ziya’s body and cried.  “Before long we will be legitimate lovers and no one will come in between us. After we have dealt with this rumor of divined Heaven’s daughter - we, yes, you and I will become a Taoist couple! And no one can stop us. No chosen one will ever come in between us! I swear to heaven – I, Chen Jinhua, swear that I will never fall in love with another woman after you, Ying Yueru or else I will have my cultivation ruined, my life shattered under thunder strikes!”

“Don’t -! You don’t have to do this!”

 “But I do. My love needs no proof lower than this.”

“But what about that immortal fate? Master Ming already predicted that you will have a smooth-sailing life if you entered into matrimony with her. What about the love your men have for you? Their expectations…? How will you answer them?” Ying Yueru had cried with her doelike eyes flooded with tears. “What about those Taoists divining that you are the son of heaven and only a daughter of heaven can ever completely get rid of your bad-luck of the lone star? I don't want to be the reason for your death! Moreover, can I believe that you will forgo that temptation - of ascending to heaven with no hurdles in your path?! You will easily succeed and ascend to the spiritual realm with her help. Don't persuade me otherwise - please!”

Wei Ziya remembered feeling disgusted at that charade. That woman was clearly pretending - as if it was not her who was whispering how the world looked forward to her, the Chosen one’s arrival, not knowing that she was already in their midst! Oh, how she had looked proud, talking to herself. As if she had hoodwinked the whole world. As if by lying low, she could be the proud benefitter of all the fortunes, without anyone ever realizing her value or taking a part in it! 

“But Ying Yueru…there is still no such person in this world right now! And I fell in love with you -and that is a fact! There will never be anyone better than you, purer than you, more loving and kind-hearted than you! How could I ever dream of leaving you? And did not the master Ming of the Qiyun sect foresee that it is more likely that the woman had already appeared? If it was my fate to love her - then why don’t you believe that you, Ying Yueru are the one being talked about in these divinations? Because that is more likely than thinking I would ever betray you!” The young man had traced her body’s falling tresses and whispered into her ears. “You are the youngest Mahayana cultivator. There is no one who can compete with you when it comes to luck or resources or ability - they cannot even do that in their dreams. Who doesn't know of your high accomplishments in alchemy? If there is a heaven’s chosen daughter with heaven piercing luck, a blessing for the whole cultivation realm, then in my heart it can only be you!”

“But what if-?! What if there is a soul who owns such a fate? Who is the protagonist of this world – who should be your one true love and the one who you should have loved, not me! What if she suddenly knocks on the door one day and then you just leave me behind to go after her?”

“But there is no such person! Do you think so low of my love-? That anyone can sway me away?”

“What if!? We both know how powerful destiny written by heaven can be.”