That place was inside the eastern compound of Wei's inner courtyard. Called the Eastern wing, it was primarily used as residence of daughters and young masters of the family. Each son and daughter had their own courtyards, with gardens and all its other amenities. But everyone in Weijia knew that the Eastern wing had a forbidden zone.

Quietly tucked between falling walls and unkempt pathways, its position was ingeniously secretive. Surrounding it, that abandoned courtyard beside the pond, there were several linked courtyard houses close by. Each separated by small alleys and pathways, arched bridges and elegantly placed 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 onto the marbled paths. A puddle had long formed just under it. Pitter patter, pitter patter it went - that was the only sound that could be heard tonight, the only sound audible in such deep hours.

At day time, when light flooded its premises aplenty, these buildings with their sprawling gardens and tall pillars standing along alleys and corridors and disjointed but commonplace pavilions, gazebos for resting and lingering around at leisure; all of these formed quite a picturesque escape from limpid, mundane feelings of everyday life into more idyllic recesses of comfort. Especially in Jinghai, where the weather never resorted to being too cold or dry, every month was akin to spring or monsoon- Wei manor was delicately refined with the weather in mind, allowing every occupant to enjoy its various pleasures at all times.

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 high and curled eaves hung a pained soul. Its lament resounded in the wind, the anger in its emptiness; even the redness of festive lanterns of such a night that had passed tonight couldn't ward off that melancholy. That ever-present emptiness.

Unsurprisingly, no one dwelled here. Nor did any one dared to come close to it.

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 those of an abandoned building, left to the mercy of time, and traces of dust settling down could be found everywhere. Its red pillars had their paints flaking off - its actual color only visible in remaining blotches. The roofs were beyond repair, and moths and termites had visibly eaten away a chunk of its previous architectural glory. Who might have lived in these walls before? That was something only a few people knew.

At a nearby shore, grasses were as tall as an adult man's thigh; their sharp blades made a slithering noise whenever the wind blew past the pond water towards them. To-night there was no such wind, or when it came it was too quick to die down. 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 a 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 suffocating to its existence. And there was no sound. Apart from that haunting pitter-pattering that never ceased to make its presence felt. 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 and she was drowning. No one came to her rescue. At the moment of fall, waves after waves washed up to the shore furiously, washing the grasses into clumps of bowing stalks. But soon all the rippling waves and tremors settled down, like a river settling down after a piece of pebble fell into it. The previous silence gripped the scene at chokehold, stifling it as before. It wasn't until fifteen minutes later that a pair of bony hands broke the pond's stillness again.

Those hands were like a ghoulish spirit breaking through its burial mound, ready to chew at the spectator. A figure frantically broke through, came out panting and gasping for life. Her white hands pierced the black waters, a head rose first then her shoulders emerged and then her nose came out 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.

But it was difficult - the task to stay afloat. Her thick cloak seemed determined to drag her down under water, as did the weeds entangling her ankle bones. From the way she tried to swim, she didn't look like someone who had ever come in contact with water, or had ever paddled in general. It was sheer desperation that kept her afloat. But fortunately, in a few minutes her white hands clenched the grasses over the pond's shore and forced herself out. This brusqueness of her spirit abruptly ended as she toppled over, with the last bit of protest stifled out.

Kneeling, Wei Ziya let out a silent cry. No sound came out at first 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 an approaching death. And then, she kept crying...crying her heart out. She knew not why, but she cried and kept crying for a long time.

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. But having vented much of her helplessness, her frustration of a lifetime - Wei Ziya lay sprawled on her back gazing upward into the black sky 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 this very pond till the next morning, and when she was finally rescued it was not herself. Everyone thought she just recovered from a coma; but only she knew...she had drowned that night, and was replaced by another woman’s soul.

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 in this world. I will take care of your family in your place and cherish them as you should have done yourself. Please go worriless on your journey to the netherworld and start a new life."

These words were so final, so direct. As if she was destined to end everything that night, despite her body being still alive and fine. But Wei Ziya hadn't died completely. She couldn't just go off to some netherworld on her own, could she? There were no underworld guards to lead her straying soul, no light that transported her to life after death...nothing. 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 Chosen daughter-!" Wei Ziya flinched, saying out 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 soul? Who could have thought- the pure white fairy of the immortal realm was nothing but a cuckoo overtaking a nest?!"

Heaven's Chosen children. Wei Ziya later learned that these were considered the blessings of any world. If one was lucky to be born in years of heroes and heroines, they could achieve anything they ever wanted! Become like those supporting characters in a famous tale and go all the way to ascension, or be like those pitiable cannon-fodders, dying the most ignoble deaths! If someone fell into enmity with these Chosen people - 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. She had seen it play out too, a completely fantastical story. Watched that daughter of heaven reach an unparalleled position, since the day she took over her body. From a small mortal world, she escaped its demise and went to become a cultivator, joining the biggest sect in that Taiyuan realm of cultivation. She became the highly sought after cultivator, the only one who had become a Mahayana level ancestor in just a hundred years! She was the only student of an ancient immortal that had noble ties with the Spiritual realm which even cultivators dreamed of reaching in a lifetime. Her senior brothers were one of the most outstanding cultivators with huge cultivation families supporting them from behind! Highly qualified men sought after her; whether they themselves were already engaged or married, it didn't matter much to anyone. High positioned women tore at her at any chance they got as if she was the bane of their lives, never minding their own positions and statuses. Whoever stood opposite her died or was silenced forever! Whoever stood with her, became the most fortunate person in the whole realm! Who else could be heaven's chosen one if not her?!

But Wei Ziya didn't care. Neither for her nobility or fame, nor her endless struggles that earned her Immortality. That woman could dance her favorite dances all she liked; it didn't matter to her. The world was full of geniuses.

She didn't envy their fates. She just hated - hated her! Hated her entitlement, her selfishness. It was because of that woman, her 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 and shredded to pieces. Only because this realm had long served its purpose with that woman's entrance into the cultivation realm! Its humans were worthless, its animals just senseless existence and all it could ever be was a place to go in search of treasures. Soon enough, when the last bit of treasure was drained away - what was the need of a plane that served no purpose or benefit to them?

That woman who called herself Ying Yueru, she clearly knew many things. Although Wei Ziya 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.

Afterall, among the Gods who controlled this world's fate, there was definitely one who later became her future master-uncle's, after worshiping her master as a teacher for life! But she hadn't done anything. She had even fuelled the fire to end this world earlier.

What about taking care of her karmas for herself? Wei Ziya, that helpless original owner of the body- she was long forgotten! That woman hadn't even shied away from dirtying her hands while sharing those spoils from that final war! She hadn't even flinched, hesitated just for a while, as she was piling up all that blood-sucked treasure into her coffer!

After that defeat, 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 too tragic, that she too died so pitiably? Wasn't the best value of her, a silent witness of that atrocity, 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 her, a certain Wei Ziya. Her name too was soon forgotten as the woman changed it back to her own. All relations dead, her birthplace blasted to bits - and she herself only able to watch like a bystander as someone else carried on a happy life using her body; she was like a lone star dwelling in endless darkness. Floating, floating forever with no strings to fall back on.

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 legends anymore - what a pity! All this, because she, that parasitic ghost couldn't replace a fainted soul! Tonight, tonight she dies as I died. I Wei Ziya, mother goddess, lived a proud life, as you asked us. I waited and waited for justice. Then as a gift, let me relive that past of shame, of defeat...let me remember it...all alone in this new life."

What about children of heaven? It wasn't her own heaven 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's! Whether it was the so-called 'heaven's chosen one', or that alien soul from 'another world' - what do these titles 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?

"But...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. Before she was captured by that woman and given away as a prisoner to her well-wishers.

***