"But it all ended with death." She knew she wasn't eternal and she knew that for a fact. Although her bloodline allowed her to enjoy the same long life span as some stars –but it did nothing to make her undefeatable in front of others. If others killed her, she would just die. But before her actual death, it still felt so far away from her.

She had seen death, played with it, felt its fangs and nurtured many bitter wounds. So many days she had woken up to attempts at assassination rather than to a birdsong, or a mother's sweet chidings that she had lost count of such encounters.

When she returned to Cuiping World – she came back with a realization that she could die at any moment. She had spent hours and hours deliberating each of her actions, fearing that even one of her missteps would lead to the most humiliating ending. Many hours she had spent arranging little games of revenge between her maternal clansmen and others. She played well – in that game of power, of control, but she also lost too many times. Each time was more humiliating than the other, each loss more dangerous than the previous one had been.

Not being a human was no longer a statement of pride, but rather a chain for others to control her, a constant reminder of her ‘fallings’ that she had been turned into a pariah, the other to their altruistic selves! The 'key' to the world's fate must live —but on what terms? That was completely under the control of the winner. And her clan had died defeated. There was no one left she could turn to for refuge! The burden of revenge was solely her own inheritance!

Apart from killing her – all of them could do anything to a ‘war criminal’ like her – whatever they wanted. Sacrificing her pleasures was called a duty. She was sanctified, going against her was sacrilegious in front of the crowd – yet, only she knew she was there to bear that assigned role of an all-forgiving, dignified ‘fake saint’, who had no power but to swallow all pains and harm they caused to her. A symbol of their influence and a trophy of their victory. Just because she wasn’t a human, she wasn't one of them, she didn’t even deserve basic dignity.

She played their games. She played till they in turn became the pawns in her hand. She wasn't petty and returned what was due at the right time and in the right amount. What should come to them was only a matter of time. But in all this, she had never imagined her own death.

In a world where her wishes were perfectly realized, she would have been wandering in space, like many of her ancestors had, with no abode, no destination in sight – eternal as time. But she was chained and drowned, and drowned so well that all her plans couldn't catch up with those people's sinister cold hearts!

She had forgotten how close it was – that fang named death, how closely it had always placed its forefingers over her jugular veins. She had died so inconspicuously that it was funny and ironic.

"Ha -"

Nothing should have mattered anymore, now that she was dead. The moment she ceased to be something she was, she lost the remaining reason to pursue the past. Some of the threads of her past had been severed, cruelly cut off by an invisible hand, and she now lay gasping for breath like a drowning man, with not a shred of will remaining. The storm she had seen coming had come and gone long ago, but her battered self, it had no respite. She wanted to ask someone, was this the end? Was this the honor she was promised? How could she dare take a deep breath of relief when she didn't get any closure? What about her dreams? What about that 'hope' that had defined the majority of her past life – what about the grand ‘future’ her clansmen had painted about her saving the world from decline and reinvigorating its magic? Why couldn't her blood-seed save her or himself at the last moment? 

Why wasn’t it still with her? Leaving her behind to fend for herself?  

"Look, father. This is the result of your painstaking dreams - how pitiful! Your hope, your people's dream of reinvigorating a dying world ended just like that...some people were too greedy to let me live. Too greedy to let your people live. My blood and everyone's hope, like dust, has settled in some past land. It's so strange…"

The song continued.

She could try. Try to forget the agony, the powerlessness of watching her clansmen die one after another, butchered in cold-blood. She could try. Try to sleep off the past tiredness. Try to forget, a life spent on a knife's edge, with lingering fear of being pushed down the cliff at any moment by her own sheer ignorance.

Forget that piece of earth washed red, with her soles drenched in innocent blood as she screamed and begged an unknown god for help. Forget the shame, forget the pain and innocuous laughter of her enemies – those burning fortresses and those wailing of her infant cousins, the wailing of that infant's mother and the lamenting silence of that aftermath – her demon, her nightmare. 

Shouldn't it be high time to let it all rest? Her past life.

'Should I forget?' A tiredness flickered on her face, muted in anger. She closed her eyes as her heart opened to that ancient rhythm, burning it in her soul, in her human blood. "Why? Why must I forget that shame? Although my revenge is already finished and made into a thing of the past– but does that wash away the pain left in the aftermath?" What a joke! Should she suddenly stop being herself if she had died once? For each day of her life, she will remember those faces - and curse and pray for each of those departed souls of her friends and enemies! She had a right to that. 

She might no longer be the Crown princess of her dynasty, the last of her lineage, but she will always remain burdened under a weight of past memories. Here, she was Wei Zhiruo. But she was a Wei Zhiruo who hadn't forgotten her past life! This life could only carry that extra burden of a past life's memories and hatred.

She didn't know why she came to this world. But she did know that every fate has its bearer. If fate has brought her here, then she must be needed here. Or had intercepted someone's fate who was needed here. A fate, like a spider, was weaving invisibly and she was already affixed in its web.

Although a rotten stench surrounded the air as if telling her, she had stolen someone else's fate, that this life was not a life of her own keeping; someone's fate was left unfulfilled to awaken her own. She wasn't Wei Zhiruo who should have lived. But it was Wei Zhiruo who survived! If there was any stealing, it was a matter of chance. Her intentions were never included in any event – as far as she was concerned, that made her innocent of charges of body theft!

She had no qualms in occupying a body that was not done with her own initiative. And who could surely tell that she wasn't Wei Zhiruo born in this soil, just that her soul was from a foreign land? At least, none of these humans she lived amongst could do that, just by looking at her face. Maybe after spending some time in her company, a seed of doubt may grow in their hearts, but no one in their right mind would ever come up with such a scenario of an 'alien' soul replacing the original owner’s soul, as the first reason for her strange behaviour! 

Some doubts still came trickling down. She had seen the workings of her own mind in this strange situation– a strange set of Runes had sealed some of her own memories. She was sure, only she could have done that, written that piece of rune flickering so brightly over her soul. So here was the question? If she had just occupied this body, only this morning - then what could explain those Runes over this body? Why would she do such a thing, and erase all memories related to it…it couldn't be because of guilt, right?

Wei Zhiruo smote the tingling doubts in her mind. No! She wasn't so unprincipled to shamelessly overtake someone else's body. She should have some faith in herself.

The song came upon a turn. 

It swelled like in the breast of a swallow, awakened at dawns-break. It was ready to prance, to emerge and spring forth the most luscious of bushes and amongst the greenest of boughs. 

Suddenly the canoe jerked to a stop, awakening Wei Zhiruo from her stupor. Her eyes turned round in surprise.

All around her, wherever her eyes could reach, she saw an expanse of surface covered in more and more fragments of shining crystal-like stars or was it ice now, she wondered. She started sealing all these images in her mind and burning them into its deepest recesses. These were all virgin rules, and Runes... so primitive and violently chaotic that there was nothing on par with them; she might need the rest of her human lifespan to just comprehend even a couple of these successfully! If she lost this chance to capture their essence, she will not get another chance like this again!

She was swift in her actions. She opened up all the apertures of her soul and mind together, and then unsealed the highest level of sense perception that a human could allow in her own apparatus. With her roaming Spiritual Senses, she first mapped out her surroundings, then sealed the birds-eye view of the star fragments into a corner of her memories to ponder later.  She repeatedly sealed, and sealed and collected without feeling any tiredness. In fact, a strange feeling of fulfillment brimmed in her heart replacing all the uncertainties of her new future, her loneliness in a new, and foreign world and that…faint loss of having left behind everything she had ever known.

What she didn't know was, unknown to her, her blood-seed sleeping inside her soul was also absorbing and burning all that it could find in the patterns in the sky, in the waters and the clouds independent of her consciousness. It worked like a thinking being, merging the highest rules and mysteries in itself – as if sealing a memory!

There were several of them, uncountable patterns to observe –these fragments danced, swirled and floated over the water like the clearest, brightest and most resonant pieces of stars conjoined in visible constellations. She exerted and stretched the limits of her consciousness, reaching as far as possible while taking in all that she could. 

But her blood-seed was faster than her, quicker at perceiving than her and more far reaching than her. 

While Wei Zhiruo had seen and captured but a small encirclement of those rules, her blood-seed was already touching the edges of the ocean, the horizons where the purple firmament and the black sea merged into one and had even extended its filament down below towards the ocean-bed! Unconsciously, Wei Zhiruo's blood-seed had escaped its restrictions and overreached human conception. It was like a hungry and thirsty beast, crawling on all fours, struggling to reinvigorate itself-! Pushing boundaries after boundaries as if it was its last struggle in face of an imminent death!

The bloodline sang along the ancient rhythm, merging and manifesting its music in itself – becoming one with that ancient behemoth. Soon it was full of rules and runes. Wei Zhiruo's blood-seed had successfully recaptured those traces of patterns and etched it in itself, preserving the spectacular phenomena; those mysteries of time and space, the rhythm of the dawn of time, the marvelous infant runes with no parallel in the world and several incomprehensible laws! Everything, while she remained ignorant of blood-seed's existence, or even the fact that it had survived! 

The heavenly song erupted once more, swelling sweeter and sweeter, with a heady affect over its listener. Its rhythm got mixed up in the waves, in the lolling of the canoe adrift a behemoth ocean, and those unknown fragments emanating light. The star light from her surroundings, though, reached her strikingly, filling her body with warmth and cherishment and a fulfilling sensation. She comfortably smelled of home, of belongingness in the mellow whiteness of the star like ice fragments, contrasted brightly with black water current. If she spent the rest of her time wandering in space, would it be as blissful as this moment? So fulfilling? Would she have been free like never before, accompanied just by her blood-seed -?

"Plop!"

Another sound jolted Wei Zhiruo into wakefulness. Something else had fallen into the pond – the actual pond. She was back into reality before she could do anything, blowing in the cold wind. She didn’t know how much time she had spent wandering in that space. She didn't know what had caused that splashing noise, but couldn't help feeling frustrated at being disturbed at such a pivotal moment.

The song had died down abruptly, with no sign of awakening again. Wei Zhiruo couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. Her connection to the mellow power of those stars though– was still there!

"What…" She felt a strange connection between herself on the earth, and the stars above in the sky. As if she was drawing their light into her body, melting them into herself! 

Her connection with the outside heaven, with the stars...

She jerked back to attention. 'Yes,' clear headed now, Wei Zhiruo stiffly closed her eyes, as if the mountain had descended over her shoulders, pushing her downwards.

'My affinity with the stars…is still there. The bloodline!'