Immortal Paladin

385 The Meaning of Choice

Life in the Heavenly Academy settled into a rhythm sharper and more orderly than I expected. Every morning, disciples left the walls of Celestial Step City to earn contribution points. Those points were then poured into purchased lectures, borrowed manuals, temporary access rights, or private consultations with lecturers. Beyond that was the usual academy mess with formal rivalries, whispered deals behind closed doors, favors exchanged in shadows, and all the small and large distractions stacked on top of my real objective: infiltrating the Heavenly Temple and figuring out what they were hiding from the world.

So of course, the moment I stepped out of my dorm, Ding Cai blocked the path with her arms crossed, blue hair bristling.

“I hate you,” she snapped. “Get out of my way.”

I blinked at her. “Morning to you too. I was looking for you.”

“Help?” She scoffed, jabbing a finger at my chest. “You only want my status. I’m Peng Ru’s niece. That’s what you’re after.”

Her hostility scratched at my patience, but I stayed calm.

Since signing that ridiculous contract with Peng Ru, I had done my homework. The Peng Clan wasn’t merely respected. They were everywhere. Their influence ran deep in the academy’s structure. By comparison, even the Jia Clan’s prestige looked modest. So Ding Cai assuming I wanted her status wasn’t surprising, even if it was annoying.

I exhaled, sitting on the corner and gesturing for her ot sit down besides me. “We still don’t have a presentation for tomorrow. Soul Symbology isn’t something we can improvise. Martial Mastery and Dao Spell Enlightenment? Sure, but not this.”

Ding Cai stopped, her posture deflating as if someone poked a hole through her stubbornness. For the first time today, she actually looked at me instead of at the floor or somewhere to the side.

“Can you really help me cultivate?” she asked quietly, sitting besides me. “A-Also, what should we present in Soul Symbology?”

“If you let me, of course. As for the presentation, you can leave it to me…”

She hugged her elbows, hesitant. “I’ve tried everything already. Everything. Martial arts, formations, metallurgy, alchemy, divination… every branch I could find. I’ve been stuck for over a thousand years. I still can’t perceive my own soul no matter how hard I try.”

A thousand years… that kind of stagnation wasn’t something a normal bottleneck could cause. If so many paths hadn’t resonated with her, then she wasn’t failing. She simply wasn’t looking at the right thing.

I studied her carefully. “Then let me ask something important. How much do you know about yourself?”

She froze. Her lips trembled before she forced herself to speak.

“I know the entire process of the Soul Recognition Realm,” she muttered. “Recognize the soul, recognize the self. I understand the theory. But… I don’t understand myself. I can’t.”

I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “If it meant raising your realm, would you do anything?”

Her eyes widened at my tone. A mix of worry and curiosity flickered across her face. She stammered, “There… there is one thing I haven’t tried.”

“What is it?”

She swallowed. “Dual cultivation.”

I stared at her in complete disappointment.

“Really?” I asked. “You want to rely on dual cultivation? Hmmm… So you’ve been thinking about it, huh?”

Ding Cai’s face turned bright red the moment I questioned her. She raised her hands defensively, words tripping over each other.

“I—I didn’t mean it like that! I wasn’t suggesting that with you! It’s just, every time my aunt forces a marriage proposal onto me, dual cultivation is always part of the deal, and—” She groaned, burying half her face in her sleeves. “Forget it! I wasn’t implying anything!”

I cleared my throat, pretending her panic wasn’t contagious. “Dual cultivation isn’t that special, you know. It has its place. Trusting someone with your life and soul in a world filled with betrayal… well, it’s kind of romantic. In theory.”

She blinked at me, confused. “Then… how are you planning to help me?”

“You’ll have to trust me first,” I answered. “And don’t tell a soul about what I’m about to do to you.”

Her entire posture stiffened. “W-wait, what are you about to do to me?!”

I turned on my heel. “Follow me.”

“W-wait! Slow down!” she shouted as I took off.

I glanced back just long enough to tease her. “Come on, slowpoke!”

As we ran through the outskirts of Celestial Step City, my thoughts drifted. Ding Cai’s spiritual root was awful. It was muddy, unfocused, and barely responsive. If she was precious to Elder Peng Ru, why hadn’t anyone refined it? The Heavenly Temple had enough obscure methods to shape spiritual roots. Even I knew how crippling a muddled root was, and mine had grown under stranger circumstances than most.

We reached a jagged mountain ledge overlooking a narrow ravine. The wind howled through it, sharp with the smell of stone and mist. Ding Cai stumbled up behind me, panting like she’d run for her life. She stopped only when she saw me perched comfortably on a flat outcropping, chewing on a warm meat bun.

She stared. “What… are you eating?”

I raised a brow. “A meat bun. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one.”

“I haven’t! Is it some kind of… precious elixir?”

I nearly choked. “No, it’s… never mind.” Poor girl. For someone in a powerful clan, she didn’t know the basics.

I dusted off my hands and pointed toward a flatter patch of stone at the ravine’s edge.

“Lie down there,” I said. “And close your eyes.”

Her confusion only deepened, but she obeyed. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

And that was how everything began.

Thankfully, I had gone to see Da Ji for extra quintessence earlier. She complained about being reduced to an energy storage tank. Next time, I’d ask Wu Chen instead; she never seemed to mind being my personal battery. It wasn’t my fault this body barely produced any quintessence, alright?

Ding Cai lay on the slope exactly as I instructed, hands folded over her stomach, eyes shut. “L-Like this?” she murmured. “It’s not going to hurt, is it?”

“Yes. Like you’re about to sleep,” I answered. Honestly, even if she slipped and ragdolled down the entire ravine, she’d survive. She was Fifth Realm. Moreover, I was here, so what was there to worry about? “Also, don’t make it weird…”

I secured my footing beside her and leaned back against the rock. I cast Divine Word: Rest.

Her breathing softened instantly.

Once she was under, I cast Divine Possession.

My Animal Soul peeled out of my vessel like a second skin, drifting toward her. A moment later, I opened my eyes again, inside her body.

“Hah…” I yawned, sitting up to stretch. Her limbs felt strangely light. “Time to see what’s wrong with you.”

The first oddity was obvious: her spiritual root. It was muddled, unfocused, and was practically a smudge of unstable qi. With her status and backing, that should’ve been corrected ages ago. Even a random wandering Second Realm cultivator would’ve drilled into her the importance of refining spiritual roots before it fully matured.

Not that I was an expert myself. My yin-yang root had refined thanks to a chain of absurd coincidences, not deliberate practice.

I closed her eyes and dug into Nongmin’s memories. He knew dozens of methods using sacred treasures or advanced formations. None applied here. We had no sacred treasures, and Ding Cai herself admitted she sucked at formations.

Fine. Then I’d check the other problem.

I spread my Divine Sense and searched within her. That was when I noticed something that made my skin crawl. Her soul barely registered at all, seemingly a flicker that soon dissolved whenever I focused on it. Divine Sense was supposed to perceive the essence of things. Souls hid, yes, but they didn’t vanish.

Guarded people concealed their hearts. Cynics masked their intentions. But even they had something.

So where was hers?

I went deeper, activating Transcendent Heart. I felt myself sink into her being, layer by layer, peeling away conscious thought, then subconscious patterns, and then the inner reflection of her spiritual image.

Nothing. No landscape of the soul. No ocean of intent. No flickering flame of individuality.

Just… an empty quiet.

A hollow.

A void.

I swallowed hard.

“This is too much.”

I kept searching, diving deeper and farther than I normally dared, but there was still nothing. No soul-flame, no inner echo, not even the muddled spiritual root I initially thought I sensed. The moment I realized ‘that’ had been an illusion as well, dread crawled up my spine.

Her root wasn’t flawed.

It was fake.

And the faint soul signature I thought I felt? It was also fake!

Which meant the conclusion was simple and wrong and horrifying: Ding Cai didn’t have a soul. She was a soulless being.

I sat there inside her body, stunned. A living cultivator without a soul was an impossibility, something that should not exist. Even puppets had cores, spirits, some fragment of will. But she had nothing.

To steady myself, I switched to techniques I understood.

I circulated the Longevity Path Method, letting the particles of vitality flow through her meridians. They moved normally, smooth, and without resistance or corruption. Her qi was perfectly fine.

Then I shifted into Mana Road Cultivation, weaving dimensional energy along her untrodden mana roads. Again, everything responded as if she were a perfectly ordinary cultivator.

Her soul was missing! I exhaled slowly, bracing myself. Whatever this was… it wasn’t small. And it might not be safe. I learned my lesson after meeting the Supreme Heart; if I encountered something beyond my ability to handle, I wouldn’t hesitate to annihilate the Animal Soul if it came to it. My main body would regenerate it, and although I’d definitely be lectured later, that was a future-me problem.

I leaned fully into the effects of Divine Possession, letting myself submerge into her memories, her lineage, and her past.

Darkness swallowed my vision.

Time passed strangely slipping fast and slow at once, but by my internal rhythm, I counted roughly nine months. Then a crushing pressure seized my skull. My tiny body twisted, the suffocating weight of childbirth crushing down on me.

I had become an infant.

I didn’t expect the memory to pull me this far back. It wasn’t the first time I relived a lifetime from Nongmin’s visions and Wen Yuhan’s reincarnations, but it felt like ages since I last used Divine Possession this deeply. No wonder the True Self avoided this method unless necessary; living another existence from the inside was exhausting.

Light spilled in when I slipped free. Two figures hovered over me. They must have been Ding Cai’s parents. Her father laughed with overwhelming relief. Her mother sobbed, clutching the newborn-me against her chest.

We were by a lakeside. Corpses of soldiers lay scattered all around, the water stained with their blood. The father held me high, voice trembling as he said, “From now on, your name will be Peng Cai.”

I froze at that.

Peng Cai?

Not Ding Cai?

Before I could dwell on the contradiction, the mother choked out a whisper, her voice shaking apart. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

These memories I watched unfold... they weren’t Ding Cai’s own recollections. No infant could remember this. They were buried so deep that even a cultivator like her never brushed against them. But my soul wasn’t ordinary. Even split into six, each piece was still the True Self’s soul, whole and overwhelming when it came to forces of memory and spirit.

So I tore through the fog effortlessly.

It also helped that Ding Cai had cooperated so honestly. Though, admittedly, I tricked her into it. She had no idea she’d given me exactly the access I needed.

The memory continued to play.

Her father and mother were running desperately, her father clutching the newborn-me, while her mother staggered behind. Blood coated the father’s robes, but he never slowed. They were being hunted.

The father was strong. He was at Ninth Realm, and not just any Ninth Realm, but one who had refined his strength to near-perfection. Yet he was alone, and the forces tailing them were many.

Shouts echoed through the forest.

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“Capture them alive!”

“Don’t damage the infant, she’s worth a fortune!”

“Make sure the Peng surname is preserved for bargaining!”

Armored elites pursued them, carrying banners of the Grand Ascension Empire. Judging from their armor and tone, this was back when the Empire was just beginning to rise in the world, clawing for supremacy.

A strike of qi tore apart trees behind us. Sub-generals dropped from the sky, encircling the fleeing family. The father roared and repelled them, but he was pushed back step by step.

Then the air split.

A wolf’s howl tore across the scene, and a silver blur descended like a thunderbolt. It was Chang Yun. The Northern General of the Empire. Younger, sharper, but unmistakably him.

“So this is the Peng thief?” Chang Yun’s voice shook the forest. “The one who stole the warp formation?!”

The father shouted back, voice cracking with fury and fear. “I stole nothing! We were deceived! The Temple’s internal politics manipulated us, don’t drag my family into it! We came for a diplomatic mission, and that’s all!”

Chang Yun’s eyes flashed. “Hand over the child and surrender. You have no right to warp formations that the Empire worked hard to create!”

They clashed.

Qi storms ripped apart the land. Forests shattered. Mountains shook. The Ninth Realm father fought with everything he had, even managing to wound the younger Chang Yun… but talent and army both were against him.

In the end, Chang Yun won.

He stood above the fallen father, breathing hard.

But the mother escaped in the chaos, clutching the infant.

Time rushed forward. Days. Months. Years.

The mother journeyed alone, wounded, hunted, but determined. She crossed frozen plains and burning valleys, until she reached a colossal wall stretching across the horizon, the Celestial Wall, the barrier linked directly to Celestial Step City.

There, she collapsed before the gates of the Heavenly Academy, begging them to take her child in. Not for protection from the Empire, but…

“Please…” she whispered, her voice brittle and fading. “Don’t… let the Peng Clan use her… as a pawn…”

Her words shook. Her tears smeared dirt on her face. She held the infant to her chest like the last warmth she had. “Please… Uncle… save my daughter… H-Her name’s Peng Cai… She’s the only one I have left…”

A white-haired man descended. Her great uncle. An elder of the academy. He looked at her injuries and knew immediately she wouldn’t survive.

The mother died two days later.

The elder cradled the small infant against the vast backdrop of the Celestial Wall. His voice trembled as he laid his hand on the child’s cheek. “From now on,” he said softly, “you are my daughter.”

The memories flowed around me like a river that refused to stop. Divine Possession wrapped me in Peng Cai’s senses until her breaths became mine, her heartbeats echoing inside my chest. She grew up ignorant of her true origins, but she carried the Peng name all the same.

To her, that name belonged to her family. To me, entering her memories, it was a reminder of secrets buried so deeply that even the person living them never noticed the gaps.

Peng Cai didn’t grow alone. At her side from her earliest memories was Peng Ru, the girl she believed to be her biological sister. They were inseparable, confidants in whispers, sparring partners in tantrums, rivals in matters of who was allowed to be smug that day. They even fought over which handsome man across the vast lands deserved the lofty title of “dream husband.”

I felt their laughter through Peng Cai’s body whenever they argued about who was more handsome Was it the mysterious young emperor of the Heavenly Eye, whose face was rumored to be as unreadable as the heavens? Or the scholar-warrior of Steel Mountain, famed for turning swordsmanship into poetry? Sometimes, Peng Ru insisted it had to be the Fiery Fist hero who punched a mountain to rescue a phoenix. They bickered for hours, only stopping when their foster father shouted for them to either train or stop wasting his qi.

But time was cruel in its fairness. Even for people born as siblings, paths diverged.

Peng Cai chose mortality. Peng Ru chose cultivation.

And that was when everything changed.

Peng Cai aged slowly and naturally. Wrinkles formed around her eyes, lines spread on her hands, and her joints ached whenever she stood too long. Meanwhile, Peng Ru’s youth remained untouched, the years sliding off her like water. She accused Peng Cai of being an ignorant snob who pretended to know what was best, but beneath her sharp tongue was pain from watching her sister wither while she herself stayed unchanged.

Through Peng Cai’s eyes, I understood everything she felt. Through my own experience, I understood why Peng Ru couldn’t.

To live freely and mortally granted a sense of completeness that cultivation often stole. Most cultivators would disagree, since immortality was the ideal, and power the ultimate goal. But Peng Cai saw beauty in the imperfection of human life. Living in Celestial Step City, where cultivators only cared about their next breakthrough, their next technique, and their next treasure, made her painfully aware of how empty endless pursuit could be. People interacted only to boast, barter, or challenge. Where was joy in that? Where was warmth?

For Peng Cai’s foster father, her refusal to cultivate was youthful rebellion. For Peng Ru, it was arrogance as if Peng Cai was saying life itself was enough.

I felt no arrogance from her. Only longing.

And so she poured her effort into the simplest of things, things almost no one in Celestial Step City cared about. Like cooking.

I stood in Peng Cai’s body as she worked in the kitchen of the luxurious Peng manor, sweat on her brow, hands trembling from age but steady with purpose. There were no pills here, no qi-rich supplements, and no divine beast ingredients. Just simple food she bought herself, prepared with techniques she learned through constant practice. A mortal’s meal.

The scent was warm, familiar, and human.

Peng Cai carefully plated the dishes from stir-fried greens with fragrant spices, braised meat simmered to tenderness, and soup warmed with ginger and herbs. She stood at the entrance of the dining hall with the faintest elderly smile, wrinkled and soft, her body aching from the effort but her heart full.

The doors opened.

Her foster father entered, looking exhausted from clan duties. Behind him, Peng Ru followed, expression proud and youthful as ever, impatience hidden behind her cool demeanor.

I felt Peng Cai straighten her back and greet them.

“Father, Ru… the meal is ready,” she said warmly. “Please, come eat.”

It was a simple invitation to a simple life. Something most cultivators would never understand. Yet, living it through her eyes, I felt its weight and its worth.

The warmth of the memory wrapped around me again, gentle at first, then unbearably fragile. In Peng Cai’s old, wrinkled hands, I placed bowls of mortal food on the table. They were simple dishes crafted with effort rather than cultivation. Her foster father hesitated, frowning slightly at the mortal fare. Peng Ru’s lips tightened as if she was restraining a complaint. But in the end, they both sat. They both picked up their chopsticks. They both honored Peng Cai’s wish.

To my surprise, it was delicious. Through Peng Cai, I tasted the depth of a meal born from patience, sweat, and devotion rather than divine ingredients. They laughed together, her father speaking of clan matters, Peng Ru bragging about her progress in the Academy, and Peng Cai listening with a wrinkled but bright smile.

It was warm, bright, peaceful.

For Peng Cai, it was enough.

The next day, everything changed.

Her body felt heavy. Her breath grew thin. Her bones trembled beneath her aged skin. She knew her life was reaching its end. I felt her acceptance like a soft sigh drifting through my borrowed chest.

Peng Ru knelt beside her, gripping her hand with trembling fingers. Tears ran thick down her youthful face.

“Why?” she choked. “Why didn’t you try harder in your cultivation? Why didn’t you drink the longevity tea? Why did you… why did you let yourself get like this?!”

Peng Cai only smiled at her sister’s tear-stained fury.

“Ru,” she whispered, voice weak and thin, “your faces… your smiles… were worth more than a thousand years to me. I’m thankful. Truly… thankful for the life I had.”

Peng Ru cried harder, shaking her head, and refusing to understand and accept.

But Peng Cai had already accepted long ago.

However, chaos soon dominated the manor.

The doors slammed open with violent force. Golden-armored officials of the Heavenly Temple rushed in, their presence heavy like crushing plates. One of them pointed toward Peng Cai, voice ringing with authority.

“The existence known as Peng Cai must not die through natural age!”

Peng Ru froze in shock. “W-what? Why are you—?”

A man in white robes, face twisted with solemnity, cut her off.

“Your father has been sentenced for treason. Remove the girl.”

“What?! No! Stop,,, stop! Cai! Cai!” Peng Ru shrieked as she was dragged away, reaching desperately for her sister’s hand. Her cries echoed through the manor halls until the sound was swallowed.

I remained inside Peng Cai’s body, letting the memory continue its grim course.

The elders of the Heavenly Temple bickered among themselves around the dying woman.

“We should incinerate her,” one elder snapped. “Reduce her to ash before the anomaly completes!”

“Fool!” another hissed. “She must be elevated! Her cultivation must be forcefully raised and bound to us. We can use her!”

“Enough,” said a third elder, shaking his head. “Let the heavens judge. Only the heavens understand what she truly is.”

An ignorant, loud, and young disciple scoffed. “Why are we scrambling over a mortal? She isn’t even a cultivator!”

A hand lashed out—slap!—and the disciple flew back landing on the stone floor.

From the shadows stepped a veiled elder. Her presence felt suffocating and ancient.

“You ignorant child… this mortal has the potential to become the disciple of a dangerous existence. One who may one day challenge the Heavenly Temple for dominion over the Hollowed World.”

A dangerous existence. A disciple. Dominion.

My heartbeat quickened even now, in a memory long gone.

Before I could reflect on her words, thunder exploded outside. Rain lashed against the windows. The roof blew apart as if torn by a giant’s hands, debris scattering. The elders immediately cast defensive spells, shielding themselves and Peng Cai’s dying body.

Then the heavens split.

The clouds peeled away like torn flesh. An enormous blue eye filled the sky, cold, storm-wreathed, and merciless.

Its gaze froze the world.

“Heaven has decided!” one elder cried in terror. “They will judge the anomaly themselves!”

Panic erupted.

“Scatter!”

“Do not resist the heavenly decree!”

“Let heaven enact its will!”

And the elders fled, abandoning Peng Cai to the storm’s judgment as the colossal eye bore down from the torn sky.

I felt her weak heartbeat shiver beneath me. I stood beside her in that collapsing moment, still wearing her wrinkled skin as if it were my own, and whispered, “Are you scared?”

Peng Cai shook her head, her thin lips curved into a gentle smile that was somehow braver than most cultivators I had seen. “This already happened, child. Why would I be afraid of a memory already lived?” Her voice rasped, yet there was warmth in it. Even with the heavens staring down, she stayed calm, almost soft.

She lifted a trembling hand, as if comforting me instead. “Take it easy on the Heavenly Temple, alright? Not everyone there is bad. I met so many kind people from that place and distant lands more. They brought spices, stories, and all sorts of food.” Her eyes twinkled, proud of herself. “I learned to cook because of them, you know? Sister Ru still hates admitting it.”

The enormous eye pulsed. Tribulation lightning tore downward with a roar that shook every corner of the memory. I felt the hair rise on my borrowed skin as Peng Cai’s smile froze. The bolt struck, and her body collapsed before I could even flinch. She died without letting go of that smile.

Everything dissolved.

What followed was unsettling. Where was Ding Cai’s existence in all this? I had traced the soul, the root, and the essence, yet I found nothing. There was no “Ding Cai” in Peng Cai’s lifetime. No hidden trauma. No sealed memory. Nothing. That absence itself was the answer, and it gnawed at me.

The world flickered again.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on cold stone. The air smelled of burnt incense, blood, and medicine. The cave was dim, illuminated only by pale lantern fire. Kneeling beside me was Peng Ru. She was no longer the young girl laughing over food, but a woman with sharper features and sorrow buried deep in her eyes.

She cupped my face in shaking hands. “Sorry… sorry,” she whispered again and again, as if the words were fragments of her breaking heart.

In the weak voice of a newborn, I—Peng Cai—asked, “Who… are you?”

Peng Ru’s breath hitched. She wiped her tears quickly, her expression hardening into forced resolve. “I’m Aunt Ru,” she said, forcing a smile that trembled. “From now on… remember me as Aunt Ru.”

As my eyes adjusted, the horrific truth laid itself bare. The floor was marked with complex runes, chalked hexagrams, and foreign script that did not belong to any cultivation method in this world. Sheets of alchemical notes were scattered everywhere. They were half-burned and smudged, but unmistakably familiar. Memories I didn’t want resurfaced from another world, from a certain quest in LLO involving homunculi and artificial souls.

She had done the impossible. She resurrected Peng Cai’s body.

But without a soul.

And the empty vessel breathing before her was the result.

Peng Ru pressed her forehead against mine, voice trembling. “Your name… from now on… will be Ding Cai.”

The warmth she forced into the name washed through me. Ding Cai blinked, smiled, laughed, and cried. It was everything a person with a soul could do. And yet I felt the truth at her core. She was a shell given motion by Peng Ru’s faith. The belief, the longing, and the desperate attachment. All of those emotions had become a makeshift soul, and a fragile imitation that kept her moving.

It reminded me of the True Self, how he lived and acted freely despite lacking any soul of his own as he pleased. People believed in him and saw him as whole, and so he became whole. Faith had a frightening power sometimes.

The memory continued like a slow river. Peng Ru raising her, protecting her, and hiding the truth behind gentle smiles. Ding Cai lived happily, oblivious to the storm that had created her. I walked through every year of her life beside her, feeling what she felt, understanding what she could not understand herself.

And after witnessing everything from her birth, her death, her resurrection, and her second life built on borrowed emotions, I felt something settle inside my chest.

I stood beside the young Ding Cai within the memory, the cave light flickering around us, and whispered softly to her as if reaching through the layers of time:

“Ding Cai… do you want to have a soul?”

Ding Cai turned toward me with that childlike confusion still lingering in her eyes, the memory around us flickering like candlelight. “W-Who are you?” she asked, hugging her knees as if the question itself frightened her.

I grinned, putting on the most ridiculous voice imaginable. “I am a powerful genie who can make your wish come true!”

Her mouth opened slightly. “A… genie?”

I honestly had no idea how the cycle of reincarnation worked here in the Hollowed World or how souls were born in the first place. The Greater Universe had the Wheel of Reincarnation, the underworld, and a whole system made to recycle souls. But here? I didn’t know if souls appeared naturally, descended from heaven, or were conjured from cosmic leftovers.

In any case, I couldn’t simply pluck ‘Peng Cai’ from the afterlife like some soul-fishing expert. And once again, I felt the danger of Divine Possession creeping in. This damned power made the possessor sympathize with whoever they possessed. It made you want to help them, even if they were criminals. Ding Cai wasn’t a villain at all. Instead, she was just a girl tossed around by fate, so I didn’t mind the foolish idea of giving her my own soul. Even if I died, the source would regenerate me. The True Self was terrifying like that.

I moved closer. My soul flared within this memory realm, golden threads unraveling from my core. I tried pushing a piece of it toward her chest, fully intent on stripping the Animal Path and using it as a seed for her. Instead of accepting it, her hand shot forward and shoved me back.

“What are you doing?!” she cried.

“Giving you my soul,” I answered plainly.

She looked genuinely offended. “I already have a soul!”

“No, you don’t,” I said, shaking my head.

“Yes, I do!”

“Where?” I demanded.

Her lips trembled as she fidgeted. She lowered her gaze and pointed toward herself, the memory version of Peng Cai we were watching moments ago. “Here… this… everything I remember. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that what a soul is supposed to be?”

I stared at her. Memories, emotions, a life lived by another, connected yet incomplete. They were pieces of meaning clinging to her, not a true soul. “They’re connected, sure,” I admitted, “but that’s not the same thing.”

She grew quiet. Even in this illusionary memory world, her presence flickered like an unstable candle flame.

“Where do souls come from then?” she asked suddenly.

“From other souls,” I answered without thinking.

“What about before that?”

I frowned. “That depends on the creation myth of whatever place you’re from.”

“So… God?” she pushed.

“Maybe. If so, do we go find them and ask for a soul?” I muttered. “Or maybe you can just take mine—”

Then I froze.

A fragment of memory from the Great Guard flickered. That ancient lecture whispered again: ‘We are each the god of our own being.’

If souls were born from faith and perception… if the True Self existed without a soul because the world believed he existed… then…

Ding Cai stomped her foot. “I have a soul!”

I blinked. “You—”

She jabbed her finger at my forehead. “You just have to believe in it!”

Her eyes shone, trembling yet determined, as if she were shouting it to the heavens themselves.

“I am going to reach the Soul Recognition realm!” she declared. “And I won’t take no for an answer!”

Her voice echoed through the memory, splitting the scene like thunder.

Something hit me like a shockwave. A force burst outward from Ding Cai’s chest. It was vast, bright, and impossibly dense. I staggered back as the memory realm cracked and scattered like glass. In that instant, I felt it forming. A soul.

Had Divine Possession triggered it? Or the memories of her past life? Or perhaps it was her own stubborn belief? I had no idea. All I knew was that something had finally awakened inside her.

My eyes snapped open and I found myself back inside the fuzzy golden retriever humanoid body, lying on the narrow slope of the ravine. Ding Cai jolted awake beside me, blinking rapidly as if she had been thrown out of a storm. She lost her balance and nearly tumbled off the cliff before frantically scrambling for a foothold.

She steadied herself, panting, then frowned at me. “I… I just had the strangest dreams.”

I asked “Was I in it?”

Her ears went red instantly. She tried to look away, pretending to examine a random pebble on the ground. I couldn’t help but laugh.

She inhaled deeply, regaining her composure. “So… how will you help me with my cultivation now?”

“You don’t need it,” I said.

Her face fell in an instant. “You fraud.”

“Ouch.” I slapped a hand dramatically to my chest. “How could I help you when you’re already capable of helping yourself?”

“I’m not capable at all,” she complained, her voice rising, until she froze.

A look of confusion washed over her face, followed by shock. She placed a hand on her lower abdomen and pushed her perception inward. The realization hit her like a bolt of lightning.

I smiled. “Congratulations on reaching the Third Dimension of the Soul Recognition Realm.”

She stared at me, mouth hanging open. Her disbelief was priceless. She plunged deeper into her dantian, searching for the shape of her soul, and whispered, “It’s… it’s a tree.”

“Very fitting,” I said. “Hey, congratulate me, too… I also rose in cultivation…”

She turned to me with wide eyes, still trembling. “Congratulations on your rise in cultivation as well. W–what’s your soul’s shape?”

“A cross,” I answered simply.

While I navigated her memories and touched the core of her being, something in me had shifted too. I finally understood the meaning behind the Soul Recognition Realm. The moment I broke through it, I leapt directly into Essence Gathering. The symbol of the cross suddenly made sense to me. It wasn’t some holy emblem or mysterious omen. It was the center of choices, the four directions, the intersecting paths, the burdens we pick up, the consequences we accept, and the lives shaped by the roads we choose. My soul was a crossroads because my entire life had been about making choices that affected more than just myself.

I pushed myself upright and extended a hand.

“So,” I asked, “what do you think of becoming my disciple?”