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  The baby kit leaned into his touch, purring in delight at the head massage she was getting. Xiao Feng didn’t need to recall the words that needed to be spoken to enter into a true bond, for the memory he had experienced through Liulian, the umbral fang’s gaze, had been so unique, so profoundly unlike anything he had seen before and most of all, so beautiful, that there was no way he could ever forget it.

  Yet, his instincts told him that it was not yet the right time. Xiao Feng knew that he was no beast tamer, but it was the words of the oath itself that guided him. He had glimpsed into the baby kit’s soul and borne witness to her greatest secrets and they were some secrets indeed. There was no doubt in Xiao Feng’s mind that had his predecessor been his position and had wished to initiate a true bond instead, he would have given up the moment he had seen the baby kit’s truth.

  His predecessor, in his previous life, had valued the pursuit of power above all even in this life, sought a way back to his prowess, albeit not with the same thirst and with greater caution involved. The choice between annoying, if not outright offending, a Soul Emperor belonging to a seemingly very powerful merchant pavillion to bond with a beast of unknown origin and whom he had unknown synergy with or sheltering the beast and waiting for the Soul Emperor to eventually find them, well, for him it was no choice at all.

  But it was also his predecessor, who had found himself an unwitting pawn in a game played by the Elders of the Azure Lotus Sect, having been lied to about his own talent so he would willingly allow himself to be conscripted into the frontier sect and wield his blade for another’s cause without having ever gotten an opportunity to discover his own.

  Whose approach would be correct in the long run? As far as Xiao Feng understood cultivation, even a Soul Emperor was not capable of predicting the future.

  So all Xiao Feng could really do was follow his heart and while he might not be the best with the sword or the most talented alchemist to grace the alchemy division, he was good at that.

  “Do you want to come over to my side now?” Xiao Feng asked. “It would be rude of me if I did not show you something interesting in return, after all.”

  “Yes!” She eagerly replied. “Where you live! How you hunt! What trails your pack treads! I wanna know it all!”

  A laugh escaped Xiao Feng’s lips as he found himself very amused by the over-eager child’s inquisitiveness. “Sure, then. Come along.”

  Cultivator and Spiritual Beast walked alongside each other before crossing the invisible border that delineated the stretch where two souls had intersected. Xiao Feng had never been on the other side of the realm of yul, never had a spiritual beast glimpse into his soul, so he was quite curious about what would happen.

  A moment later, Xiao Feng found himself looking at a face he didn’t believe he would ever see again.

  His face.

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  Not his predecessor’s.

  But his face, because these were his memories and this was his world.

  Xiao Feng watched as he himself in a past lifetime made his way through a crowded city sidewalk. A hundred different colours were visible before his gaze, a thousand different people that were all strangers to him and a million different scents that not even a magical beast from another world could catalogue and keep track of. Beasts of metal crowded the street and tall, elongated rectangular constructs that approached the sun itself boxed him in from seemingly every direction, besides the openings that the moving beasts of metal utilized to make their way through the alien land.

  Xiao Feng did not have a physical body in this world, he was only an observer watching his past self make his way through the world, but it didn’t unnerve or bother him because…

  He was the world itself.

  The scene changed and Xiao Feng watched as his past self danced in a crowded bar with friends he had made a week before, his blood stream full of alcohol and his heart full of excitement for his first semester in college.

  In another scene, he was working late at night, with only a single lamp illuminating his notebook so he didn’t disturb his roommates and stress written all over his features, as he wrote down notes with a gel pen, repeatedly searching his textbook for references and occasionally skipping pages as he did so.

  There were many scenes, none that Xiao Feng found particularly exciting, but many that brought warmth to his heart. He lived an ordinary life, after all. He laughed, he cried, he stressed, he worked hard, he succeeded, he failed, he set goals and celebrated when some of them were achieved, trying not to mull over the ones that weren’t met.

  Eventually, the scenes drifted towards his mother’s house.

  “Ryan, eat those pancakes before they get cold,” His mother called from the kitchen sink, as she did last night’s dishes. “I’m not slaving over here in the morning so you can eat your pancakes stale.”

  “It’s a pre-mix, mom,” Ryan replied with a note of amusement audible in his tone, as he set the textbook he was reading through aside. “And I told you I could just make it myself if you’re busy.”

  “Nonsense. This is my house, young man and I believe I taught you how to serve guests when they’re visiting,” His mother replied in a mock-stern tone.

  Ryan snorted, but he still reached for the fork. His mother wasn’t much of a cook and they both knew that, but when he cut into the maple syrup laden pancakes that were golden brown, crispy at the edges and a little too fluffy in the centre—- just the way she’d been making them since he was five years old—- and took a bite, it, well…

  It tasted warm. So warm and sweet. Exactly the way he’d been eating pancakes since he was a child. It tasted like nostalgia, it’s aroma was thick with love and its temperature had a warmth that was closer to a dao than a measurement.

  If Xiao Feng had a body to cry with, he would be weeping.

  It was such a simple thing. Such an insignificant, common, day-to-day thing. The pancake pre-mix was made in some factory by some workers he’d never get to meet. Yet, he regretted that he hadn’t cherished it more. Regretted that he hadn’t shown how much his mother’s effort meant to him. Regretted that he left so much that he wanted to say, unsaid.

  He would do anything for even a bite of that pancake, now that a world separated him from it.

  How ironic was it all.

  The scene changed.

  Time, as always, continued moving and Xiao Feng’s story, how he woke up in an unfamiliar world and pieces of events since, were played out. Together, it was his greatest, deepest truth that was revealed to the baby kit.

  Then the world dissipated, the two contesting landscapes faded and all that was left was an endless expanse of white.

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