It had taken decades for Xie Yingying to truly regain control.
Their first attempt at intimate dual cultivation had not been proper at all. What was supposed to be a sacred fusion of Taiyin and Taiyang, guided by ancient scripture and spiritual resonance, had dissolved into something far more desperate, more human. The moment Su Min's Solar Sovereign Body awakened, it was as if a floodgate broke open inside Xie Yingying. Her own Lunar Sovereign Physique had been completely overwhelmed, drowned in a radiance that made her very soul tremble at the contact. And she, she had simply lost herself.
Not just once. Not just for a fleeting moment.
For years, Xie Yingying's raw desire consumed her. Each time Su Min's brilliant white light returned, she would chase it with a single minded focus. She abandoned words and rituals, reaching only for skin, for warmth, for that fire which scorched her yet never burned her away. It was not the proper way. There was no careful alignment of meridians, no chanting of ancient verses, no symbolic breathing patterns. Just their bodies, colliding and falling apart, over and over again in a cycle of frantic need.
Su Min had let it happen. Perhaps she had even welcomed it. She never said.
It had taken decades for Xie Yingying to slowly, painstakingly temper that primal craving into something focused, something sacred.
Only then did they return to the true path outlined in their scriptures, beginning once more with the very foundation, the ancient methods of Lunar Sovereign and Solar Sovereign inheritance. When they finally enacted the correct rituals, their resonance shifted fundamentally. The effects were immediate and overwhelming in their clarity. The moment their breaths aligned, the Taiyin and Taiyang energies flowed into one another like ink and flame, forming a perfect ring of balance that neither scorched nor froze.
In that instant, they glimpsed the Great Dao of Ten Thousand Laws.
It was unlike anything Su Min had ever sensed, even at the height of her rare Heavenly Dao Insight. The scriptures had not exaggerated. The purest, most profound truths of the universe emerged in that moment, brief, transcendent, and painfully elusive. But that glimpse of enlightenment did not come without a cost.
The Solar Sovereign Body was still bound by time. Su Min's transformation always faded before they could fully enter the deeper stages of comprehension. They tried again. And again. But the third time, Su Min had halted them, her face strained.
"If we force it, we risk Dao injuries," she had said quietly, wiping a sheen of sweat from her collarbone.
So they fell back on more accessible methods, intimate dual cultivation without their specific scripture, guided only by instinct and shared breath, like countless other cultivator pairs before them. Occasionally, they would use casual methods, merely sitting back to back, or with hands intertwined, allowing their spiritual currents to mingle peacefully. These methods offered a steady boost for their cultivation, and helped maintain the deep bond between them, but none ever matched that first, transcendent glimpse.
And Su Min could not forget it.
Which was precisely what led her to the radical experiment.
~
"I want to try exchanging essence blood," Su Min said one evening, her voice cutting through the quiet hum of the cave.
Xie Yingying paused, her pale fingers hovering above a small brazier as she stirred a simmering alchemical solution. The soft violet fumes cast gentle, shifting ripples of light across her impassive cheeks.
"That is forbidden in most orthodox sects," she said without looking up, her tone measured. "It can create dangerous dependencies. It ties fates together in ways that are difficult to untangle."
Su Min poured a basin of clean, spirit rich water into the cauldron beside her. Her voice remained calm, but held a thread of unwavering intent. "And yet, the scriptures of our Sovereign Bodies never forbade it. They do not even mention it. It is a blank space."
A long silence stretched between them, filled only by the bubble of the potion.
Then, finally, Xie Yingying spoke again, her tone soft, almost resigned. "One drop only. From each of us."
They did not make it a grand ritual. There were no chants, no ceremonial offerings to the heavens. Just a single, sterile silver needle, and the unmistakable, metallic tang of blood on their tongues.
When Su Min swallowed the single, dark drop of Xie Yingying's essence blood, something ancient and violently potent stirred within her core. Her meridians screamed in protest, then bloomed with a power she had never known. Taiyang energy, pure and brilliant, flared from her right hand. Taiyin energy, deep and cool, emanated from her left. And for the first time, they did not conflict. They coexisted.
Her entire body pulsed with an impossible, raw energy. It was not a true, legendary Chaos Body, but something tantalizingly near it. Her attacks shimmered with opposing forces, balancing perpetually at the very edge of detonation. Her combat aura in that state shot far past what even her perfected Five Elements Holy Body could ever reach.
But the cost was immediate and severe.
Xie Yingying slumped to the floor that night, her breath shallow, her face ghostly pale. The high grade, fourth tier restoration pills Su Min swiftly administered dulled the worst of the pain and fatigue, but they could not fully hide the profound spiritual drain. Su Min never asked for another drop after that. Not for decades.
Now, with only three uses of this fused state remaining before the essence blood would be fully metabolized, they had a strict agreement to limit it. Each activation would violently burn through Su Min's meridians and leave her unable to re enter that unstable state for at least three months. This incomplete Chaos Body was not a simple gift, it was a desperate weapon, to be used only sparingly, when all else failed.
But Su Min did not let the intervening years slip by idly.
~
Within the quiet, lamplit chambers of their cave dwelling, scrolls and jade slips littered the floor. The two foundational scriptures, the Solar Sovereign and the Lunar Sovereign, had once seemed distant, even alien to one another. But as Su Min studied them side by side, day after day, she discovered something startling.
Where the Solar technique expanded, the Lunar technique refined.
Where the Solar script taught to burn away impurities with purifying flame, the Lunar script taught to isolate them, to freeze them for later dissolution.
And where the Solar Sovereign Body struck outward with blinding, aggressive light, the Lunar Sovereign Body pulled inward with the silent, inexorable force of gravity.
"It is not that they are opposites," Su Min murmured late one night, tracing the elegant characters of the twin scrolls laid out before her. "It is that they complete each other. They are two halves of a single thought."
From this fundamental realization came new, shared techniques, abilities neither scripture had described explicitly, but which emerged naturally through their joint practice.
One was the Twin Polar Karma Seal.
Together, they could seal away not only an opponent's cultivation level, but the very Laws and Daos they wielded. It did not just suppress power, it removed the context that made the power meaningful. A profound sword technique without its supporting Sword Dao became just a simple swing. A devastating lightning spell without its Law of Destruction was little more than harmless heat and light.
Even more remarkably, Su Min found she could use a weaker version of it alone, but only when she was in her unstable, incomplete Chaos Body state.
All of this was the result of dedicated research, not fleeting passion. It was born from a deep, intellectual connection, not mere physical lust.
And in the end, that was what made it feel truly sacred.
~
Over the passing decades, they developed a comfortable, efficient rhythm.
In the secluded depths of the Golden Core Avenue, they would meditate for hours with fingers linked, breathing in each other's qi, learning the subtle cadence of their combined energy.
They tested their new seals against specially crafted puppet enemies, timing how long it took to destabilize various Laws, and then timing how long it took to carefully restore them.
They measured how pure Yin and pure Yang could be fused simply, without complex rituals, just a clean, powerful blend of two complementary halves hurled outward as one.
"The finest ingredients require the simplest methods," Su Min said once, quoting an old mortal chef she had met long ago on her travels. She pressed her palm firmly to Xie Yingying's, their energies beginning to swirl together. "And we are nothing if not finely made."
Xie Yingying had laughed at that, not mockingly, but softly, a rare, genuine sound of amusement.
She did not say that Su Min was right.
She just said, her voice steady and sure, "Again."
And they began to fuse.