Night in the secret realm was not truly dark, but dreaming.
Above the Golden Core Avenue, twilight lingered endlessly, caught in the space between dusk and dawn. Pale stars flickered like dozing eyes, and the wind moved slow and deliberate, steeped in the scent of old stone, crushed herbs, and quiet memory. Even the mountains stood hushed beneath veils of mist that seemed to breathe.
They walked without speaking. Not for a lack of words, but because the profound hush around them made speech feel fragile, an intrusion.
Su Min glanced sideways at Yingying. Her pace was even, yet her hands remained clasped tightly behind her back, as if holding something vital in place, bracing for a blow that had not yet fallen. The holy maiden, always the picture of composure. But tonight, something in her spiritual qi shivered at the edges, a subtle vibration Su Min could feel in the air between them.
Su Min recognized it. It was a perfect echo of her own restless energy.
Their bond had undeniably deepened. They had stood back-to-back in battle, escaped death more than once, and faced threats that would have broken lesser cultivators. Still, trust born on the battlefield was like a finely honed blade—gleaming, weighty, and double-edged. It did not always cut clean.
The resonance between their Solar and Lunar Sovereign Physiques could stir powerful, unpredictable reactions, both spiritual and corporeal. It felt deeper than simple affection, yet its origins were not always truthful, tangled up in the cauldron's compatibility and the echoing pull of their respective inheritances.
They continued in silence, their footsteps muffled by the thick moss and low fog. The mirrored peaks on either side loomed like ancient sentinels, their summits fading into the drifting clouds. Above, stars blinked like distant lanterns, their weak light caught and reflected in the still, dark pools scattered along the path.
Then Su Min halted.
A faint, ethereal glow shimmered ahead, nestled between two gentle slopes. Yingying came to her side, her sharp eyes narrowing as she focused on the light.
Beneath a natural arch of woven pale stone and gnarled root, a single herb swayed in the quiet air. It was silver-petaled, delicate as spun silk, and it pulsed with a soft, internal light, as if it breathed in rhythm with the hidden moon.
The Moonlace Bloom.
Su Min exhaled, a soft sound in the stillness. "It's real."
Yingying stepped closer, her gaze locked on the luminous blossom. "So this is the legendary Dreamscape Herb."
It had many names in ancient texts, all pointing to the same elusive truth: it was born only where yin and yang met in perfect stillness, where neither night nor day held dominion. The records claimed it allowed two cultivators to share a single thread of consciousness, merging thought, memory, and soul. It was an art of cultivation as intimate as it was dangerous.
"To use it is to bare the soul," Su Min said quietly, her voice barely a whisper. "No masks. No shields. Even what we hide from ourselves, the Moonlace will reveal it."
She reached out, her fingers gently brushing a single, cool petal. It was soft and almost shy in its otherworldly fragility.
Yingying met her gaze, her dark eyes reflecting the flower's silver light. "That is why we came, is it not?"
Without another word, they each plucked a single petal—one silver, one faintly gold.
The world folded inward.
~
When Su Min opened her eyes, the sky was split, half silver, half gold. Moonlight and sunlight twined above her like ink swirling in water, never clashing, only curling into one another. She stood in a realm that was not hers, yet it did not feel foreign. Ancient pavilions drifted over seas of cloud, glowing lotuses bloomed among the stars, and ancient runes shimmered along the stone paths like captured fireflies.
"Your dreamscape..." she murmured. But she knew it was not Xie Yingying's alone. The presence of another soul pulsed around her, cautious, near, and startlingly open.
She turned.
Xie Yingying stood in the half-light, her white robes fluttering in a wind that did not exist, her gaze holding both the sun and the moon.
They did not speak at first.
Su Min's old instincts, honed by a life of survival, urged her to reach out and test the dreamscape, to probe its boundaries and take what she could. But that was who she used to be.
Xie Yingying began to walk, her bare feet silent on the translucent path that formed beneath her steps. Su Min followed.
With each step, the dreamscape shifted. Memories, not their own, yet intimately familiar, echoed through it. A glimpse of Su Min, young and bloodied, kneeling before the burning ruins of her clan's manor. A flash of Yingying, much younger, meditating silently under the relentless spray of a frozen waterfall.
Their truths. Their scars.
Then came Yingying's voice, soft but unwaveringly steady. "They say the Lunar Sovereign is fated to resonate with the Solar. Drawn like the tide to the sun."
Su Min looked at her, her own heart suddenly uneasy. "So that same question had festered in Yingying's mind, too."
"Does that bother you?" Su Min asked, her voice deliberately light, though her fingers curled slightly at her sides.
"It bothers me that I cannot tell whether I am drawn to you," Xie Yingying paused, her gaze lifting to the horizon where the moon hung low and heavy, "or just to what you became."
Solar Sovereign Physique.
The words hung unspoken in the air between them, but they did not need to be voiced.
Su Min glanced away, her throat tight. She remembered the flicker of desire she had quickly buried, the initial longing for the inheritance, for the power, for the Heavenly Yin Sect's legacy that was wrapped within her very body.
"I suppose," she said, her voice low, "we are both wondering whether we want each other, or just what the other possesses."
Silence fell again, taut with things neither of them could deny.
Then, Su Min reached out. Not to take, but to offer. Her fingers hovered, open, just beside her hand.
A single breath passed. The space between their hands shimmered, warm and cold tangled together like the twilight air.
Xie Yingying moved, slowly. Her fingertips brushed just above Su Min's palm, a ghost of a touch, testing if the warmth was real.
It was.
A gentle ripple passed through the dream. Petals lifted from moonlotus trees and hung suspended around them like a constellation of tiny stars. The light bent softly, not to dazzle, but to hold them in its embrace.
Xie Yingying stepped closer. Her spiritual aura brushed against Su Min's like cool mist across a steady flame—a sensation that was curved, receptive, and utterly new.
"You are always holding something back," Xie Yingying said, not as an accusation, but a simple observation.
Su Min did not deny it. Instead, she pressed her palm gently, firmly, against her shoulder.
"I do not want to take," Su Min said. "I want to understand."
Xie Yingying's breath caught.
It was not hunger. It was not even longing. It was intimacy, the quiet kind, the kind that allowed someone to see you fully and choose to remain.
A memory rose behind Su Min, unbidden and unwelcome.
She was fourteen. Barefoot on cold, blood-slick tiles as the Su Clan Mansion burned. The air was thick with the scent of peach blossoms and ash. Soldiers in gold-threaded armor moved like ghosts through the smoke, their blades still dripping. Somewhere beneath the roar of the fire, she could hear the dying cries of her cousins, her elders—slain not in honest battle, but in the Emperor's mockery of justice.
In another flash, the scene shifted: a stone-walled cell, damp and rank. A younger Su Min was curled around herself in the corner, listening to her uncle scream until his voice gave out entirely.
"Confess," they had said. "Confess your treason."
She had not cried then. She had only waited, until even the rats abandoned her for dead.
That girl looked out now, from the edge of the dream, and met Xie Yingying's eyes.
Xie Yingying did not flinch.
Instead, her own memory surfaced in reply: a vision of her kneeling alone in the sealed sanctuary of the Heavenly Yin Sect, hearing her masters and mentors die one by one as they activated a self-destruction formation to shield her. Cold moonlight had poured through the broken dome above, and in that desolate light, she had sworn she would carry their will, utterly alone.
Neither of them had ever expected to be seen like this, to have their deepest ruins laid bare.
But here they stood. Not admiring each other's brilliance, but acknowledging the devastation underneath.
Without speaking, they began to move again, passing through a corridor formed of starlight and shared memory. They crossed shifting bridges woven from moonbeams, climbed terraces where the sun bled golden sap through crystalline branches, and stood in silent harmony atop the twin statues of the Sovereigns, Lunar and Solar, as if measuring the vast, fateful distance between them.
As they walked, their steps grew more synchronized. A quiet rhythm emerged, heralded not by clash or command, but by a dawning, mutual trust.
One such trial came in the form of a powerful illusion—a dark, twisted version of Su Min, a self consumed by greed for power, her soul shattered and unrecognizable. In the illusion, this Su Min was cold and calculating, willing to sacrifice everything and everyone, even Yingying, to achieve her goals. Yingying, struggling against overwhelming feelings of betrayal, almost gave in to the illusion, believing that the real Su Min had truly become like the people who had once betrayed her.
But Su Min's voice broke through, calling out to Yingying with an intensity that shattered the false reality. "You know me," she said, her words a lifeline thrown across the chaos. "I will never become them."
In that moment, her heart shifted. The truth of their bond, the rawness of their shared emotions, could not be denied anymore. She had feared becoming just another person in Su Min's world, a casualty of fate, but she now realized that Su Min's heart, like her own, was still healing, still capable of love and trust.
The next trial was even more personal, a manifestation of her own deepest fear: the overwhelming pressure to remain distant, to hide her true feelings behind the cold, impeccable facade demanded by the Lunar Sovereign Physique. In this illusion, she was trapped in a beautiful, agonizing cage of solidified moonlight, her body aching from the strain of restraining her desires, her power, and her emotions.
Su Min entered the illusion to save her, but she did not do so as a protector swooping in. She entered as an equal, as someone who understood the immense weight of what Xie Yingying was facing. As the two of them stood together against the trial, Su Min reached out, her touch both tender and firm. "You do not have to hide, Yingying. Not from me."
The cage of moonlight shattered.
Xie Yingying's greatest fear had always been that her connection to Su Min was merely a product of their fated resonance, of the Solar and Lunar energies intertwining out of necessity. She had lived in constant doubt, unsure whether her feelings were her own or just an effect of their unique bond. But in this moment, with Su Min standing beside her with her own heart open and vulnerable, Yingying finally realized that what she felt for Su Min was real. It was not just the resonance; it was the quiet, unspoken moments they had shared, the way Su Min had never treated her as just a cauldron or a legacy, but as a person.
Before she could collapse from the emotional release, Su Min caught her wrist.
And then, let go.
No claim. No price. Just a steadying presence.
"You always move ahead like you are alone," Su Min said, softly.
Xie Yingying's smile came and went, a fleeting, fragile thing. "Because I always was."
A beat passed, filled with the echo of that confession.
"Not anymore," Su Min said.
This time, Xie Yingying did not look away.
Their hands met again, this time naturally. Fingers interlaced, not with the heat of hunger, but with the calm of recognition. As if their souls were now walking beside each other too, matching one another step for step.
And then, the final test: an empty courtyard where all illusions faded, leaving only skin and spiritual qi, light and shadow.
Here, the resonance between them peaked.
But the Solar and Lunar energy did not clash. They breathed together. Found a rhythm. A shared tide.
There was no kiss.
No grand declarations.
Just stillness.
Their foreheads touched.
And in that profound stillness, Su Min let go of everything but one, crystalline truth.
She did not want Xie Yingying's legacy.
She wanted her.
Xie Yingying, with the softest tilt of her head and the quietest release of breath, accepted that truth, and offered one of her own.
She wanted Su Min back.
Wanted her, not because of some heavenly resonance, but because of who Su Min was underneath all the brilliance and power.
When they parted, their hands lingered, warm with something neither could any longer deny.
The dream unraveled around them, petal by silvery petal.
And just before waking, both of them found the answers they had not dared to ask aloud.
But neither voiced them.
Not yet.
They carried the answers in their hearts, like a new kind of heat beneath the skin—silent, unseen, but now impossible to ignore.
===
This chapter was born from Xie Yingying's inner turmoil. At its core, it's her story - a deep dive into the fears and revelations of a woman blessed (or cursed) with the Lunar Sovereign Body (Taiyin body). This rare constitution makes her the ultimate "furnace" for dual cultivation, whether through intimate or non-intimate methods, and the weight of this truth haunts her.
The revelation that Su Min possesses the complementary Solar Sovereign Body (Taiyang body) alongside her Five Elements Holy Body only amplifies Xie Yingying's anxiety. In these pages, we witness her confusion, doubt, and terror - and ultimately, her path to resolution.
As for Su Min? With her infinite lifespan, she certainly cares about her sect's legacy... but there's something more important brewing. This marks the beginning of her emotional awakening - the moment she must confront and acknowledge what her heart already knows: she's fallen deeply, irrevocably in love.
--
Before you start comment about "That was the original Su Min's memory", let me refresh your memories. Current Su Min is inheriting original Su Min's memory, feelings even her trauma. She is Su Min, and Su Min is her.