The air in the master suite of Blackwood Manor was thick and alive, a storm of warring energies contained only by the ancient wards of the house. On the floor, a complex ritual array pulsed with a crimson light, its power drawn from Xue Lian's own blood. In the center of it all, on the grand, canopied bed, lay the two women, their bodies marked with glowing, matching sigils, their open heart wounds pressed together.
This was not a gentle healing. It was a metaphysical war.
Xue Lian's consciousness was torn from her own body and plunged into the chaotic, dying sea of Lan Yue's spirit. She felt everything. She felt the searing, corrosive agony of the Soul Scourge poison as it gnawed at Lan Yue's meridians. She felt the desperate, failing battle of her lover's celestial qi. And she felt the slow, terrifying fade of her life force, a candle flame sputtering in a violent storm.
But she felt other things, too. In the depths of that turmoil, she felt the unshakable core of Lan Yue's soul. She saw flashes of a decade spent in a cold, lonely cage, of a serene mask hiding a heart that refused to break. She felt the profound, unwavering love for their daughter, and for her. It was an invasion of the most intimate kind, a baring of two souls that was both beautiful and agonizing.
Her own potent, demonic energy poured across the bridge between them, not as a gentle stream, but as a legion of silver furred foxes hunting a great serpent. She directed her own life force with a surgeon's precision, hunting the threads of dark, corrosive poison within Lan Yue's spiritual pathways, burning them out with blasts of her own power. Every victory sent a backlash of searing, venomous pain through her own soul, but she did not relent.
For hours, the battle raged. But the poison was insidious. It had taken root too deeply. She felt Lan Yue's spirit begin to unravel, her life force plummeting toward an abyss of final silence. The Soul Bond held true, and Xue Lian felt herself being dragged down with her, the strength leaving her own limbs, her vision darkening at the edges.
We're not going to make it, a part of her despaired.
Then, through the pain and the encroaching darkness, an image bloomed in her mind. A small, perfect face with dark, serene eyes, looking up at her with absolute trust. Her daughter. Xue Hua. The promise she had whispered to her sleeping child: I have to go bring a hero home.
That promise was a fire in the void. A new, ferocious wave of power surged through her, fueled by a mother's unshakeable resolve. She would not fail.
In a final, desperate gambit, she stopped fighting the poison directly. Instead, she opened her own spiritual core to it, drawing the most venomous, potent threads of the Soul Scourge out of Lan Yue and into her own body. The agony was absolute, but her demonic soul, born of the Netherworld's resilient darkness, could withstand what Lan Yue's pure, celestial one could not. She absorbed the poison, her own system shuddering violently as it began the slow, torturous work of containing and purifying it.
The storm broke.
The crimson light of the arrays faded. The violent clash of energies subsided. The room fell into a profound, exhausted silence.
Xue Lian collapsed onto the bed beside Lan Yue, her body utterly spent, her spiritual energy drained to a whisper. The ritual was complete. The immediate danger had passed. Lan Yue's breathing was deep and even, the fever had broken, and the ugly black veins on her skin were slowly receding, leaving behind a network of faint, silvery scars.
But something new remained. A constant, quiet, thrumming connection in the back of her mind. It was a new sense, an awareness of another soul now permanently, irrevocably woven into her own. She could feel the steady, slow pulse of Lan Yue's healing life force, the peaceful quiet of her sleeping mind, as if it were a part of her own body.
She was exhausted, but she was not alone in her own head anymore.
As she lay there, drifting on the edge of her own unconsciousness, she felt a flicker across their new, shared bridge. It was not a word, but a dream, flowing from Lan Yue's mind into hers.
She saw a sunlit field of strange, beautiful Netherworld flowers. A small girl with moonlight white hair was laughing, running towards a serene woman in grey robes. In her hands, the child held a small, carved wooden fox.
A moment later, Lan Yue's fingers, which had been limp, twitched, her hand finding and weakly clutching Xue Lian's.
And for the first time since she had fallen, a single, clear thought, a whisper of pure consciousness, traveled from Lan Yue's soul directly into hers.
*Lian…*
The bond was forged. The hero was coming home.