Soul or body?

☾︎☀︎︎☽︎

Notes:
I got this idea right before school started, and I finished this in basically less than an hour. This is actually probably my favorite story that I have written so far, so I hope you can enjoy it - at least a little bit.

---

Soul or body? That is the question that cultivators and commoners have been asking themselves for centuries - each for a different reason, whatever it may be. Once cultivators had become as common as mosquitoes during the hot summer, they found out that they had a much longer lifespan than the average person, and that caught the attention of many people.

Cultivators started popping up everywhere and more people were able to experience life for a lot longer than they would've been able to before. Different methods of cultivation were created - some worshiped and others despised. Centuries later, it became common knowledge that the average lifespan went from 250-300 years for a healthy cultivator. People were rejoicing at the different abilities that came with this lifestyle, and traveled the world, built up their cultivation levels, and made new standards for others that wished to join them on their journey to immortality.

But, soon enough trouble had to rear its ugly head. Young cultivators at the ripe ages of 90 or even 78 started to die. People began asking themselves: soul or body? Which one? Which one should they focus more on, which one should they pay more attention to and build up the strength of? After this abnormal phenomenon started, the more people became scared, and they went into seclusion to shield themselves from something they thought was contagious, but it ended up not mattering. Later, some people just started to ignore it, and went back to going about their longer lives like normal - some people even completely forgot about it, others never even told their children, leaving them to grow up ignorant of what could be sprung up on them in the future.

Lan Zhan had never fully thought about it enough when he was younger, because he thought he wouldn't have to ever personally deal with it. His family had a clean record, no one in his ancestral line had ever died of the "Depletion Illness" as the cultivators had started to call it. He thought he would be free of the mental baggage and torture that came with someone close to you becoming a victim of. He thought the people he finally got to spend his life with would be safe. But apparently not. Because when Lan Zhan had woken up that morning, he turned to greet his husband but only found a cold corpse of the man he loves. He laid there like he was sleeping, but his Golden Core was not thrumming as it usually was - no matter how dim. The Core thrum that gave him comfort in his darkest days, and the warm smile that he looked forward to every second of the day would never be shown ever again - not to anyone.

Lan Zhan was frozen on the spot. He couldn't believe it. His vision went blurry and his cheeks started to feel moist. He leaned over, and wrapped his arms around the cold body, his head buried in the juncture between Wei Ying's shoulder and neck, letting his tears fall free and his body shook and barely concealed screams of emotional pain wracked his whole being.

Lan Zhan was never going to be whole again. Wei Ying wasn't going to come back to life miraculously, he knew that. But his mind wasn't caught up with the logical part of him, and he hoped - and he ached . And Lan Zhan cursed the gods that he didn't believe in, because what god would let this happen? He cried for hours, and then fell asleep asking the same question that others had been wondering for centuries before him.

Which one: soul or body, that gave out on the perfectly healthy first?