Solstice Souls: Solstice Sons (Book 3)

Fluidity in Motion

Lan Zhan's POV

The Yin Hufu is still changing, he realizes, as they stare at it. It rests in Lan Zhan's palm, and the white swirling stone is shifting, like glittering snow caught inside a frozen bubble, but as Lan Zhan directs his energy towards it, an inquiry, a friendly request to know more, a golden circle appears around the edge of the stone.

They both gasp, and Lan Zhan's hand trembles.

"Lan Zhan? Your eyes are mirroring the stone!" Wei Ying grabs his wrist in a panic. "They're white with a golden rim around the edges! How does it feel?"

That is a deep question with no simple answer.

When Wei Ying suggested working with the Yin Hufu as a possible weapon in the upcoming war, Lan Zhan's heart rebelled against it.

All of his life, he's been told how harmful it is to use resentment energy, how it messes with a person's golden core, taints their memories and destroys their physical body. But from the moment he's been able to observe Wei Ying's mastery of it, to see the ease with which his husband can manipulate it, and now to find out that it's actually more of a partnership, he's starting to see just how much Wei Ying is more remarkable and talented as a Demonic energy cultivator.

That being said, he would be lying if he said he wasn't scared by it.

But the way the black tendrils of resentment energy are tentative, slowly climbing up his arm as if asking for permission, makes him think he has been misled.

If it is true that each person is born different regarding their golden cores and the strength or power they can wield, then surely the same can be said regarding resentment energy? Doesn't that make more sense? Of course, it's a rare skill though.

But his elders had refused to consider the possibility of this argument, even when they presented Wei Ying as proof of the fact. Then maybe Wei Ying was right, they definitely needed to find out more about this kind of power, and its obvious connection to cultivation.

He thinks about when they visited Lotus Cove, and during that time, Madam Yu's punishment of Wei Ying, how Lan Zhan had seen the damage for himself. How Zidian's bite had torn gashes into Wei Ying's tender skin, and how he had managed to knit the slashed skin together, over and over again. How, not just a few days ago on the day of their wedding, Wei Ying had used that same resentment energy once more to heal Lan Zhan then.

They hadn't discussed it too much then, but Lan Zhan thinks he can put some pieces together.

All this time, like a blind person leading the blind, the question of using resentment energy had been shut down without investigation, and had they continued down that path of blind trust and faithfulness only in traditional methods of cultivation, they would not have any advantages to speak of now, in the face of the Enemy Wens, and how they would be attacking.

And yet, there's a massive difference still.

Wen Ruohan uses Resentment energy like a servant. He locks it away so it builds and builds, until it's ready to break loose, to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting. A weapon to do his bidding, and this is fine as long as their objectives remain the same; to weaken cultivators by growing the natural resentment energy to be found in everyone.

But what will happen when there's a divergence of their paths? The assumption would be a backlash to obliterate the one holding the resentment energy in check, because its true strength is still indeterminable. They simply do not know enough about it to learn this. The results could be devastating.

However, maybe Wei Ying has stumbled upon a hidden truth. Maybe...this is the vital key.

Wei Ying treats Resentment energy like a friend.