Across Different Lifetimes and Different Realms to Find You

Prologue Remember 记得

Tell Me And I Will Forget; Show Me and I May Remember; Involve Me And I Will Understand
-       Chinese proverbs

Her eyes blinked few times, trying to be accustomed to the darkness surrounding her. Her body ached all over while her mind was bombarded with vivid images of the past memories of previous lifetimes. Grinding her teeth, another wave of memories came to her, and without pause, the massive flashback that came waves after waves, hitting her hard like tsunami gave her such a splitting headache, that she clutched her head and cried out.

Her heart, body and soul were tired. She took long breaths as she squeezed out her tears from her swollen eyes, trying to find her inner peach to calm down. Wiping her tears off her face and eyes, the young girl straightened her stooped shoulders, pulled her messy hair back, took a deep breath and strengthened her resolve. It was definitely time to move on, be happy and she could be, and she should do away without men or love.

Love just hurt and she did not want to go through all the messy feelings again. First things first and she could sort out her emotions later. Whatever the vicissitudes of her past lives, she had to put them on hold, while she figured her current situation. Just as she was trying to find clues of familiarity of the place she just awoken from, she saw a gnarly hand grabbing her hand.

"Huh! There you are, save me and the others the trouble to find you."

"Elder one, wait, who are you?" One could not help but panic when one was grabbed while they were vulnerable.

Ai, did I somehow land wrongly into someone's house?

"You forgot who this grandmother is? Huh! Anyways, this is my court and not even Jade Emperor could get you out of this predicament. You should have known in advance, hmmm, well, this never happened before and I will have to make new rule about this. But nonetheless, this girl had trespassed and right under my nose, she went to do that dumb thing to do...." The old lady was muttering to herself, while she dragged the young girl to where a steaming cauldron was floating magically in the air, cooking above an open flame. With a soft gesture, the cauldron lowered down and an attendant appeared to pass the old lady a bowl before retiring swiftly into the darkness.

The young girl could not help but to have a cold shiver down her spine when she figured where she had landed into.
One hand ladled the soup with dubious ingredients given the shade of greenish grey, and the old lady passed the odourless yet steaming bowl to the younger girl, giving her a nod, indicating for the young girl to drink up.

"Uhh...elder one, I mean esteemed MengPo, this...? Why do I have to take it?" the young girl was bewildered as she grabbed on the bowl that was shoved to her, the contents sloshing around the rims of the bowl. She looked at the old lady, to the bowl, to the dark alive pool next to her and then her gaze lingered to the desolate lot of people and different beings, halted to move forward in their long queue.
She did not know how she came back to Heavens, but was glad that she was and wanted a break from mortal realm. Why does she need to go back to the mortal realm?

"Girl, you went to rebirth cycle without any permission or in a proper manner. This time as a punishment for breaching into my Court of Wheel of Rebirth, you have to go through proper standard protocol and go through a mortal tribulation to pay your dues, with a clean slate and without any memories and skills."

The young girl closed her eyes, remembered and acknowledged her mistake, "Esteemed MengPo, can you kindly give me few moments to collect myself, before I drink this?"

"Girl, it doesn't matter now or later, your memories will still stay with you, the Broth of Oblivion, will only work for your upcoming mortal lifetime. And when you return, all of the past lives memories will also return together." MengPo sighed and shook her head, she gestured for the queue to come forward, "I will give you some time but after these 10 souls have entered the pool of Rebirth, it will be your turn."

The young girl thanked MengPo and went to a corner, the memory flashback had paused when she was grabbed earlier. She went through her jumbled memories to remember how she had ended up in such predicament.

Gasp! Eyes widening and smacking her head with her palm, not bothering to wince from the unintended vicious forehead smack, 'Could it be? Aiiiii....', her stupidity really astound even herself or should she say her shamelessness led to her stupidity. All in all, she was the loser in her past life trials, to which, stupidly were not even her trials, to begin with.

The past was just a distraction, she did not want to overly dwell in it. About the future, she doesn't know what will happen; it's a fantasy, so she has to be pragmatic and focus on her own self, to seize the moment to be grateful and happy. With these thoughts, the young girl smiled, came to terms with herself, this lifetime, she was determined to live for herself and enjoy it as her newest adventure. She quickly wrote a letter to her family not to worry about her and that she would return home as soon as possible.

"Esteemed MengPo, I'm ready. Please have someone pass this letter and my personal items to my family." The young girl removed her accessories, shown her true self within the Court of Wheel of Rebirth.

It was not easy to surprise MengPo, who had seen all kind of beings through her court, but this girl had done it twice, once with her past action and now with her astounding beauty.

The young girl drank the Soup of Oblivion and an attendant carefully led the graceful fairy into the pool of rebirth. Just as she was about to be absorbed into the inky pool, an errant thought popped before all the memories were cleared, 'theres someone important that I have forgotten to write to...who is it?'