Her Last Words[Completed]

Chapter 9: The Stranger

Here is where DongFeng step in, and the story progresses! Very soon we will have our main couple back, hopefully :)

Do let me know in the comments/DM me if there's something you would like to request or suggest for me to include in the fic ^^

The song I've chosen is an old song:

I'm not caring in order to get
Some sort of repayment

I'm not anticipating for
Some sort of tomorrow

Because I am alone
I can only be honest about my feelings

Just for one sentence from you
My whole body wavers

Just for one smile
Love then exists

Those people who think too much
Will not understand when they're alive

- extract from "Because of Love, Therefore Love" by Nicholas Tse, Legendary Siblings OST.

The sky thundered. A crowd formed, of Xiangli Meng, Queen Junuo's only child, his mother and cousin the Princess Jielu, the demon lord Xiaoyan, the court musician Jiheng, and the visiting third prince of the Sky Kingdom.

The Emperor Lord Donghua had chosen to discharge ninety percent of his cultivation in order to enter the dream dimension known as "Aranya's Dream", to save his beloved Bai Fengjiu, after she had accidentally entered the Dream and was subsequently trapped within.

Queen Junuo said to her niece Princess Jielu, "in the end, it was him, who chose to give up his lifelong cultivation to create this world for her". As the two disappeared into the distance, Jielu asked her aunt about the Dream and her relationship with Aranya, a myth which nobody was allowed to say her name. Fanyin Valley only had one season, eternal snow, ever since the Archmage cut off the other three seasons with his sword.

Xiangli Meng had been close friends with Bai Fengjiu. But at this point he was powerless to help her, and even Xiaoyan, who accidentally fell into Fanyin Valley with Fengjiu from the mountain overlooking the Valley, admired Donghua for his bravery and sacrifice in the name of love. They had all heard stories of this Dream, that there was the danger of death should someone attempt to escape the Dream by disrupting it, due to the powerful Diezhou sorcery used to create the Dream. An immortal had once died when his peer tried to save him by disrupting the Dream. His peer had also died along with him.

Suddenly it dawned on His Majesty the Third Prince that there was one person who was likely to be able to enter the Dream, given his family history. He was the second son of the Queen of Snakes, no other than Master Mo.

And so, when the Third Prince requested for a favour from him, Su Moye entered the Dream. He had readily agreed to help, as he himself wished to know the circumstances behind Aranya's death.

As Fengjiu had been seriously wounded, Donghua preserved her body in an ice coffin while attempting to place her primordial spirit in one of the bodies of the inhabitants of the Dream. He decided that a pregnant woman's womb would be most helpful to her recovery, but unfortunately, Fengjiu's primordial spirit had escaped his grasp, finding its way within the Dream. As he had only a small portion of his cultivation, it would be some time before he could find her primordial spirit.

As he walked in the streets, invisible, he had bumped into the Dream's version of Xize, which had been created in the likeness of Xize to accommodate to Aranya's memory of Xize in the Dream. He had then taken over Xize's identity with a correction spell which changed everyone's memory of Xize to be that of his image, while freezing "Xize" within Qinan Palace.

Then he had been called to enter the palace as Xize.

With Xize's help and guidance, they had modified the Jiepo lantern, which was used to create the souls of mortals, to accommodate to re-create souls of earth deities. The Dream's version of Aranya had been but an artificial shell in the likeness of Aranya, as was with the other inhabitants of the Dream. As soon as he had progressed through the events of Aranya's life, he was able to collect fragments of her soul to be used in the creation of another soul for Aranya.

He had been collecting these soul fragments in the Dream. He had been going through a cycle of these events for many years in order to collect the soul fragments. But what surprised him was that the Aranya he created had been acting strangely today. This time, Aranya had waken up one morning not being herself. When they had a run-in at Zuilixian, she hadn't recognized him. He would later come to realize that things were going to change. This was no longer the original past of Aranya. Somehow, some person had came into the Dream and Aranya's fate was changing. All these years, when someone stumbled upon the Dream from the Saha tree in Fanyin Valley, they would appear as a "stranger" to the Dream, and a new inhabitant. Unfortunately, they would be stuck living the Dream until the end of their finite lifespan, without any means of escape. The only one person who tried to break out of the Dream, had perished.

Fengjiu had stolen the Saha fruit in Fanyin Valley in order to resurrect her mortal friend and former husband in name, who had died saving her. However, on the way out, being an immortal with thirty thousand years of cultivation, she had discharged her cultivation to bypass the four serpents and by accident, she ended up trapped in the Dream.

She had a dream of herself falling far and out of reach of the man she loved, Donghua. When she woke up, she found herself in a new body that was not hers, and as a princess no less. What puzzled her was the resemblance of the person whose body she had just taken over, to her own self. The only difference in their looks was that this person didn't have a phoenix flower birthmark on her forehead like she did. It was from this birthmark that she gained her name, Fengjiu, meaning Phoenix-nine. She had been born on the ninth month.

Fengjiu learnt from her maid Chacha that she had challenged her older sister, the eldest princess, to a horse race the night before. She used this as an alibi to feign partial amnesia, alleging she had hit her head during the challenge. She also learnt that the person whose body she had inhabited was Princess Xiangli Aranya.

Aranya had loved to wear red. Fengjiu could not find any clothes in any colour other than red in Aranya's wardrobe. When she went to Zuilixian to try out Aranya's favourite dishes for dinner, she was disgusted to find out that the lady in fact loved to eat snake meat. On the verge of throwing up, she had quickly ran out of her private suite in search of a bathroom, only to run into Chen Ye at the door. Obviously he had realized she had not recognized him. She feared that Chen Ye or someone else might find out that she was in fact an impostor.

Darkness fell, and she retired to sleep. She was still sound asleep when daybreak came. Chacha had come in with good news, waking her up with her melodious voice. "My mistress, guess what? Your teacher is back from the West Sea," she chirped happily.

"My master?" Fengjiu repeated after her.

"Yes, my mistress. Master Mo is here, waiting for you outside in the manor."