#yiyu

The child is but sixteen years old when you bring him into your home in your first encounter. Through your own efforts, and though you yourself have never so much as spent more than a day with a child, you have somehow managed to raise him. It was no easy task, perhaps for another much more experienced than you, but many a time you found yourself a little helpless on how to care for him. 

No matter, he is a lovely child, one you are undeniably proud of. You must admit, you may be biassed in your judgement, for even when you must return from ‘work’, there is already a full table of home-cooked dishes waiting for you, the house absolutely spotless and the mail collated in a neat pile atop the counter. He requires no urging to complete his work as many children often do, nor have you ever been brought in by his appropriate schooling for behavioural or academic issues. Every report card he brings back sings only praises of his demeanour and performance. Extra-curricular activities were likewise an area he did not falter in. 

Perhaps then one might think him withdrawn from you, unwilling to share woes and joys. Yet again, you could find no fault in him. He took to you easily, and the two of you fell into the roles of auntie and nephew all too easily. That sweet adoring child like sunlight, with wide fluttering eyes of soft grey, you must admit that though this was all part of a bigger plan, of one he should never have to know, whenever he flashed you that bright smile that could win over even the coldest of hearts, you could not help the squeeze of emotion that swells within your ribs.

Unlike most children, you found that he did not develop that rebellious phase that every child seems to fall into upon teenagehood. Rather than the expected shows of defiance or even distance, that child of yours only seemed to strengthen his stickiness. Two birthdays and the only thing he asked for?

“I just want to stay with you.”

You suppose that might have been your first clue that this child you were bound to meet in every world was not one that you could escape so easily. 

You took him travelling within the country for those two birthdays, and it came as no surprise as to how he responded when you asked him once more. This time, you would have taken him out to far more distant lands, to a place that belonged only to the two of you. 

Yet every mission must come to its end. You only wished you did not have to do it when he was at his most joyous. 

The child reached his eighteen years of age, and you distinctly remember those soulful eyes squeezed in joy when you promised to spend time with him for his coming of age, you remember it clear as day. Yet your time was limited, you had to leave this world soon. 

‘I’m sorry, I broke our promise, we couldn’t spend your eighteenth birthday together after all.’

Harsh needles of rain beat against the asphalt road as he watched you die. Caught in an accident perfectly orchestrated by forces this world could not hope to fathom, you feel yourself detach from your body like shedding a skin not quite your own. You watched him, that young child rushing forward to cradle your body within his arms as he cried, all but begging for someone to call an ambulance, anyone, someone. 

No one responds, there is no reaction to his clear distress. He could only hold onto your cold body, shaking from the frigid rain and sorrow, such grief that overtook him that bystanders could likewise express no response other than pity. Your poor child, though you have not spent much time with him, you could not help the squeeze of your chest and the stain of guilt upon your soul, no matter that you were now as much a bystander to his life as those apathetic observers. You had not intended to get as attached as you did, you even bought him an additional gift in your irrationality. 

Too soft-hearted, you did not expect this out of yourself. 

Watching through the hazy veil, your mission was soon to be over. You merely had to sit through the ending to return to your reality. 

He seemed to have felt the gift you prepared pressed against him, a little box in your pocket now cradled in his large hands. Your nephew opened it and the glimmer of the silver ring reached you even then, his hand removing it from the velvet interior with severe care. He pressed it to his lips, his eyes squeezed shut as each second passed with excruciating dilatoriness. When he had finally brought himself to sobriety, when you could finally register his dolour, the ring slipped onto his left ring finger. 

You were buried soon after, a simple headstone that detailed your date of birth and death. There was but one inscription carved onto the dark stone, ‘Most Beloved’. Standing in front of your grave beneath the pouring rain, that child of yours had his head bowed. Dews of rain clung to the tips of hair it could reach, no matter that he was surrounded by a dozen men clad in suits and bearing open umbrellas. 

When he rose, his head remained bowed as though in respect, yet when he took one last look at your eternal resting place, you caught a glimpse of his face. Far more severe and cold, his steel eyes softened just the slightest, just a moment. 

You were scarce to even hear his words, watching his lips move as though in abject silence. You managed to make out a sentence among the rain and mist. 

‘Please, wait for me, I’ll find you.’

In the end, you really thought you could change his descent of vengeance and deration into one much kinder for a child like him. 

You had inadvertently became the catalyst that would send him spiralling down the treacherous road that he was meant to journey. The great founder of Fusheng Corporation who spared no sympathy for those beneath his shoe, the great giant of the financial market who dominated all. No longer was he that sweet sunny child whose very smile could bring about sunshine, but rather a man who could no more feel affinity as much as he could so distinctly feel the burden of lost devotion. 

And yet behind the scenes, Fusheng Corporation hid behind the same veil its very founder had put up around himself.  He found them. He found the people he had been looking for all these years. He completely destroyed a technology company that had been the perpetrators of your very passing, and with each passing day, it seemed that declaring bankruptcy may be their only way out. Yet,you had no doubt that he would hunt down the culprit if only to satisfy the caving loss within him. 

He will find you. 

He will find a way to bring you back.

You find him last alone in his room, unclad from the day’s suits and formalities, bearing nothing but a white button up and casual slacks, that ring still ever on his finger. There is barely any illumination that could shine upon his visage, merely the dim light of a computer screen and meagre bedside lamp. Beyond this room is the persistent rain that beats against the window, the dark clouds casting a dismal shadow upon the world. 

He runs a thumb over the cool metal as his eyes wanders to the framed picture on his desk, an old almost weathered old thing encased in glass and metal. You are next to him with a practised smile and a sun hat atop your head, that child of yours stands close, the ghost of a past that he can never have again. 

“I’m still looking for you,” He whispers, his voice so soft you must strain to hear it. 

His form is hunched over, shoulders drooping as he reaches for the frame. He has lost the very person who brought joy to his life, beyond his revenge, he has nothing to live for. Not even his resolve to bring you back.

You cannot be brought back. 

He brings his ring finger to his lips and presses a chaste kiss, “Auntie, I will find you.”

➽──────────────❥

The child is prophesied to be the next demon king should he fall to the vices of his previous incarnations in your second encounter. He would plunge the world into chaos, taking over the three realms and ruling with tyrannical terror. As his master, you would have to steer him away from his road, or at least, you hoped you would be able to. 

You had established yourself as a trusted member of the jianghu, if only because it meant that you may attract his attention, and if not, then perhaps the position would give you some kind of leverage for information. 

It paid off in the end, for you did not have to search for him when he instead came to you. Yet rather than a young child you could shape and mould away from his destiny, you are granted a teenager to be inducted into disciplehood. You once again take it upon yourself to bring him in, to take care of him as he should be. 

Young Master Yi. 

That is his personage before you find him, before you are approached by a young man with an oiled paper umbrella above his head, shielding the two of you from the rain that falls from the high heavens. Clad in simple white robes and standing tall, he had smiled at you.

‘I found you, master.’

You accepted him as your disciple, sitting atop a sandalwood stool as he served you tea with those beautiful eyes and guileless smile. 

How could such a child possibly be the incarnation of all that is evil in this world? 

How could a young man, with nothing but bright hopes and dreams swirling within him be capable of destroying the world? 

He picked up many skills required of a cultivator easily, as though second nature to him despite his non-cultivational background. You can only suppose it is because of his unique heritage but that did not mean he was nonetheless diligent in his training. If he was not sticking to your side during training, then he was doing as he did in that last world, preparing meals for the both of you, cleaning, as though preparing himself as a tender-hearted maiden. 

They find you. Of course they do, this is this body’s destiny. The high elders just so conveniently find you without your disciple, and you are taken into custody. Albeit, in the original world, things go about far more differently. 

Your disciple was meant to be hated from the start, he was meant to be the white lamb unfairly looked down upon as his morals and integrity corrupted into something far more twisted. He was meant to be betrayed this very moment, for his master to throw him to the wolves the very moment she got. 

Yet, you could not do it. 

Again, once again, against your better judgement, you had grown all too fond of that sweet child. 

Staring up at that disgraceful old coot’s wrinkled face, you felt nothing but disdain for him and the rest of this greater society. With your hands bound with immortal binding cables, though you knew that you were no less weaker than a worm in dry soil, you still mustered the strength to maintain your poise. 

It disgusted you, they disgust you. Wanting to kill a child just because he had the chance to be evil, as if no other person could possibly bear the same possibility themselves? They are no lower than the very evil they claim to abhor. 

You are his master, it is your duty to protect him. You will protect him. 

So you gritted your teeth and refused to answer, biting your tongue and turning your head even as they kicked and beat you. Even as you felt your brain ram against your skull and your throat bring up hot blood, you refused to give up anything. Each dull ache was nothing, nothing if it meant his safety. Spilling past your lips and choking your lungs, you had resigned yourself to this momentary torment. 

Nevertheless, no matter your station or reputation, your disobedience displeased them greatly, made especially so by your persistent protection of who they deemed a threat. As such, they do as any great pillar of virtue and justice do, rewarding your years of hard work with the careful and meticulous stripping of your five senses. 

One touch and your body sets alight in flames, the nerves and vessels laden in your limbs and form ripped through your skin. Another and your eyes blur to inexplicable fogginess before descending into a dark void, another and your ears fill with liquid that block all sounds, another and another and another. 

At the very least, you know your disciple will still be safe. Because you are still alive, and your formations will keep him safe. 

Even if you cannot see his soft grey eyes squeeze in joy, hear his gentle voice in the mornings calling for you to awaken, smell the waft of his orange blossom hair oil or ever feel the way his hair feels in your hands, he will be safe. That is all that matters. 

So why does it hurt? Why does it hurt so much? It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. It hurts, it hurts. 

It hurts.

IT HURTS

Once more, yet perhaps in a turn of events unlike the original, you feel your soul detach from your current body, desperately clinging onto the vestiges of what may be considered a more a corpse than living being. Though your body still lives, still breathes, heart still beating within a useless old thing, your soul grips onto life. 

Vaguely, you thought you could hear the remnants of his voice, the soft trill of his words. Only vaguely, for all you could have known, this could have been another trick to lower your guard. It is as though he were speaking beneath the seas, barely a sound passing to your ears. 

“Shifu, I’ll bring you to the Wangyou Sea and find the Jiao Pearl for you.”

“Wait for me, please.”

‘What a shame, I lied to you again.’

You could not keep your promise to him again, how fitting. Your soul that clinged and grasped onto that useless body could only do so for so long, and soon you are relegated to that screen once more. Yet in the last few moments of your death, you think you heard him. 

Your intervention does not help, it never will. Your death, the knowledge that your death was caused by the very immortals meant to be the pillar of virtue plunges your disciple into that dark abyss.

They who have feared him, have become the very cause of his corruption. 

You know that he knows. The whole cultivational world knows. Hot bubbles of magma burst free from a raging volcano, dark clouds of smoke and soot drifting to cover the great blue skies and from within the resentful crucible is your disciple. An anguished cry just manages to reach your ears, his voice once gentle and soft filled with heart-wrenching grief. 

The birth of a new demon king, inaugurated by his greatest loss, embarks on the total and entire subjugation of everything and everyone that has ever brought his master desolation. 

Tall and looming and seething with cold fury. That young man you had raised in this life and another had disappeared, and though you have long past, you could still so palatably feel his sorrow through the thin veil of death. Those cold grey eyes, it was as though a blizzard raged within them, bearing nothing but a wasteland. 

The demon realm, the mortal realm, even the high heavens, none were safe from him. And yet he still searches, continues to find a way to bring you back. But your bodies are nothing but a vessel for a wandering soul, and no matter what he does you will never come back. 

Sitting atop that lonely throne, what did the conquest of three realms mean when you were gone? When you were not there to pat his head and to hold him? 

If he could choose, he would rather return to those simpler times, to when you accepted him, to when you praised him, to when you were by his side. 

‘In another life, I’ll protect you.’

➽──────────────❥

The child you have raised in two worlds stands before you, in a white coat and bearing that gentle smile upon his thin lips. 

He maintains the height he had, though he appears much kinder, much softer than his previous incarnations, with his ash brown hair meticulously styled and his clothes iron-pressed. You think you smell the hint of orange blossoms coming from him, fresh and slightly sweet. 

Yiyu, he tells you. That is his name in this world, and the name you should call him. 

He is a doctor here, and unlike all those worlds, you have no obligation to care for him. 

He is alive and safe here, with no debts to repay and no grudges to hold. 

Laying atop a hospital bed, you can vaguely hear him speaking, perhaps details about your current condition but you could care less. Then, he looks to you, those eyes as though begging you to acknowledge him. You think you hear the whisper of a familiar title, the instinctual urge to press his lips to form that familiar call. 

‘Auntie.’

Your heart sinks yet sings. 

That damned system. After all those worlds, perhaps your soft-heartedness had come from something else. 

The only question you should ask yourself now is,