Spirits can’t dream.

Technically, they can’t sleep either.

Just as they had no body that needed resting, they had no minds that needed time to process events during the day.

Thus, Jin was tired, but not in the way mortals think of being tired. It was a soul weariness that comes from his own nature...

Actually, the longer Jin was human the more questions he had about his nature. He knew he was something like a fire, what his wife and that annoying tree called “yang”. But knowing he was something called yang didn’t help him understand himself.

Even that know-it-all tree admitted she didn’t know how yin and yang could gain consciousness and had never heard such a thing happening anywhere else in the world. Technically yin and yang were energy, specifically the primordial energy that made up the foundations of the world. They shouldn’t, strictly speaking, be able to think.

But his and his sister’s existence proved they could think, have a will, and feel.

Yin and yang having a mind was the same as if air or dirt was suddenly capable of thought. It wasn’t normal and anyone who saw it would naturally wonder how that happened.

As a pure spirit, Jin had never wondered. Just as nature exists without questioning itself, he never asked why he existed. He never even thought to ask.

But being human had a curious effect on the Yang Spirit of the Mountains. He questioned who he was and why he existed in the way he did.

It also, surprisingly, let him dream.

Among all the curious things being human had done, perhaps this was the most bizarre and surprising. His spirit never really rested properly while his body slept and thanks to that he had an unnatural clarity about the kinds of dreams his human body produced.

Usually they were bizarre and nonsensical, but occasionally he’d have a dream he couldn’t explain. Those dreams usually happened when his body slept and his spirit was taking a “nap”. These naps were too short though and he often couldn’t figure out what was going on in these peculiar dreams, or even what made them different.

His sister had sent a little bit of herself in her journal, and because he was strained from being active too long, it had been more than enough to knock him out cold.

For a while he was in a cool, inky blackness, unaware of anything going on around him.

But slowly, ever so slowly, his human body began to influence his spirit and he dreamed.

He was lying in an empty space. He blinked and sat up. His body was shaped like the one he had as a human, but was made up of his gold inner energy.

When he looked down at himself, he couldn’t help thinking, ‘Since when did I view myself as a human?’

It used to be that he was some strange combination of beasts or a buck. That was how he looked when Mei Hua, as a child, had met him. When he entered Mei Hua’s world years later, he had become something between an animal and a human. Now all traces of his beast persona were gone, replaced by his human one.

The human body was really impressive. A century hadn’t passed yet in his human body and it had already completely altered his view of himself. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or alarmed by how quickly he’d integrated.

The gold glow of his body cast a harsh light around him, allowing him to see the world was not as empty and black as he’d initially thought. Directly around him, his inner light created innumerable shadows.

It seemed he was standing on something. It felt familiar but also foreign and no matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out what it was. After struggling for a while he gave up and looked farther out, beyond where his light shone.

There was only darkness out there.

He stared and stared but there was nothing.

A sense of restlessness rose up within him causing him to pace around, searching for something but not knowing what. When he’d walked until he couldn’t walk anymore, he realized it wasn’t restlessness he was feeling.

It was loneliness.

He was lonely.

Dreams rarely had a sense of time and that applied in this case. It felt like he’d been in that strange place a very long time but not long at all. Either way, the sense of being alone was unbearable. Since searching did nothing, he sat back down and sulked.

He really hated being alone.

Probably this was the major reason for the fall out between him and his sister.

The moment someone new came along, she’d always leave him by himself without a second glance. Whether it was fairies or humans, she had no problem mercilessly abandoning him! He couldn’t force her to do anything, so he resorted to taking his deer and playing by himself.

If she was going to ignore him, why can’t he ignore her back? Why not?! He was sure she’d be bothered by it and come back to him eventually.

But of course all she did was visit him every now and then, as if giving him some attention as an afterthought. And eventually not even that.

Her cavalier attitude from that time hurt to think about even now. She was the only one in the world who could make him feel small and unwanted…

He covered his face with his very human hands and laughed into the darkness.

As a father of 10 children, he was keenly aware of what loneliness did to them. They would get angry and jealous. They’d throw tantrums, whine, and sulk. If they were particularly upset about it, they’d even destroy things. All because they were lonely and didn’t know how to express it properly.

When he thought of himself from before he met his wife, he was like his children when they were young. He simply responded to his feelings without thinking about why. Rather than spending time thinking on how to properly express himself, he’d just act on anything he felt.

He was as old as a mountain but as ignorant as a toddler….

No wonder his sister was annoyed with him!

His laughter turned to embarrassment.

He lowered his hands slightly and, to his surprise, saw a faint glow in the darkness. The light was so dim it was a miracle he’d noticed it at all, especially over his own internal light.

It had a faint blue tint to it.

His body went rigid with surprise.

No matter how weak, he could never mistake it.

It was his sister!

He concentrated on her light, trying to figure out the source. It seemed to be coming up from the ground itself, rather than from a specific place. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t find a source for the feeble light he was seeing.

Standing up, he meant to search with his own two human legs for her, only to find the blue light had vanished. There was a moment of panic until he considered that he’d not originally seen the light when he woke up.

What had he done before seeing it?

He sat back down, then he covered his eyes. He kept his eyes covered for some time and then removed them and looked out into the darkness without focusing on any one spot.

To his relief, the light appeared again.

What had her journal said? She’d given up half her remaining power to become human and then poured the rest out to allow her son to be born. By doing so, she’d weakened herself to a degree that she couldn’t maintain her body anymore. It could only exist thanks to her power and without it, would once again become sickly and die.

But the body was gone and her spirit was free, there should have been nothing sapping what little strength she had left. The power that came from the mountain, just a drop of it, was enough to keep a mortal going for far beyond their years. If she had even a tiny amount left, it would be enough to keep her alive for centuries.

Fu Jing, the man she’d chosen to marry, had believed it.

Now he, Jin, believed it.

She was definitely alive. But very weak.

His heart felt anxious.

Though she had enough power to live, did she have enough to think? It seemed unlikely. Probably she was out there, unconscious, and unable to do anything to help herself.

Could he really do nothing to help her? Really?

He gazed at that feeble light that seemed everywhere and nowhere and pondered deeply.

For his son’s to maintain their power when leaving the mountains, they must have some kind of connection to the mountains. The younger ones had decided to take after his oldest and leave their hearts in a secure location deep in the center of the mountains, where no one could find them. With that, they could go wherever they wanted and always be safe.

Theoretically, shouldn’t the same hold true for his sister? His sons left their hearts, but she left her body. After all, her body was the mountains! The connection ought to be stronger but it wasn’t.

How was she different from his sons?

The whole body was left behind?

Right, but she still existed without the body.

Like a ghost?

No, that wasn’t right either. They both shared a body, the mountains, but lived separately from it too. They were a strange existence that couldn’t be quite compared to anything else in the world…

His oldest was the most like him in spirit, it was just that his body was foundationally different. Shan Hui had a single body, while he—and he supposed his sister—technically had two: the mountains and the human one.

The major difference must be in the mountains.

What were the differences between the mountains and the human body?

There were so many he didn’t even know where to begin!

He clutched his hair on either side of his head in frustration.

“If this is a dream, why can’t you just give me the answer instead of making me think about it so hard?” He complained to the darkness around him. Part of the appeal of dreams was that they weren’t rational and everything, no matter how ridiculous, was somehow believable.

As he thought of how unfair this dream was being, getting him so close to the truth but not revealing itself at all, he looked down at his feet.

There, between his heels, was a faint gold outline of a familiar building: Blue Flower Palace.

As he stared at it in surprise, the outline seemed to spread out from there. He realized that he’d been on the mountains all along. No wonder something about this place seemed familiar!

He looked around, momentarily distracted by what was happening underneath him. At first the thin outline was the surface of the mountains, but then the lines went deeper. He could see each layer outlined in meticulous detail, going further and further down.

“How far does this go?” He asked as he watched in amazement.

When it came to the mountains, he was keenly aware of every last detail. But just like how a human gets used to how they look and only notices things that change, he also paid no attention to the mountains unless something changed. It had been a long time since he’d thought about the mountains to this degree.

The lines finally stopped their downward trend and for a moment he thought they were done. The lines had traced every single detail of the mountains now. Where else could they go, after all?

But then they spread out, to the north, the south, the east, the west... going beyond what he thought of as the mountains proper.

The further from the mountains they went, the fuzzier the lines became until it was hard to tell where they were anymore. If he hadn’t been following them closely with his eyes, he might not even realize anything was there.

Yet, despite them fading away to seemingly nothing, the overall effect was that the world around him brightened. The gold glow grew until he could no longer sense his sister’s light at all.

Rather than being upset, he was astonished.

Could it be that he’d been too narrow minded about what was and wasn’t the mountains? Their influence seemed to stretch out further than he’d ever thought possible.

It was just that, for some reason, the yin and yang power was tied to this spot. And the yang power that was part of him grew weaker the farther away from this spot it went… but it was still there.

And so was his sister’s yin power.

But she was too far away from the epicenter. When she expended all that energy in such a short amount of time, it was impossible to reabsorb more at a fast enough pace to replace it. Now that she was no longer spending her energy, she should very slowly start to absorb it again.

She would eventually return to her usual self, prior to being human, but the process would take a very long time.

As for why he couldn’t sense her, it was simply because he was “too bright”. Her power was passive by nature and could be easily overshadowed by his on a normal day. With her weakened and his energy spiraling out of control, naturally he couldn’t see her.

The only reason he’d caught a glimpse of her yin energy was because, for the first time in a long time, his yang energy was calm, his mind was still, and he happened to be thinking about her. If all three hadn’t happened at the same time, he’d have never sensed her.

This knowledge wouldn’t be any good for helping his sister directly, but it was encouraging. It meant that his sister could come back someday, he just had to wait for her.

He wasn’t thrilled with the thought of the amount of waiting he’d have to do but this wouldn’t be like before. There wouldn’t be any fear or worry about her wellbeing. It would be waiting with hope.

Feeling relieved that he’d gotten some kind of answer, he curled his body around the steadily brightening outline of Blue Flower Palace.

Without being told, he could feel he was going to wake up soon.

His eyes began to close and he felt his body relax.

But not yet.

Just a little longer.

He wanted to sleep, just a little while longer...

***

“Ah, Old Man, how much longer do you plan on sleeping?” Shan Hui voiced his well-worn complaint as he sat in a chair next to his parent’s bed, where his Father had been lying unmoved for years. “I have done this once with Mother, now I must do it with you. I’m heartily sick of it! Should I just suckerpunch you to get you up and about?”

He put an elbow on the chair arm and propped up his chin, staring with his gold and blue eyes at the silent man in front of him. The usual antagonism was absent from his youthful face. Instead there was a very rare glimmer of affection and, ever so slightly, anxiousness.

“I’m back for a while this time. I finally scared those damn Demons out of the east and sorted out the vassal states while I was at it.” He paused, straightening his spin and leaning back in his chair. He looked at the ceiling with his brow furrowed. “Really, I don’t understand humans despite being half of one. To be tempted to rebel off some flimsy lies spoken by a Demon. How stupid are they? Even if you’re absent, aren’t I here? They ought to fear me more than you considering I’ve always done your dirty work outside…”

He looked back at the man on the bed. “Oh yes, speaking of that, I couldn’t do anything in a dirty fashion at all. That nosey Uncle followed me around the entire time and nagged me to death about doing things in an “orderly and upright manner befitting a Prince”. If Mother didn’t fob him off on me, I’d have given him the boot. As it was, I was forced to do everything in a tiddy, neat fashion. Just thinking about it leaves me stifled. Honestly what did Auntie see in him? So uptight! Ugh, if you’d been around….”

Shan Hui left the sentence unfinished.

“Anyway. Sixth and Seventh’s children are celebrating their first First Year tomorrow. Those two little brothers really do everything in sync: find love, marry, and even have babies step-in-step. Their children are shaping up to be like them too, despite coming from different mothers. Why, the moment those little toddlers saw me, they clung to my legs and wouldn’t let go and kept babbling nonsense at me. It was so like those two when they were young, it gave me goosebumps.” Despite how he was talking, he had a soft smile and then, just ask quickly, frowned.

“...it’s strange how quickly they grow up, those brothers of mine…”

He lifted his hands and stared at them. He couldn’t help looking nostalgic and a little melancholy. “Wasn’t it just yesterday I could hold them in these two hands? Now they’re off having their own children, and those children will have their own too….” He sighed and lowered his hands, looking at his Old Man. “Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? I….”

A strange expression rose up on his face.

“I didn’t think too much about it with Second’s family… no, more like I didn’t have the energy to care very much about it. Just keeping my temper and not causing harm was enough. Now I…” He looked puzzled for a moment. “I like them, Old Man. Second, Third, all the way down to Little Tenth, though he’s not so little now… them and their children, and their children’s children… I like them all. They are… are…. dear to me, I think.”

A slight flush rose on his cheeks, as if he’d just admitted to something extremely embarrassing. He cleared his throat, feeling awkward at the honesty despite the other person not being awake to hear it. Truthfully, it was only because the other person wasn’t awake that he would say it out loud.

It wasn’t that he didn’t value his younger brothers and their family, but that familial affection had always been buried under the chronic irritation and exhaustion in his spirit. Only with Mother did that thick layer of annoyance disappear. Perhaps his attachment to her was due a great deal to the fact that she was the only one in the family that he could love without fighting through fiery miasma that had been his companion since birth.

But now that heart-searing fire had been reduced to barely flicker, there was nothing to suppress his familial love. All the stifled affection burst out like a torrent. Things that he’d only vaguely felt before pierced into him like a knife through tofu.

Those little nephews clinging to him were a good example.

When De Taihua and De Weishan had been that age and done the exact same thing, he’d just felt annoyed. Little flames latching on to him, who already felt like he was being burned alive, he wasn’t happy at all for their love and adoration. He wished they’d stay away from him more than anything. Then he could like them a little bit more, though from a distance.

However, his little nephews were adorable and endearing when they clung to his legs. They were like small sparks of light, dancing in the night. He wanted to scoop them up and hug them fiercely. Of course he didn’t dare. He had an “Big Brother” image to keep up and he’d die before letting anyone see he’d turned soft.

A thought had flashed across his mind as that urge to cuddle his nephews hit him: Is this what it should have felt like with 6th and 7th? A sense of loss immediately followed at that thought. Without realizing it, he’d missed out. And not just on the De twins, but going back all the way to Yan Li and Shi Ji. He’d avoided them and when he couldn’t avoid them, he’d tolerated them.

“It would be good if Auntie could be found….” He muttered, brows lowered.

After hearing about it from his Mother, he more or less understood what had happened to his Old Man and why he’d passed out for so long and taken all his son’s with him.

Only his Aunt could balance the fire of his Old Man. And that, in turn, was the only way to balance his sons. He, Shan Hui, was more like his Old Man than any of his siblings. Whether it was his own blaze, his Old Man’s, or his siblings, he felt it most keenly. Only his Old Man had it worse than him.

Shan Hui felt pity and admiration for his Old Man. Unlike Shan Hui, who tended to pull away and distance himself from the pain, his Old Man had endured. Even while he was burning up inside, he’d let more fires be lit, for his wife’s sake. Himself and his little brothers existed and grew up reasonably healthy thanks to his Old Man’s ability to embrace the pain instead of reject it.

He leaned forward, both elbows now on his legs, hands propping up his chin again.

“What would you and I be like, I wonder?”

If his relief from the ever-burning flame of their spirits had mellowed him out to this degree, how much more would it do for his Old Man? Might it be that they… could finally get along?

“You know Old Man….” He hesitated, looking around as if checking for eavesdroppers. “... I think… I might… like you, quite a bit… so… you should think of waking up.”

There was a long pause after this statement and then he stood up, a huge shiver running through his body. He looked as if he’d eaten something extremely sour.

To no one in particular, he complained, “How do people live like this? Ugh! I can’t even stand myself!”

With that, he stomped out of the room, slamming the door shut once he’d left.

The “Old” Man lay there peacefully for a moment and then his mouth opened slightly, a contented sigh escaped.