Han Shin’s spell was impressive in its design. The kind of complex spellcraft that only an accomplished mage who had extensively studied mana theory could accomplish. The results of a brilliant mind applying all of their hard work and knowledge towards a singular purpose—to kill. This particular spell was made to kill groups of people in large conflicts—and not just any normal people, either, but those pesky, hard-to-kill cultivators. A subtle combination of force, fire, and air that aimed for maximum widespread destruction. And, like an idiot, Yoshika had swallowed it.

Miraculously, Yoshika’s preemptive efforts to reinforce Eui’s body had paid off—to a point. She’d managed to completely contain the explosion within her, and saved her more fragile family members. Unfortunately, this had the unintended but not surprising side-effect of turning Eui’s entire abdominal cavity to paste. She collapsed to the ground in an instant, and forcefully expelled a distressingly high volume of blood from her mouth.

Unfortunately, Yoshika didn’t have the wherewithal to be concerned about how that would look to her friends and family—she had to concentrate every last bit of her focus on Eui’s ravaged body. The entire world dropped away until there was nothing but Eui. Jia’s body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, but again, she didn’t have time to think about how that would look to her friends. Absolute Awareness was already being pushed to its limits, and a migraine that transcended body and mind was growing worse with every subjective second—she held on anyway.

For the second time in as many hours, Yoshika was forced to desperately keep a failing body alive—only this time it was her own. Unlike with Rika, her body hadn’t simply stopped working or failed under the strain. Eui had suffered acute, and extreme physical trauma. Her heart hadn’t stopped—it was gone, along with her lungs, stomach, a significant portion of her spine, and most of her internal organs. While her brain was still intact, the physical trauma was so great that her body probably only had fractions of a second at best before that too failed.

By any normal mortal or immortal standard, Eui was already dead. If Rika had suffered such injuries, Yoshika would not have been able to save her. No level of outside healing could possibly keep someone alive in such a state, and self-healing would likewise be impossible without the ability to manipulate one’s own essence. Yoshika was not normal. Even now, with one of her bodies all but utterly destroyed, her soul was perfectly intact, and her awareness was in no danger of fading as Eui’s brain began to fail.

It wouldn’t last forever, and Yoshika was faced with an incredibly difficult decision. Did she give up entirely on Eui’s body in order to preserve her soul, or did she risk permanently losing half of herself in a potentially vain effort to save it? Yoshika was fairly certain she would remain either way, but also lose the independent egos of Jia and Eui in the process.

If she tried to save Eui’s body and failed, then she’d lose half of her soul, but it wouldn’t strictly be the Eui half of it. Her soul was merged—evenly distributed between her two selves. Whatever was left would still be Yoshika, but it would no longer be Jia or Eui.

On the other hand, if she absorbed Eui’s soul, the only way Jia’s body would be able to handle such a transformation would be by allowing her tennin and demonic cores to take in a portion of that energy in order to remain stable within a single vessel. Jia would transform, physically and spiritually, into Yoshika. Once again, there would no longer be either a Jia or a Eui—only their total unity.

Abandoning Eui’s body was sorely tempting. On an intuitive level she knew that doing so would make her much more powerful than she was now. It was also a certain outcome—no risk whatsoever. She could do it—she knew she could do it—and come out of the process exponentially stronger than she went in. All it would cost her was everything.

Yoshika had always known that on some level, her two aspects were becoming less distinct. Do Hye had warned that her path would eventually lead to total unification between the two, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. She didn’t want to ever be ready for that. Yoshika had been making an effort to hold on to her identities as Jia and Eui, even as the line between them continued to blur, and she was determined to do so even now.

Ancestors damn the risks—Yoshika refused to let Eui die! Her focus narrowed down further and further until her entire world was just the tragically maimed form of what was left of Eui’s nervous system. With Rika she’d had to jumpstart the nerves with a tiny jolt of lightning, but this was her own body. She didn’t need to resort to such imprecise measures. Without any blood to circulate, Yoshika was forced to provide the energy to Eui’s failing organ directly, replacing the necessary biological functions with careful infusions of pure essence.

With life support taken care of, Yoshika moved what remained of her mental capacity towards the issue of Eui’s destroyed body. It was...not looking good. Her Tranquility of the Verdant Marsh was a powerful healing technique, but it had limits. The human body could be incredibly resilient, especially when enhanced by Wood essence—the element of life and creation—but some things simply could not be repaired. A severed limb could be replaced, but not regenerated back from nothing at all. A damaged organ could be repaired, but Eui was completely missing several important ones—there was simply nothing to build from.

But Yoshika had long since stopped being an entirely biological being. In fact, since her breakthrough to the third stage, even most of her physical bodies had been replaced by ki—down to the tiniest form she could conceive and beyond. Rika had only just begun that transformation, but Yoshika had nearly completed it. She knew that she wouldn’t completely transcend physical biology until her xiantian breakthrough, but she’d already come so close that the difference was purely academic. Where the portion of her body made from essence was once a billionth or less, now it was the opposite—only the barest hint of her physical biology remained.

Aside from the obvious benefits of being much hardier, and the ability to move essence rapidly through her body, it also allowed her to tap into her bodies’ ki for bursts of energy that were otherwise impossible. It was what allowed her to use her Lightning God Transformation, and what would theoretically allow her to unleash the full power of the fifth arm of Eui’s Six Arms of Asura—she’d rarely had opportunities to test it. Now, Yoshika considered another implication.

If her body was made almost entirely from essence, then it would also be a part of her soul. She’d known that her body was part of her soul on a conceptual level—as soul, mind, and body were all connected together to form a single cohesive whole—but never thought about the implications of it being true on a physical level. It didn’t matter whether her organs were damaged beyond repair, or her limbs were missing—her soul would have an imprint of what her body should be. It was simply a part of who she was. All she had to do now was figure out how to access it.

Yoshika dug deep, searching her own soul for Eui’s identity—her sense of self, and how it applied to her body. It was so much more complicated than a simple image of Eui’s form. There was an ideal of how Eui wanted to look, the way she thought others perceived her, her own perception of her body, and more. None of them quite matched, yet they were all completely inseparable from the others—interlinked and cross-referenced in ways that made Yoshika’s head spin.

She loved the demonic form that her core gave her, but she would be mortified if others saw her that way. She hated the brand on her forehead, but deep down she thought she deserved it—couldn’t imagine herself without it. She wished she was taller, had bigger breasts, more spiritual expressions—all things to more closely fit Goryeon beauty standards—yet at the same time she resented those standards, and wished she could be happy to look the way she already did. None of this was useful to Yoshika in the immediate sense, but it was impossible to separate it from the intrinsic physical characteristics of Eui’s body.

Yoshika needed a solid image—something to build from. With as much thought as she could spare, Yoshika carefully tried to piece something together from the depths of her soul. Step by step, she meticulously recreated Eui’s body in the same way that she had created the simulacrum’s body when refining Rika’s ultimate technique. She ran into a bit of a snag when she reached the brand, but quickly discarded the problem—Eui’s head wasn’t in need of reconstruction.

With her image in mind, Yoshika drew as much Wood essence as she could muster from her rapidly crumbling foundation of essence. Months, perhaps even years of cultivation were lost as she forced herself to pull more and more essence from the depths of her soul. Better than death, she reminded herself. She would have eternity to gain it all back.

Once Yoshika was ready, she tried to begin the arduous task of recreating Eui’s body, only to meet another obstacle. Eui’s ki affinity was Destruction. Her body was a paradox of concentrated Destruction essence, kept stable only by the will of her soul and the demonic core that even now pulsed hungrily in her otherwise devastated chest cavity—it had somehow survived the blast unscathed. Normally, this wasn’t a problem—Destruction or not, the solid essence still replicated her normal biological functions and was perfectly capable of having those functions enhanced by her Wood element healing technique.

But she wasn’t enhancing her biology now. She was trying to recreate her entire body from scratch. Yoshika felt like an idiot. How did she expect to restore a body made almost entirely from the essence of death and destruction using its polar opposite?! The words of Elder Qin echoed in her mind.

‘Miss An, however, will only hold you back from that greatness. She is destined for nothing but death, destruction, and misfortune.’

Was this it? Was this the moment where Eui’s cursed affinity finally brought her down and proved Qin Zhao’s predictions? No! Yoshika wouldn’t give in so easily. There had to be another solution! As if in response to the thought, she felt her demonic core pulse with an intensity that she’d only felt once before—when it had tried to consume Jia’s soul. Yoshika felt it pulling at the Wood essence image of Eui, demanding to be fed.

She resisted, at first. Her demonic core had always been a malevolent force, driving her towards horrible things and only kept in check by willpower until Jia’s tennin core had balanced it out. If she succumbed here, would that disrupt the balance? The idea of it terrified Yoshika. Yet, if she didn’t do something, then Eui’s body would die. She couldn’t keep up the life support forever, and the entire ordeal had already drained her physically, mentally, and spiritually beyond anything else she’d ever experienced. What else did she have to lose?

She let go.

The image of Eui was instantly devoured by the demonic core, but it wasn’t satisfied. Like a shark tasting blood, it demanded more, reaching out hungrily for any essence it could reach. What it found was the destruction essence that made up Eui’s body. Yoshika barely had time for the horror to set in as the core absorbed almost everything—momentarily leaving Eui as nothing more than a head and a glowing red crystal.

Then, the core reached out with tendrils of power, connecting itself to Eui’s head first before rapidly reconstructing her body layer by excruciating layer. By some cruel twist of fate, the nerves were first, then the bones and organs, the flesh, and finally the skin. The entire process was too painful to bear. Yoshika’s concentration failed as Eui’s body finished reknitting itself from nothing, and her vision faded to black as both bodies fell unconscious. But alive.