Before a young man, the corpse of a woman laid.

He knelt to the ground before her, wordless.

...

A battlefield, strewn with corpses. The young man stood, a lifeless look on his face, a long metal staff in hand. Metals spheres floated around him, coated with blood.

Mei woke up with a start.

She had never felt so terrible in her life. Her consciousness felt like it was mangled, or simply incomplete. Her memories felt hazy, or even wrong.

Where was she?

What happened?

Around her, there was only a strange chamber, a cluster of qi floating in the centre, almost beckoning to her. From what seemed to be tiny holes all over the walls, faint wisps of qi would occasionally enter.

Was she dreaming? But it felt like she just woke up from another...

The memory of the man was so vivid... yet vague. Mei felt sick to the stomach simply thinking about it. Not because of the corpses, she could barely remember how they looked like; it was because of something else, something she didn't understand.

She rubbed her eyes.

As she brought them away, she paused, seeing her hands. They were old, wrinkled.

What was going on? Did the sect master's backlash apply to her body too? Mei was filled with panic. Did this have to do with the strange chamber she awoke in?

She walked- floated? She floated around the chamber, pushing against the wall, but couldn't find a way out. Somehow, the walls felt alive.

A rather terrible thought came to her.

She used soulsense and looked around her.

As it spread out, she saw meridians, blood vessels, organs. She was in... some sort of huge giant. No... this aura. The giant was her!

She looked to herself and saw that she was nothing but a soul, the soul of an old woman. The aura she had was not what she remembered herself to be.

No. No.

This couldn't be happening.

Mei... was not Mei. She was just a nascent soul.

Those memories were not hers. She bit her incorporeal lips and laid down on the ground, her eyes wavering.

"Hey! Hey! Can you cultivate for me?"

"You answered me earlier! Why aren't you answering now?"

"Hello?! I know you can hear me!"

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

"Mei" didn't want to hear it. Hearing the voice of the real Mei, she curled up and pretended to be dead.

She regretted answering Mei. But she was so frustrated, she couldn't help it.

Not now. She still hadn't sorted out her thoughts.

Mei was so inconsiderate. "Mei" hated her. She hated how she understood exactly what Mei was thinking.

Hah.

Just a day ago, she was thinking of having a nascent soul cultivate for her. Now she was the nascent soul, forced to cultivate for Mei.

No. It wasn't even that. Those were not her memories. Before yesterday, she did not exist. They were all just... lies.

At that thought, "Mei" curled up and cried.

"I think my nascent soul is broken. It won't respond to me and just does nothing..."

From within, she heard Mei speak to the sect master.

After a few more words, the sect master sent his qi sense within. The foreign strands qi that peered within almost seemed like monsters to "Mei". She felt like she was being stared at by an unfathomable horror.

"This is most problematic." the sect master said. "Mei Xiu, I think your nascent soul has awakened consciousness."

"What do you mean?"

"It seems because of the backlash, she ended up absorbing a tiny portion of my vital qi and branched off into a separate consciousness. Normally, nascent souls aren't supposed to think actively, only supplement the actions of the cultivator, much like a subconscious mind."

"Eh?"

"Awakened nascent souls are rare enough that I don't have cases to compare it to, but I've heard tales of them trying to fight the main soul over control of the body."

"Huh?! What do I do then?"

"I'm not too sure what to do. Normally, most cultivators would destroy the nascent soul and form another one, but that would incur a lot of bad karma. You would have to deal with the implications of destroying a clone of yourself too. Mei Xiu, what do you think?"

"What? H-how would I know?"

The two paused for a bit. Then Mei spoke up,

"Why are you making it sound like it's my fault? It's all your fault! I shouldn't have agreed yesterday!"

"I never said it was your fault! I was just trying to help! This has never happened before!"

The two of them paused. Mei, having realised who she yelled at. The sect master, having realised he lost his composure before a disciple.

"I... I'm sorry." the sect master apologised unwillingly.

To think the sect master was that type. But "Mei" wasn't in the mood to appreciate the irony, with her very existence at stake.

"I'll try to reason with her," Mei said, finally.

"Hey," Mei said.

Such a headache. She thought she would be celebrating the breakthrough, but between the tribulation lightning and now this?

"Please answer me. I get how you feel. You must have heard me talking to the sect master earlier, right? I would have been terrified."

The nascent soul didn't respond. Urghhhh. What was wrong with her?

"So... what should I call you?"

"Mei." the nascent soul finally spoke up.

"What? But that's my name!"

"That's what I've always been called! You don't understand! It's my name as well! I don't care if it's fake!"

Mei was taken aback by the nascent soul's anger.

But she understood. If she woke up one day and found this happening to her, she would be rather distraught as well.

"Then... what about Xiao Mei?" (Little Mei)

"Fine."

This was so incredibly awkward. Mei wished she could go back in time to stop herself yesterday.

For the rest of the day, Xiao Mei didn't talk. Mei couldn't complain, not wanting to be disturbed. But not being disturbed didn't stop her from feeling disturbed.

Originally, she had planned to try to explore her abilities more, but with that on her mind, she wasn't in the mood.

She ended up spending the rest of the day reading.

To Xiao Mei's surprise, while she couldn't see the pages directly, she realised she could see into Mei's mind and watch the mental imagery without having to actually read.

It made her feel a tiny bit better.