Is This a Dream?

Her heart hurt. Her soul hurt. Everywhere hurt. Bai Rong's white fingers wrapped around the sword Lin Jun had left in her stomach. Bit by bit, she gritted her teeth and pulled out the blade.

'Bastard. He thought I died, huh? If I make it out of this alive, I will kill him!'

But revenge was temporarily out of the question, not when she was hanging onto life by a thread. Every inch the sword came loose, she vowed she would make him pay, even if she had to die to do it. She wrapped her spiritual energy around the sword and pulled.

"Aaarrgghhh!!!"

Blood immediately gushed out of her wound, and to her horror, she felt her spiritual energy dissipating into thin air. Years of cultivation, gone. Her dantian was wrecked beyond repair. 

Bai Rong looked up at the sky, as if she could see the gods in Heavenly Realm from here. Teardrops fell from her hopeless, lifeless eyes.

"Why! Why are all the good people dead? Why is the heavens blind?"

She remembered them: her mother, her unborn brother, her friends, her fellow disciples. And Chu Yuan.

So many good people, and yet their lives were taken away. Everyone said she was a demon, but the real demons were the ones who got away with their evil deeds. 

She could feel her life force slowly leaving her body.

'No... I have not had my revenge yet. I cannot die. Must not die...'

There was one way to escape death. A long time ago, Bai Rong stumbled upon a tomb and found scrolls of ancient texts on old magic. Most of it was forbidden and heaven-defying--just the thing she needed.

"To bring one soul back from the brink of death, one must trade the one thing as valuable as their own life for another chance to live. Then chant the incantation of the ancestral gods…"

She started chanting the words she had read before, and although most of them were foreign symbols and characters intertwined, it was as if her fading soul knew every word and pronunciation.

Gradually, the world became brighter until the forest of snow faded away into a pavilion over a pond of golden lotuses.

***

Bai Rong could see an endless blue sky and smell the fragrance of the lotus flowers. The unknown place felt like an illusion. The clouds were too perfect, the sky too blue, but there was solid ground beneath her feet.

"Am I dead?"

"No."

"AAAHHHHHH!!!!" She jumped in surprise. "Who are you?!"

A deity? A god? A figment of her imagination because there was no way she had left The White Forest?

Oh crap. Maybe she was dead and having hallucinations due to the soul-out-of-body experience. She should have known better than to trust ancient magic in dusty old books.

The man in silver robes leisurely unfolded a fan with a white jade handle in the shape of a cloud and showed it to her. To her amazement, she saw the words written in ink on it move to form an image of a lady in red throwing something at a man in a pavilion surrounded by golden lotuses.

"What is this?"

"This fan is a godly artifact that can predict the future."

"What is this place? Why am I here? I used that old magic to live, not die."

The man gestured at the cloud-like ceiling of the pavilion they were in. "You are in the Cloud Pavilion, of course."

 He sat down at the jade table and started brewing a pot of tea. To be honest, before watching this man, Bai Rong had never thought of the action of brewing tea as graceful.

'Aaah! Focus! Am I dead or dreaming?'

"Ahem." She sat down opposite the man and accepted a cup of tea. After a sip, she sighed. For some reason, her physical and emotional pain was soothed after drinking it.

"So... Can I leave?"

Ignoring her question, the man said, "I am Yun, the keeper of Heavenly Realm's prophecies and occasional soothsayer. When you used forbidden magic, I found you and brought you here. Do you know why?"

Seeing that she kept quiet, he continued, "You are under arrest."

That got her attention. Bai Rong slammed her cup down and glared at him. "Listen, mister whoever you are, I don't want to be here so let me leave. If it wasn't a life or death situation, I wouldn't even have used forbidden magic, and I have a very good reason. I have to kill that son of a--"

"Is revenge worth it?" Yun sipped his tea and smiled. "You're half deity, but you're not a god. You're not immortal. Sit back, relax, and live the rest of your short life in peace, how does that sound?"

The lotus fragrance and the warm tea must have been meant to lure her into a sense of comfort and safety. But hell no.

Red. Bai Rong saw a red haze descend over Yun.

Then she stood up and threw her teacup along with its contents at him.