When the dream dissipated, Tian came to, gasping, as if he’d been underwater. Above him Master Jian’s concerned face was visible, holding a cup of tea that smelled of jasmine and medicine.

  “Well?” Master Jian asked once Tian regained his breath. “What did you see?”

  “A tournament,” he replied, attempting to organize thoughts that felt as if they were floating across multiple lifetimes. “Two cultivators, Ke Yin and Wu Kangming, fighting in what looked like the Azure Peak Sect. I knew them, not knew about them, I felt like I knew them personally.”

  “But you were just observing?” Master Jian clarified.

  “Yes, but it felt as if I was watching my own life being lived by strangers.” Tian placed his teacup down with shaking hands. “Master, I think I need to try again to see things more clearly. There is something more here that I’m missing.”

  Master Jian hesitated, then nodded. “First rest for an hour. Allow your spiritual energy to settle before attempting to enter another controlled dream.”

  The second attempt progressed similarly, following those familiar currents down into the realm of dreams and memories. However, instead of viewing events as an outside observer in the amphitheater, Tian now found himself standing within a private courtyard staring down at hands that were not his own.

  These hands were pale and refined and were riddled with calluses that spoke of countless hours of sword work. When he flexed them, they responded with precision that felt natural but also foreign at the same time.

  Tian looked around and caught his reflection in a nearby fountain.

  A face that wasn’t his own looked right back at him; it was Wu Kangming.

  Before he could come to terms with the disorientating experience, memories flooded through him like water breaking through a broken dam.

  Tian saw what life was like in the Wu Clan for a main branch child like Wu Kangming.

  It was a life of privilege.

  Similar to Tian’s own childhood, Wu Kangming had been the recipient of so many proposals that they couldn’t be counted. His parents had eventually decided to have him engaged to his childhood friend, Wu Lihua, a beautiful and talented girl from the side branch. It was a political move on their part, but Wu Kangming and Wu Lihua hadn’t cared, they genuinely had feelings for each other.

  All seemed to be going well in the young master’s life until he had joined the Azure Peak Sect and his talent had been declared as barely passable for an outer disciple. What didn’t help matters was that his fiancé had been recruited as a Core Disciple. And things only worsened after that.

  Wu Kangming had been targeted by a vicious inner disciple who had landed a devastating blow in a sparring match that had left him barely able to maintain basic qi circulation. A cripple was of no use to the sect, and since his clan had disowned him in all but name, it wasn’t long before he was demoted to the servant quarters.

  Months of shame and constant humiliation passed as everyone that had wanted to interact with him before now wanted nothing to do with him. Most people who experienced something like this would begin to break, but underneath the surface of Wu Kangming’s various emotions, Tian sensed something else.

  A core of unyielding determination that would never break, regardless of the accumulation of disappointments. And that mindset had been rewarded. A life and death situation turned into a chance encounter where he met his mentor figure: a ring that held the spirit of an ancient sword master that provided guidance and techniques that were impossible for someone with Wu Kangming’s severely limited cultivation abilities.

  But that wasn’t all that Tian saw, he could feel Wu Kangming’s conflicted emotions towards the other figure that kept appearing in his dreams – Ke Yin. Sure, there was respect and admiration for him, but also a type of kinship that extended far beyond mere rivalry.

  Both Ke Yin and Wu Kangming were battling with identity, both striving to transcend their circumstances in order to become something greater. Ke Yin represented to Wu Kangming a mirror of his own unyielding will to push past limitations.

  The memory of the dream carried Tian through the tournament from Wu Kangming’s perspective, showing him the battles he fought using techniques that leveraged the ancient sword master’s spirit to amplify his own power.

  Tian could feel the burden of expectation, the pressure to prove to everyone that his fall from grace hadn’t destroyed everything worthwhile about him and that he still mattered. And when the final battle with Ke Yin began, he experienced it, not as a competition, but as a conversation between two individuals who understood each other’s struggles.

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  As the second dream faded away, Tian opened his eyes to find them wet.

  He was crying, but he didn’t understand why.

  These weren’t his emotions, these were the emotions that Wu Kangming never allowed himself to express because he worried that others would see it as a weakness.

  “You went deeper this time,” Master Jian said, offering Tian another cup of medicinal tea. “Your spiritual fluctuations showed significantly better alignment with the memories from your dream.”

  “I was him,” Tian whispered as the tears continued to fall. “I wasn’t watching anymore. I was living it. I was Wu Kangming.” He used the back of his hand to wipe away his tears, feeling a frustration with his inability to control his emotional response. “But how is that possible? I’m not a reincarnated soul. From what I can tell, my parents created me using dream techniques.”

  “Are you certain about that?” Master Jian’s tone remained neutral. “Maybe what your parents created was not a completely new soul, but a vessel that could host something that already existed.”

  The suggestion was both intriguing and frightening.

  “You’re saying that I’m some sort of spiritual construct that has pieces of other people’s lives?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” Master Jian replied. “I think you need to finish exploring before drawing any conclusions. You mentioned two names: Ke Yin and Wu Kangming. You've experienced one perspective; you should experience the other one now.”

  Even though Tian wanted to stop here, he nodded.

  As emotionally and mentally exhausting the process was, each dream did bring more clarity, even if it also brought with it more questions regarding his own identity. He was so close now, he couldn’t give up. After twenty years of feeling as if he was living the life of someone else, he finally had a way to find out the truth.

  ***

  Tian closed his eyes and entered the same deep meditate state as before.

  After a few minutes of breathing techniques, he felt his soul dissociate.

  When he opened his eyes, he didn’t see the pale and refined hands of Wu Kangming.

  What he saw were the hands of a village boy.

  He was now Ke Yin.

  As soon as he realised that, Tian was overwhelmed with a barrage of foreign memories.

  Just like it was with Wu Kangming last time, this time he lived life as Ke Yin.

  Tian experienced being the son of a tailor in the Floating Reed Village.

  He watched as his father spent hours perfecting his craft, doing everything in his power to provide for his family in a world where the mighty didn’t care about the weak. He listened as his mother told him stories about immortals and monsters. And he saw the expectations that they had for him, that he would grow up to help his father with the shop, marry one of the village girls and settle down on the same street.

  But underneath all of that, he sensed something strange, something he hadn’t experienced when living as Wu Kangming. Even though he was living Ke Yin’s life, it felt like he was an outsider, as though he was observing and not fully in control.

  The best way he could describe it was like living the life of someone who hadn’t really lived it themselves.

  And that wasn’t even the most disturbing part.

  Unlike Wu Kangming’s memories, which were complete, there were disturbing gaps in Ke Yin’s memories, spaces where experiences should have been but weren’t. It was as if sections of his life had been removed or replaced with something else.

  When Tian tried to focus on those gaps, he felt a deep, abiding sadness that seemed to have no source. And when he tried to fight through the sadness, he felt a terrifying sensation that if he continued then his soul would be ripped out of his body.

  Despite all of these strange feelings, it felt more natural to be Ke Yin.

  He could relate to Ke Yin’s behavior more. Whether it be the way he approached problems, the way he felt like he didn’t fit in, or his instinctual responses to danger – all felt as if they were an organic extension of Tian’s own identity.

  The dream carried him through Ke Yin’s version of the tournament, showing him the battles he fought using plant manipulation techniques that distorted reality in small but significant ways. He felt the burden of expectations, the pressure to demonstrate that he was worthy of his sect’s investment. But he also felt something Wu Kangming hadn't, a deep sense of displacement and fear, as though at any moment he would be exposed and attacked for something that hadn’t been his fault.

  When the final battle with Wu Kangming arrived, Tian experienced it simultaneously from both perspectives. The unique duality of perspectives created a form of spiritual dizziness that caused the battle to appear less like a battle of opponents, and more like an internal conflict.

  He was Wu Kangming, fighting to redeem years of failures and disappointments. Yet at the same time, he was also Ke Yin, fighting not for victory, but for an understanding of his own identity.

  As the two perspectives tried to combine, reality warped under the strain of impossible contradictions. Tian felt his consciousness separating, part of him pursuing Wu Kangming’s memories while another part clung to Ke Yin’s experiences.

  For a terrifying moment, he forgot his own identity as Tian.

  Then, suddenly, something broke.

  The dried vine bracelet he had worn on his left wrist since leaving home crumbled.

  He had carried that vine for years, it was the only plant that had ever responded to his care, and now it turned to dust between one breath and the next.

  The spiritual energy that came out of him in that moment scattered the formation stones across the ground and brought Master Jian to his feet immediately.

  "Tian." His teacher's voice was sharp with an alarm he was visibly working to contain. "Tian, are you with me?"

  Tian opened his eyes and looked up at Master Jian.

  This was the man who had declared him hopeless on the first day they met and then spent five years guiding him despite his lack of talent.

  This was the man who had lost his best student because of Tian’s weakness.

  The least that he could do to pay the man back was be honest.

  "I am not Tian," he said.

  The certainty in his own voice was something he had not heard there before. It came from somewhere below the level of thought or decision, from the part of him that the dreams had reached and the rest of his life hadn't.

  "I never was. I am…"

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