Fates Parallel (A Xianxia/Wuxia Inspired Cultivation Story)

In the physical realm, Yoshika’s defensive techniques barely withstood the twinned assault of the tribulation’s fifth strike, while within her soul she struggled against the corrupting influence of the Kumiho’s manifestation. It was a race against time. She needed the Kumiho’s power to defeat the tribulation, but if the tribulation weakened her too much then the Kumiho would overpower her from within and consume her soul to fuel its resurrection.

Pale green Soulfire spread across the inner sanctuary of Yoshika’s soul realm, trying to consume everything she was. It was slow to spread, her own Soulfire resisting the influence as she staved off the Kumiho’s attacks.

“How long have you been possessing my aunt, you monster?”

The Kumiho brushed off a spear of lightning with one of her tails, smirking.

“Silly child, you know full well that’s not how it works. Had I manifested fully, I’d have been struck down like our poor sister. Like you, I am only a partial manifestation—a union of inner spirit and vessel. I am and always have been Eunhee, and I am and always have been Kumiho.”

“We are not the same!”

“Tsk, of course not. You rejected the power you were blessed with, as our sister before you. Even after embracing the truth and accepting yourself, you still suppressed our legacy—while I embrace it!”

Kumiho’s tails lanced out in every direction, carelessly spreading Soulfire to everything she touched. Normally, Yoshika would be at an advantage, fighting within her soul realm, but the Kumiho herself was part of Yoshika’s soul. She was, in essence, fighting against herself, and with the tribulation still raging against her above, the stalemate was not in her favor.

There was only so much Yoshika could do to fight the fire. Normally, the Kumiho’s power had no effect against other fragments, but that was because it recognized those fragments as part of itself. Eunhee had essentially become a manifestation of Yoshika’s fragment, and she had no qualms about wielding that power against her own ‘sister.’

“Why?! What is the point of all this? If you just wanted to reincarnate, we could have helped you!”

“Hmph! I already made the mistake of trusting another of us to ascend in our place. Heiran had no interest in reuniting our soul to regain our place as a goddess. I spent years trying to make her embrace her true self as I have, only for her to go mad in the end. I feared we’d lost that aspect forever, and so when you were born I took a gentler approach.”

One of her tails lashed out at Yoshika, threatening to strike her core if it wasn’t blocked. She defended with her own Soulfire tails, but the Kumiho took advantage of her distraction to spread more of her fire elsewhere.

“But still you rejected it! The things I could have accomplished with such a gift, if it hadn’t been wasted on the likes of you and Heiran. Well, no more! Soon you will succumb, and I will be made manifest with the full strength of the Sovereign’s Tear at my command!”

Yoshika was losing. Trapped within her most vulnerable place, it was all she could do to keep the Kumiho’s influence away from her core and the Tear, but with every inch the fires spread, she grew weaker while the Kumiho’s power grew.

She drew from the Sovereign’s Tear to empower her attacks, but no matter what she threw at the Kumiho, the spirit endured.

“I won’t let you do that! I won’t be turned into just another tyrant by your twisted idea of control!”

“Oh, but you will. You have no choice! You need me, or you would have used that Destruction of yours to annihilate me instead of trying to absorb my power. Don’t worry, your domain is a perfect compliment to my own. Just imagine it—an entire world free of war and strife, where all are equal because all are one! A perfect utopia, with us in control.”

Yoshika grimaced. That was not the world she wanted to build. Even among her own aspects, each had their own will, their own lives, loves, hopes, and dreams. Unity was not about everything serving a single end, it was a community working together to uplift each other, each aspect strengthening the others to become greater than the sum of their parts.

“That will never happen! I’d sooner die and take you down with me.”

The Kumiho scoffed.

“I’m afraid that ship has sailed. Had you simply allowed Eunae to succumb to the tribulation, you may have stood a chance against me, but you can barely resist as it is and you’re growing weaker by the moment. Soon we will be one, and it will all be over.”

Yoshika smiled ruefully.

“You’re right, we’re not strong enough to defeat you alone.”

“It’s good that you understand, now stop wasting our time and give in.”

“But you’re so blinded by your obsession with total control that you’ve forgotten the most important part of our domain.”

She lunged forward, putting everything she had into an all-out frontal assault. The Kumiho rolled her eyes and brought her flaming tails forward to counter the suicidal attack. Yoshika was undeterred, grinning wildly as she lashed out at the spirit of her ancestor.

“We’re never alone!”

Heian appeared behind the Kumiho, enveloped in black fire and already swinging her claws.

“Hello.”

Overcommitted to her counter-attack against Yoshika, the Kumiho wasn’t able to defend herself against Heian. The fiery black claws raked across the evil spirit’s back, leaving a plume of Shadowflame in their wake. The Kumiho screamed in anguish, scrambling away from Heian and desperately trying to extinguish the flames spreading across her body.

“What is this?! You’re just some lesser spawn of a weak shadow spirit!”

“No. I’m Heian. And you are not alive or dead. You are a shade that belongs in the afterlife, and you’re not welcome here.”

The Kumiho tried to subsume Heian’s flames with hers, but wherever the pale green of her Soulfire touched Heian’s flame, it turned pitch black.

“This isn’t possible! I can’t be overpowered by some nameless upstart in the heart of my own soul!”

“I’m not nameless, I’m Heian. I already told you that.”

Yoshika smirked.

“And this isn’t the heart of your soul, it’s mine—you’re just a part of it. I have absolute faith in Heian. I trust her with my soul even more than I trust myself.”

The Kumiho thrashed helplessly as the flames began to consume her.

“You’re making a mistake! You’re nothing without me! Without my power, you’ll be destroyed by the tribulation!”

“No. You are part of me, and I embrace that. No soul is without darkness, but my dark desires and selfish impulses do not define me. Yes, I need your strength—but I do not need you.”

The black flames enveloped her, leaving behind only an echoing scream of impotent rage. Yoshika fell to her knees, panting.

“Thank you, Heian. Is she gone?”

“No, but she’s not here. I’ll need some time to bring her back.”

Yoshika grimaced.

“Ugh, right back where we started. We still need her, though. How long will it take?”

Heian chewed on her lip and averted her eyes nervously.

“Nn, until it’s done. Try not to die, please.”

Yoshika sighed.

“We’ll do our best.”

Thanks to Heian, they were back on track for their original plan—albeit with a few unexpected alterations. All Yoshika had to do was hold out long enough to execute it.

Back in the physical realm, another brutal pair of lightning bolts crashed down on the Sky Hall, fracturing into countless branches that actively tried to bypass Yoshika’s defenses and target each of her bodies independently.

Each of her aspects did their best to cover for each other’s weaknesses, but it was as if the tribulation was learning. Like some malevolent intelligence with heaven’s power at its command, doing all it could to destroy her. Given the complexity of some of the divine formations Yoshika had seen, and the cavalier attitude the Sovereigns had towards avatars, it was entirely possible that the tribulation was intelligent.

She wished she’d brought Jianmo with her. Though they were an independent object spirit again, Jianmo was still capable of withdrawing into their blade and acting as a spiritual weapon. If Yoshika had been expecting to face a tribulation of her own, she wouldn’t have hesitated to ask for that favor.

Eunae’s body had it the worst—she’d already been injured before merging with Yoshika, and her defenses were focused primarily against spiritual attacks. Meili wasn’t much better off, as she focused mostly on supporting the others rather than defending herself. Jia and Eui stood by them, acting as the defensive core of their formation, while Kaede wielded one of Yamato’s legendary god-slaying Kamikiri blades to fight back directly against the storm.

Yoshika didn’t have time to acknowledge the strangeness of fighting a thundercloud with a sword—that was just what her life had become. As another strike descended, Kaede launched herself into the air and struck out against the tribulation with the arts of her master.

Sacred Art: Soul Severing Slash

The Kamikiri split the air as Yoshika’s power clashed with the tribulation to imprint her will on reality, twin thunderclaps resonating through the Sky Hall and shaking the earth. The lightning was weakened, but not defeated, and Kaede was struck back down to the earth as punishment for her aggression. Jia and Eui caught her, their shields dissipating the last of the thunderbolt’s remaining essence.

Kaede’s injuries were severe, but not life-threatening yet. Still, Yoshika was running out of strength, and the tribulation showed no signs of slowing down.

Jia clenched her teeth, as Eui did as much as she could to heal their failing bodies in the brief respite between bolts.

“We can’t last forever like this.”

Meili glanced up from treating Kaede’s more acute injuries and frowned.

“We don’t have to! Heian will come through. We just need to make it through one more time!”

One more time. One more bolt. Yoshika repeated it to herself like a mantra. It was arbitrary, really. They had no way of knowing when Heian would complete her task, but until she did, Yoshika just had to endure one more strike. Always one more strike.

Like a shark smelling blood, the tribulation struck again. This time, it didn’t split. It didn’t even have its usual twin—the punishment for Eunhee’s intervention. Instead it focused all of its power into a single thick bolt of pitch black Destruction, the edges glowing bright with a malevolent crimson.

Eui dove to cover Kaede. There was no strategy behind it beyond the fact that Eui’s affinity for Destruction might better allow her to weather the assault. Yoshika had never heard of a tribulation striking with pure Destruction before, but if the heavens could hear her curses, they gave no indication of it.

Her shields crumbled like dust, and her body soon began to follow suit. Yoshika felt it like a quake in her soul as the annihilating essence of Destruction ate away at Eui on a fundamental level.

In a panic, Jia threw herself into the fray, desperately trying to neutralize the bolt of Destruction with her Lightning. Meili and Eunae soon followed suit, and even barely conscious Kaede lent what little strength she had left. All five of them poured everything they had into the desperate defense, but the bolt seemed inexhaustible. Yoshika’s consciousness began to slip away, her soul fraying at the edges as she worried whether she’d be able to resurrect from such a comprehensive annihilation.

“It’s ready!”

Heian’s voice was a resounding clarion in her soul. From the edge of the Sky Hall, she threw a glowing pale green crystal towards Yoshika. A xiantian grade Soulfire mana crystal well on its way to awakening as a newly reborn Kumiho.

After the struggle she’d just undergone within her soul, that would have been a disaster—had it not been the one thing they’d been most thoroughly prepared for.

Heian had carefully brought the stone right up to the edge of awakening, using a complicated formation array to suppress the spirit within—one that she’d developed from a traumatizing memory of her brief experimentation with Yamato’s shikigami techniques, and the cruel spirit-sealing talismans of Qin’s Bai clan.

Such a seal couldn’t keep the great spirit’s ego suppressed forever, but it would last long enough for Yoshika’s purposes. She caught the stone and instinctively conjured something up from the deepest recesses of her soul—her first divine technique. The one she’d developed with the help of her friends before ever reaching xiantian. And though Yun and Rika were missing, Yoshika held the thought of them in her heart and unleashed the power they’d helped her achieve so many years ago.

Divine Art: Foxfire Avatar of the Sixfold Paths