The damage done to Wu Àiliàn’s time was considerable. Wu Meiying did not think Wu Àiliàn truly understood what had been done to her. That bastard Zhou Shiwei had destroyed each timeline he found that had her being rescued in it. This reduced the risk of her ever escaping. Then, as if to showcase the man’s paranoia, he had stolen all of her time save for one second. After that, he locked her in this room, which kept that single second going indefinitely. That was the only reason this woman had not become a withered husk.
It was beyond cruel.
There were ways to fix this, of course. However, Wu Meiying would need to find some way to give Wu Àiliàn the time she had lost, and the only way to do that was by taking someone else’s time, merging it with Wu Àiliàn, and manipulating the harmony so it would become Wu Àiliàn’s time instead of whoever it belonged to originally.
That was no small feat.
When she had been at the height of her power, she’d been able to perform feats like this with, if not relative ease, then at least practiced ease. She understood the underlying principle and had enough technique and raw power to make it possible. While her technique and understanding were fine, she lacked the power. That meant she would need to draw the power from somewhere.
“It’s going to take a bit more time, but I think I can fix your time once I find a place that’s steeped in the Dao of Time,” Wu Meiying said. “There aren’t many such places on this small sealed world, but time is a constant no matter where you live. That means there should be a place where time is heavily present.”
“How long do you think it will take before I am recovered?” asked Wu Àiliàn.
The woman did not appear very enthusiastic. She was a shell of the whimsical woman that Wu Meiying had known in her childhood. It pained her to see what Wu Jian’s mom had become, but she put on a bright smile because doing anything less would cause her to break down again.
“Hmmm. That depends on how long it takes me to find a place. I plan to use Clairvoyance to locate somewhere that will suit our purposes.” She paused long enough to frown. “I’ll need to search for one through Wu Jian’s timeline. I’d love to find one through yours, but… well, that’s not an option after what they did to you. Wu Jian’s timeline should have one, but he has an infinite number of possible futures. That will make searching more difficult.”
“What about going through someone else’s time?” asked Wu Àiliàn.
But Wu Meiying shook her head. “No one else will have something like this in their timeline--not on this small sealed world at least. The only people who have that potential are Wu Jian and his women…”
“Will you be able to do that? I noticed you’ve been avoiding my son,” Wu Àiliàn said with a pointed look.
Wu Meiying looked away. “What? Avoiding? Me? No, I would never avoid Jian. He’s my everything. You know that…”
Wu Àiliàn raised an eyebrow. “And yet, while he’s been working hard to fix this world now that the dust has settled, you’ve holed yourself up in here with me.”
“Mrrrk… I forgot how perceptive you were,” Wu Meiying said. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Ever since I was little, I’ve always been able to feel Wu Jian’s presence. The connection between us was the one constant in my life… the one constant I’ve had across all of my lifetimes… and now it’s gone. It was what has kept us together time after time. I… I’m scared about how Wu Jian will feel now that it’s gone. I’m scared that my feelings will change without that connection.”
There had been a point in time where she had offered to severe the connection with Wu Jian. If he had asked it of her, she would have done it, but she would have likely destroyed herself completely afterward. She could not bear the idea of being separated from him. Now that they were, she felt a great hole within herself. It was like a massive portion of her soul had been cut away.
It terrified her.
“You can’t hide from him forever,” Wu Àiliàn said pointedly.
“I know that,” Wu Meiying defended herself, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“You should talk to him,” Wu Àiliàn continued.
“I know that! You don’t have to tell me. I know. I just… need time,” Wu Meiying muttered.
This was the first time she had ever lost her connection to Wu Jian since forming it during her very first incarnation. That was why she felt so nervous.
As if speaking about him summoned him, Wu Jian appeared with Hou Jingshu and Zhou Lihua in tow. Wu Meiying was caught torn between happiness at seeing him, jealousy at the two girls on his arms, and fear because she still didn’t feel ready to speak with him.
He opened his mouth to say something, but then paused and looked at her. She didn’t know what he saw. However, he must have seen something troubling because she could tell he had switched topics.
“Mei, are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Of course, I’m fine. Why do you ask?” she said.
“If you were really fine, you wouldn’t look like you wanted to cry,” he pointed out.
He really knew her too well. It was like he could see straight into her soul. She pursed her lips and ignored the triumphant look in Wu Àiliàn’s eyes as she decided to confess her fears to Wu Jian and the others.
***
“I see. I had no idea you’d felt that connection so strongly,” Wu Jian said.
They were all sitting on the bed in Wu Àiliàn’s prison. Several pieces of luxurious furniture had been brought in since the Zhou Clan had only given his mother the bare minimum needed to survive. She hadn’t even been given a bed. Just some sheets. It was yet another reason to hate the Zhou Clan.
“You can’t feel the bond as strongly as I do,” Wu Meiying confessed. “It was something I did more for myself than anyone else. I… I understand it was very selfish of me. In any case, that bond is what kept me sane through all these incarnations. Now that it’s gone…” She trailed off.
Wu Jian wanted to say that she was surely exaggerating, but he understood how serious she was. Wu Meiying did not joke about matters that involved him--not like this at least. He also knew she was more than a little unhinged. This was a woman who, if given the chance, would very likely commit genocide for him, and while part of him wanted to say that wasn’t true, another part understood that Wu Meiying had been broken at a fundamental level since before they had even met in this lifetime.
He shuddered to think about what kind of man he would be if he remembered every single one of his incarnations like she did. He was blessed in his ignorance.
“That just sounds like an excuse to me,” Hou Jingshu admitted.
Wu Meiying’s head whipped over to her. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Hou Jingshu said. “Not only does it sound like a bad excuse, but it sounds like you don’t trust Wu Jian’s feelings for you.”
Wu Meiying launched herself to her feet. “Take that back! Wu Jian is the one person in this universe I trust completely!”
“Then why can’t you trust that his feelings for you won’t change even with the bond gone?” asked Hou Jingshu.
Wu Meiying opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. She looked about ready to go crosseyed.
Hou Jingshu crossed her arms and nodded. “You can’t answer because you know I am right. You’ve been using that link you two share as a crutch to make yourself feel more secure about your feelings for each other. I don’t have any such connection. The bond Jian and I share is so strong entirely because I have complete faith in his feelings for me, and I don’t need some sort of nebulous link connecting us to believe it’s real. But you do.”
This was one of the few times Wu Jian had seen Wu Meiying look truly baffled. She glanced around as though seeking answers that didn’t exist. She looked at Zhou Lihua, then Wu Àiliàn, before finally landing her gaze on him. She stared into his eyes. For what, he didn’t know, but she didn’t seem to find it.
Her shoulders slumped.
“I guess I can’t deny that,” Wu Meiying confessed. “I’ve had this connection to him for most of my life. If you were to combine all of my incarnations and pit them against my very first life, my first life is just a drop in the bucket. I’ve lived tens of thousands of lifetimes by now, and in every one of them, I had that connection to Jian. It was an always present reassurance that we were both together even when we were apart.”
Hou Jingshu sighed. “Well… at least you can admit that. To be frank, I can’t imagine having a connection like that, or living through so many lives like you did. It doesn’t sound the slightest bit pleasant.”
“It… wasn’t,” Wu Meiying said with a sigh. She placed her feet on the bed and gripped the sheets with her toes as she wrapped her arms around her legs. “There wasn’t a single incarnation where Jian and I ended up happy. My apprentice would always find me when I turned eighteen and tried to take me back. If Wu Jian was with me, he would die. If I was alone, I would kill myself so I could reincarnate and try again. But no matter how many times I reincarnated, the results never changed.”
Wu Meiying sniffed and wiped at her eyes. Then she smiled at them.
“Maybe this is a good thing. I’ve tried so hard and for so long to no avail. Now, there won’t be any do overs. If we fail this time, it will be the last time. Maybe that will motivate me extra hard to make sure we finally succeed.”
While her words were meant to be encouraging. He could tell that she was terrified. Wu Jian reached out and placed an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his chest.
“We’ll succeed this time,” he said. “We’ve actually got the element of surprise now. Your apprentice’s forces on this world are gone, and no one was able to inform him of what happened. That means we have time to plan.”
“Maybe…” Wu Meiying said with a frown.
“Maybe?” asked Wu Jian.
She pulled away and looked at him. “Do you think that damn chimera won’t have some kind of means of knowing when one of his subordinates has died? You’ve already seen the Soul Halls here. There are even more meticulous ones in the Nine Heavens. I guarantee he will eventually find out. We are still on a timelimit.”
“What will happen when he finds out?” asked Wu Jian.
“He’ll send someone here to check in and confirm what happened,” she said immediately. “There’s no guarantee we’re the ones who killed his subordinates, so he’ll want to learn what happened before making a decision. Our only saving grace is that whoever he sends will not be very strong. The method of suppressing someone’s cultivation through artifacts and rituals doesn’t work after reaching a certain level of cultivation.”
“So they will be on Zhou Shiwei’s level?” asked Zhou Lihua.
Wu Meiying shook her head. “They will be stronger, but not by much. Their cultivation will be close to the same. However, the techniques they have at their disposal and their prowess on the battlefield will be much greater. Zhou Shiwei had grown complacent with his power since there was no one on this small sealed world who could match him.”
“I guess we’ll need to prepare,” Hou Jingshu said. “We should try to reach the Perfection Realm before they come.”
Wu Jian agreed, but there was something he wanted to know more than right now. Future events could be dealt with in the future.
“So have you figured out how to help Mǔqīn?” he asked.
“I have!” Wu Meiying perked up. “The phoenixes haven’t destroyed Huo Huangdi’s cultivation yet. I was wondering if you could convince them to give him to me…”