Fates Parallel Chapter 290 - Demands

“No, of course not.”

Despite Luo Mingyu’s rising panic, Jia did not intend to flagrantly rob the Gaze of the Everwatching Mists. After all, they needed to keep a low profile and robbery was Eui’s area of expertise—Jia preferred to be more subtle.

“I’d prefer to steal it without anyone knowing about it.”

The poor alchemist nearly choked.

“You can’t be serious. Look—I’ll be honest with you and admit that I have little love for that place or the people in it, but I am an inner disciple, and I swore my loyalty to the sect. I won’t be party to any attempt to undermine them. Do what you must, but leave me out of it!”

Eui rolled her eyes and scoffed.

“As long as you’re willing to look the other way once we get our hands on it, we don’t need you.”

Jia and Eui turned to regard Pan Jiaying. Jia opened her mouth to speak, but Pan Jiaying beat her to the punch.

“I’ll do it.”

Jia blinked, and Pan Jiaying took advantage of her surprise to go on, holding up two fingers.

“I have two conditions. The first, you can probably guess. I want to talk to Li Meili again—face to face, and just the two of us.”

Though she had to suppress a sigh, Jia nodded.

“Of course. We were going to do that anyway.”

Pan Jiaying gave her a flat glare.

“I don’t believe you. Number two—take me on as a disciple.”

That came as a genuine surprise. Eui put a hand on her hip and raised an eyebrow.

“Why? I got the impression you didn’t like us very much.”

Pan Jiaying sighed and shook her head.

“I don’t like you. I liked Li Meili before everything went sideways, though—and I can definitely see bits of her in you. That’s not really important, though, is it? If people only trained under masters they liked, there wouldn’t be any cultivators at all.”

Eui snorted in amusement.

“True. Are you sure you want to just throw yourself at the first people willing to treat you with a bit of kindness and give you a practical lesson, though?”

“Of course not, don’t be so insulting! If it was just that, I wouldn’t even consider it, but you two aren’t normal.”

Pan Jiaying cast a conspiratorial glance at Luo Mingyu, whose attention had been captured by an exceptionally average blade of grass.

“It wasn’t your friends up north who studied under Yan Hao, was it? It was you.”

Jia narrowed her eyes.

“Why do you ask? We’re not exactly alchemists ourselves, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Maybe not, but there were other masters at that academy, weren’t there? Famous ones from all over the world. You obviously learned something from them, and I’m not going to pass up the chance to learn the same things, even second hand. I’ve wasted twenty years of my life watering fucking ginseng for a bunch of old men who don’t care about me—thanks for showing me that, by the way—and I’m tired of it.”

Her determined expression struck a chord with Jia. Though Pan Jiaying was older, and her life had been much more comfortable, Jia was nevertheless reminded of her old self. She scratched her head and sighed—this was getting messier by the second.

“Luo Mingyu, do you have anything to say about this? You can stop pretending not to listen now.”

Luo coughed once as he straightened up.

“I have no idea what you mean, but I am suddenly inclined to remind Junior Pan Jiaying that there is the small matter of her debt to the sect. Also, in the purely hypothetical scenario where she suddenly vanishes after a highly valuable asset goes missing, it will place her in a very difficult position. Do you think you’ll be able to survive as a rogue cultivator after gaining the ire of even a minor sect such as ours?”

Pan Jiaying hesitated, staring into her hands and frowning for a moment before clenching her fists together and nodding resolutely.

“I’ll just have to do my best. My mother is right—there’s no future for me here. This might be the only chance I ever get to grasp my own destiny.”

Luo Mingyu nodded slowly.

“So be it. I’m going to go examine that peach tree very closely. Who knows, perhaps these wild peaches have managed to take on some kind of qi. I’ll have to devote all of my attention to finding out, so please don’t interrupt me with whatever conspiracy you may or may not get up to. I refuse to hear a word of it.”

As he made good on his promise, Jia turned back to Pan Jiaying who was doing her best to look imposing and confident. It might have worked if Jia couldn’t sense her anxiety and fear.

“So, that just leaves the matter of your first condition and the actual plan itself.”

Pan Jiaying swallowed nervously.

“The plan is simple enough. Regular spiritual ginseng are actually used all the time by outer disciples. They’re expensive, but not entirely out of reach. When we return to the sect, you can just buy one and I’ll ‘accidentally’ bring you one of the hundred-year-old batch. Nobody even knows about them, so it should be a while before it gets noticed.”

Eui crossed her arms.

“But it will be noticed, eventually.”

“Yes, which is just one more reason to flee the sect afterwards. I’d rather not be here when they catch on and fingers start pointing.”

It was bold, but the plan had merit. Jia stroked her chin thoughtfully as she considered it.

“What about your debt?”

Pan Jiaying scowled.

“I’m already considering stealing from the sect and throwing my lot in with foreigners. I’m pretty sure that debt is the least of my worries.”

Eui pursed her lips at that, idly adjusting the fringe of her hair that covered her scar. She dropped all pretense, and looked Pan Jiaying firmly in the eyes as she spoke seriously.

“Are you sure you want to do this? You’ll be branded as a traitor to the empire. Are you prepared to face the consequences of that?”

Pan Jiaying stared down at her own clenched fist, trying to stop her trembling hands.

“No, I’m not sure. This whole thing is completely insane. Yesterday I was certain that the sect had my best interests at heart, and that if I just kept working hard and believing, then one day I’d find my path and make a difference in the world. Now, it seems so obvious that they were just using me. It’s embarrassing how naive I was.

“But I’m done being used. By my parents, by the sect, by you, by this entire fucking empire! I can see a path now, and I’m taking it. I won’t lie or sugar coat it, Miss Li—I’m using you. I don’t know why you care about me, but I won’t hesitate to take advantage of it. I’ll take everything you can give me, then demand more until I don’t need you anymore. If you’re willing to take on an ungrateful disciple like that, then you’ll get your hundred-year-old spiritual ginseng.”

Eui whistled appreciatively, her voice ringing in Jia’s mind.

“Holy shit, she’s you! No wonder we got a crush.”

“Shut up!”

Jia sighed.

“Alright. I can respect that. What about your family, though? Are you putting them in danger with this?”

Pan Jiaying shook her head.

“No. Our sect isn’t like that—they won’t hold my parents accountable for my actions. I...probably shouldn’t talk to them before leaving though. No sense in giving people more reason to be suspicious.”

“Then I guess that only leaves Li Meili. I suppose it’s not a coincidence that your plan requires us to make a new avatar?”

“Not a new avatar—I want to talk to the same Li Meili that I first met.”

Jia frowned.

“I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but we’ll try our best.”

Yoshika felt a bit self conscious as Pan Jiaying watched her sit down to meditate. She put it out of her head and focused inward. The most critical parts of her avatar—the ones that had required a whole ritual to create—were still preserved. Much like Rika’s essence clones, Yoshika’s avatar could be reformed at will as long as it wasn’t destroyed outright.

Actually doing so was a much more complicated process, however. The artificial body and soul would be the same—remaking those would require rebuilding the framework of divine essence and carving out another piece of her own foundation. But that alone would leave it without any personality—an empty husk incapable of interacting with the world around it.

That was part of the conundrum Yoshika had been struggling with—the avatar needed to be a person, or it wouldn’t work at all. Ethically creating such a person was a challenge that they had already failed once—the suffering they had subjected Li Meili to was unacceptable, even if they ended up experiencing it themselves.

Now, she wrestled with the same problem a second time. Before, she’d tried to craft the avatar’s identity around the false persona that Jia used to hide herself in Qin. That had been a problem, since there was no such person. She’d taken her own insecurities about her identity and magnified them a hundredfold by attaching herself to a literally false identity. If there was one thing she’d learned from the experience, it was that she needed a better understanding of herself.

Of course she didn’t expect to solve that overnight, so in the interim she needed some sort of stopgap for Li Meili to identify with. Something a little more concrete than a fake name and appearance.

She considered her options. The easiest would be to just use herself—but since she had her own crisis of identity to deal with, that was probably only going to make things worse. Another option would be the memories of her time as an avatar. It seemed like a nice fit—to take joy in the nature of her existence as a construct rather than being distressed by it.

Yoshika found two problems with that idea right away. First was the fact that she knew it would make her feel too detached from the consequences of her actions. She remembered Ienaga’s warning and intended to heed it well. A construct without personal accountability was out of the question. Second problem was some of her memories as Li Meili were devastating, and being left with just those would leave her a blubbering wreck—she didn’t want to do that to herself.

Idly, she considered focusing only on the good memories of her time as an avatar. Enjoying the beautiful scenery, the artful way the sect’s grounds were designed, meeting Pan Jiaying, spending time with Pan Jiaying, teaching Pan Jiaying, the feeling of Pan Jiaying’s—

Yoshika stopped that train of thought. That was dangerous. She couldn’t deny the attraction she felt, but creating an avatar that based her entire identity around that would be...creepy beyond words. She shuddered at the thought of her own duplicate fawning obsessively over the girl—it brought up some dark memories.

A balance, then. To focus on any one thing wouldn’t be right, but neither was leaving anything out. The first time, Li Meili had been created while Yoshika was still uncertain whether Li Meili was an individual or an extension of herself. This time, she had to decisively be both. No tricky oaths trying to influence her behavior, no carefully crafting her identity around a single purpose.

She would be Li Meili, for better or worse. Both part of Yoshika, and an individual capable of making her own decisions. Yoshika could accept that, and she could accept being that. With those thoughts in mind, she focused on her new avatar and once more imbued it with thought.