Night in the secret realm was not dark, but dreaming.
Above the Golden Core Avenue, twilight lingered endlessly, caught between dusk and dawn. Pale stars flickered like dozing eyes, and the wind moved slow and deliberate, steeped in the scent of old stone, crushed herbs, and quiet memory. Even the mountains stood hushed beneath veils of mist that seemed to breathe.
They walked without speaking. Not for lack of words, but because the hush around them made speech feel fragile.
Su Min glanced sideways at Xie Yingying. Her pace was even, yet her hands remained clasped behind her back—as if holding something in place, bracing for a blow that hadn't yet fallen. The holy maiden, always composed. But tonight, something in her qi shivered at the edges.
Su Min recognized it.
It echoed her own.
Their bond had deepened. They had stood back to back in battle, escaped death more than once, and faced threats that would have broken others. Still, trust born on the battlefield was like a blade—gleaming, weighty, and double-edged. It did not always cut clean.
Resonance between Solar and Lunar Sovereign Physiques could stir powerful reactions, both spiritual and corporeal. Deeper than affection, yet not always truthful. The cauldron's compatibility, the echo of inheritance.
They continued in silence, footsteps muffled by moss and fog. The mirrored peaks on either side loomed like ancient sentinels, their summits fading into drifting clouds. Above, stars blinked like distant lanterns, their light caught in the still pools scattered along the path.
Then Su Min halted.
A faint glow shimmered ahead, nestled between two gentle slopes. Xie Yingying came to her side, narrowing her gaze.
Beneath a natural arch of pale stone and root, a single herb swayed in the quiet air. Silver-petaled, delicate as spun silk, it pulsed with soft light—like it breathed in rhythm with the moon.
The Moonlace Bloom.
Su Min exhaled. "It's real."
Xie Yingying stepped closer, eyes fixed on the blossom. "So this is the Dreamscape Herb."
It had many names in legend, all pointing to the same elusive truth—born where yin and yang met in perfect stillness, where neither night nor day prevailed. Ancient records claimed it allowed two cultivators to share a single thread of consciousness, merging thought, memory, and soul. An art of cultivation as intimate as it was dangerous.
"To use it is to bare the soul," Su Min said quietly. "No masks. No shields. Even what we hide from ourselves—the Moonlace reveals it."
She reached out, fingers brushing a single petal. It was cool and soft, almost shy in its fragility.
Xie Yingying met her gaze. "That's why we came, isn't it?"
They each took a petal—one silver, one gold.
The world folded.
~
When Su Min opened her eyes, the sky was split—half silver, half gold. Moonlight and sunlight twined above her like ink in water, never clashing, only curling into each other. She stood in a realm that wasn't hers, yet didn't feel foreign. Ancient pavilions drifted over seas of cloud, glowing lotuses bloomed among stars, and runes shimmered along the stone paths like fireflies.
"Your dreamscape…" she murmured. But she knew it wasn't Xie Yingying's alone. The presence of another soul pulsed around her—cautious, near, open.
She turned.
Xie Yingying stood in the half-light, robes fluttering without wind, her gaze catching both sun and moon.
They didn't speak at first.
Su Min's old instincts urged her to reach out, to test the dreamscape, to take. But that would be who she used to be.
Xie Yingying began to walk, her bare feet silent on the translucent path forming beneath her steps. Su Min followed.
With each step, the dreamscape shifted. Memories echoed through it—glimpses from both lives. Su Min, bloodied and kneeling before a burning manor. Xie Yingying, younger, meditating beneath a frozen waterfall.
Their truths. Their scars.
Then came her voice, soft but steady. "They say the Lunar Sovereign is fated to resonate with the Solar. Drawn like tide to sun."
Su Min looked at her, heart suddenly uneasy. "So that question had festered too".
"Does that bother you?" she asked, voice deliberately light, but her fingers curled slightly.
"It bothers me that I can't tell… whether I'm drawn to you," Xie Yingying paused—her gaze lifted to the horizon, where the moon hung low, "or just to what you became."
Solar Sovereign Physique.
The words weren't spoken, but they didn't need to be.
Su Min glanced away, her throat tight. She remembered the flicker of desire she'd buried—the longing for inheritance, for power, for the Heavenly Yin Sect's legacy wrapped in Xie Yingying's body.
"I suppose," she said, voice low, "we're both wondering whether we want each other… or just what the other has."
Silence again, taut with things neither could deny.
Then, Su Min reached out—not to take, but to offer. Her fingers hovered just beside Xie Yingying's.
A breath passed. The space between them shimmered, warm and cold tangled like twilight air.
Xie Yingying moved, slowly. Her fingertips brushed just above Su Min's hand, testing if the warmth was real.
It was.
A ripple passed through the dream. Petals lifted from moonlotus trees and hung suspended like stars. Light bent around them softly, not to dazzle, but to hold.
Xie Yingying stepped closer. Her spiritual aura brushed Su Min's like mist across flame—cool, curved, receptive.
"You're always holding something back," she said—not accusing, only observant.
Su Min didn't deny it. Instead, she pressed her palm gently to Xie Yingying's shoulder.
"I don't want to take," she said. "I want to understand."
Xie Yingying's breath caught.
It wasn't hunger. It wasn't even longing. It was intimacy—the quiet kind, the kind that let someone see you fully and remain.
A memory rose behind Su Min—unbidden, unwelcome.
She was fourteen. Barefoot on cold, blood-slick tiles as the Su Clan Mansion burned. Peach blossoms and ash in the air. Soldiers in gold-threaded armor moved like ghosts through the smoke, blades still dripping. Somewhere beneath the roar of fire, she could hear the cries—her cousins, her elders—dying not in battle, but in the Emperor's mockery of justice.
In another flash, the scene shifted: a stone-walled cell, damp and rank. Su Min curled around herself in the corner, listening to her uncle scream until his voice gave out.
"Confess," they'd said. "Confess your treason."
She hadn't cried then. She had only waited, until even the rats abandoned her.
That girl looked out now, from the dream's edge, and met Xie Yingying's eyes.
Xie Yingying didn't flinch.
Instead, her own memory surfaced in reply—of her kneeling alone in the sealed sanctuary of the Heavenly Yin Sect, hearing her masters die one by one as they activated the self-destruction formation to shield her. Cold moonlight had poured through the broken dome above, and she'd sworn she would carry their will alone.
Neither of them had ever expected to be seen like this.
But here they stood. Not admiring each other's brilliance, but acknowledging the ruin underneath.
Without speaking, they began to move—through a corridor formed of starlight and memory. They crossed shifting bridges of moonbeams, climbed terraces where the sun bled golden sap through branches, and stood in silent harmony atop the twin statues of the Sovereigns, Lunar and Solar, as if measuring the distance between them.
As they walked, their steps grew more synchronized. A quiet rhythm emerged—heralded not by clash or command, but by trust.
One such trial came in the form of a powerful illusion in the shape of a dark, twisted version of Su Min—a version consumed by her greed for power, her soul shattered and unrecognizable. In the illusion, Su Min was cold and calculating, willing to sacrifice everything, even Xie Yingying, to achieve her goals. Xie Yingying, struggling with the overwhelming feelings of betrayal, almost gave in to the illusion, believing that Su Min had truly become like the people who had once betrayed her.
But Su Min's voice broke through, calling out to Xie Yingying with an intensity that shattered the illusion. "You know me," she said, her words a lifeline. "I will never become them."
In that moment, Xie Yingying's heart shifted. The truth of their bond, the rawness of their emotions, couldn't be denied anymore. She had feared becoming just another person in Su Min's world—a casualty of fate—but in the end, she realized that Su Min's heart, like her own, was still healing, still capable of love and trust.
The next trial was even more personal—a manifestation of Xie Yingying's own fears: the overwhelming pressure to remain distant, to hide her true feelings behind the cold facade of the Lunar Sovereign Physique. In this illusion, she was trapped in a cage of moonlight, her body aching from the strain of restraining her desires, her power, and her emotions.
Su Min entered the illusion to save her, but she didn't do so as a protector. She entered as an equal, as someone who understood the weight of what Xie Yingying was facing. As the two of them faced the trial together, Su Min reached out, her touch tender yet firm. "You don't have to hide, Yingying. Not from me."
The cage shattered.
Xie Yingying's greatest fear had always been that her connection to Su Min was a product of their fated resonance, of the Solar and Lunar energies intertwining. She had lived in constant doubt, unsure whether her feelings were hers or just an effect of their unique bond. But in this moment, with Su Min standing beside her, with her heart open and vulnerable, Xie Yingying finally realized that what she felt for Su Min was real. It wasn't just the resonance—it was the quiet, unspoken moments they had shared, the way Su Min had never treated her as just a cauldron, but as a person.
Before she could collapse, Su Min caught her wrist.
And let go.
No claim. No price. Just presence.
"You always move ahead like you're alone," Su Min said, softly.
Xie Yingying's smile came and went. "Because I always was."
A beat passed.
"Not anymore," Su Min said.
This time, Xie Yingying didn't look away.
Their hands met again, this time naturally. Interlaced—not with hunger, but with recognition. As if their souls were now walking beside each other too, a step at a time.
And then, the final test—an empty courtyard where all illusions faded, leaving only skin and qi, light and shadow.
Here, the resonance peaked.
Solar and Lunar energy didn't clash. They breathed together. A rhythm. A tide.
No kiss.
No declarations.
Just stillness.
Their foreheads touched.
And in that stillness, Su Min let go of everything but one truth.
She didn't want Xie Yingying's legacy.
She wanted her.
Xie Yingying, with the softest tilt of her head and the quietest breath, accepted that truth—and offered one of her own.
She wanted Su Min back.
Want her—not because of some heavenly resonance, but because of who Su Min was underneath the brilliance.
When they parted, their hands lingered, warm with something neither could deny.
The dream unraveled, petal by petal.
And just before waking, both found the answers they hadn't dared to ask.
But neither voiced them.
Not yet.
They carried them in their hearts, like heat beneath the skin—silent, unseen, but impossible to ignore.
===
This chapter was born from Xie Yingying's inner turmoil. At its core, it's her story - a deep dive into the fears and revelations of a woman blessed (or cursed) with the Lunar Sovereign Body (Taiyin/Pure Yin body). This rare constitution makes her the ultimate "furnace" for dual cultivation, whether through intimate or non-intimate methods, and the weight of this truth haunts her.
The revelation that Su Min possesses the complementary Solar Sovereign Body (Taiyang/Pure Yang body) alongside her Five Elements Holy Body only amplifies Xie Yingying's anxiety. In these pages, we witness her confusion, doubt, and terror - and ultimately, her path to resolution.
As for Su Min? With her infinite lifespan, she certainly cares about her sect's legacy... but there's something more important brewing. This marks the beginning of her emotional awakening - the moment she must confront and acknowledge what her heart already knows: she's fallen deeply, irrevocably in love.