He Renxiao had always dreamed of freedom—not the fleeting liberation that comes with wealth or power, but the ultimate escape from existence itself. Death had been his constant companion in thought, a seductive whisper that promised release from the suffocating chains of his twisted reality.
For years upon endless years, this desire had consumed him like a slow-burning poison, transforming what should have been the prime of his life into nothing more than a collection of lost and bitter memories, each one a testament to his growing desperation.
In his former life—if one could even call that tormented existence a life—death had been his singular obsession, his most fervent prayer to whatever cruel deities might be listening. He had courted it with the dedication of a devoted general, seeming to yearn for it like a lovesick fool.
But just as he had believed—no, known with absolute certainty—that he had finally achieved that prolonged and desperately sought dream, consciousness began its cruel, inexorable creep back into his unwilling mind. Like water seeping through the cracks of a dam, awareness trickled in slowly at first, then rushed forth in a torrential flood that brought with it the devastating realization that he would most likely never have that coveted freedom from life's endless torments.
Such a pity... He didn't know whether he should laugh until his sides split with bitter mirth or cry until his tears formed rivers. The absurdity of his situation made him want nothing more than to just disappear.
All of this seemed so bizarre, so fundamentally wrong, that he was starting to believe more and more that perhaps all of this was merely a dream—that somewhere, in some healing chamber or laying in a bed with his Shixiong's warmth and teachers affection to hold him., he was actually still clinging to life by the thinnest of threads.
Though if that were true, it would indeed be a miracle considering the grievous injuries that his stupid mutt of a Shixiong had inflicted upon him with such calculated cruelty. The memory of those final moments came rushing back like a nightmare made manifest: the betrayal in his senior brother's eyes, the cold steel piercing his flesh, the warm blood pooling beneath him as his vision faded to black.
The explanation didn't exactly clarify where he was now, however, or even begin to answer why everything was so dark and it was hard to see—well, more accurately, He could see, just barely, as if looking through layers of gauze or viewing the world from the bottom of a deep well. Whatever this place was, it was clearly what he thought it would be.
No, this was something else entirely. Instead of either extreme, He Renxiao found himself suspended—quite literally, it seemed—in what could only be described as an absolute void, a space so profoundly dark and seemingly infinite that it appeared to devour any hint of light or
hope that dared to venture into its depths. The darkness here wasn't merely the absence of light; it was a living thing, a presence that pressed against him from all sides with an almost palpable weight.
Now that he thought about it with growing unease—perhaps this was the afterlife? Not the glorious realm of immortal bliss or the torturous pit of eternal damnation, but something far more unsettling: a place of endless ambiguity, where souls existed in a state of perpetual uncertainty.
The liquid that enveloped his body added exponentially to his growing sense of unease and disorientation. It clung to his skin with an unsettling familiarity that made his flesh crawl, neither warm nor cold, existing in a state of disturbing ambiguity that defied all natural understanding. The substance seemed to have a mind of its own, responding to his movements with an almost sentient awareness that sent shivers down his spine.
As He Renxiao moved his fingers through the mysterious substance, watching with fascination as it rippled and swirled around him in patterns that seemed almost too perfect to be natural, he found himself utterly unable to determine its true nature. The liquid caught what little light existed in this strange realm, creating trails that followed his movements like ghostly afterimages.
Was it blood? Or was it merely water, ordinary and mundane, made strange only by the otherworldly nature of this place?
The uncertainty gnawed at him with the persistence of a hungry beast, much like the memories of how he'd ended up in this liminal space—memories that seemed to drift just beyond his grasp in the endless darkness like ships glimpsed through fog.
Every time he reached for them, they slipped away, leaving him with only fragments and impressions that refused to become clear.
It was then, as he floated in this sea of ambiguity, that the most terrifying realization of all crashed over him like a tsunami of pure terror. The liquid wasn't just around him—it was in him. He could feel it filling his lungs, his throat, his very being with each labored attempt to breathe. The substance that he had been so casually moving through was drowning him, slowly and inexorably stealing what remained of his life force.
I'm drowning, the thought struck him with crystalline clarity, cutting through the fog of confusion that had clouded his mind since awakening in this place. I'm actually drowning.
This is it, he realized with a mixture of terror and twisted satisfaction. This is how I die. Not in a glorious battle, not in a moment of heroic sacrifice, but drowning in some otherworldly river while contemplating the very death I once so desperately desired.
The water—if water it truly was—seemed to grow heavier around him, pressing down with the weight of all his accumulated sins and regrets. Each movement became more labored, each attempt to surface more futile, as if the liquid itself were conspicuously working to drag him down into its depths.
His vision, already compromised in this strange realm, began to tunnel and darken at the edges as his oxygen-starved brain struggled to maintain consciousness. Colors bled together like
watercolors in the rain, and sounds became distant and muffled, as if he were hearing them from the bottom of a deep well.
So this is how it ends, he thought with a strange sense of peace beginning to wash over him despite the physical agony. All my struggles, all my pain, all my desperate longing for release, and it comes to me now in the form I least expected.
The water filled his mouth, his nose, his very soul, and for a moment—just a moment—He Renxiao stopped fighting. He let himself sink deeper into the liquid embrace, feeling a perverse sense of completion as death finally seemed ready to claim him properly this time.
But then, with agonizing slowness and uncertainty, He Renxiao began to move upward through the suffocating liquid, his survival instincts overriding his death wish in a cosmic joke that would have made the gods themselves weep with laughter.
The water filled his mouth, his nose, his very soul, and for a moment—just a moment—He Renxiao stopped fighting. He let himself sink deeper into the liquid embrace, feeling a perverse sense of completion as death finally seemed ready to claim him properly this time.
Then something grabbed him.
Not gently. Not with the tender mercy one might expect from a savior or celestial being. No—the hand that seized the back of his robes did so with bruising force, yanking him upward through the water with all the delicacy of a fisherman hauling in a particularly disappointing catch.
He Renxiao broke the surface with a violent gasp, water exploding from his lungs in painful, wracking coughs. Before he could even process what was happening, he was dragged bodily onto a riverbank and unceremoniously dropped onto the hard ground like a sack of rice.
"Pathetic," a voice sneered above him—a voice that sent ice shooting through his veins because he knew that voice. He knew it intimately, because it was his voice, yet somehow different. Sharper. Colder. Carrying an edge of bitter experience that made his own sound like a child's by comparison.
He Renxiao rolled onto his back, still coughing up river water, and found himself staring up at... himself.
Or rather, what he might have been. Should have been. Could have been.
The man standing over him wore robes that He Renxiao recognized—robes he'd worn in what felt like another lifetime. But where He Renxiao's had always been slightly disheveled..
The face was his own, yet not. Harder. More angular. Eyes that held depths of experience and suffering that He Renxiao was only beginning to comprehend. This version of himself looked like he'd been carved from stone and tempered in fire, every soft edge burned away to reveal something uncompromising beneath.
"Well?" Renren Xiao—for that was clearly who this was, the name echoing in He Renxiao's mind with sudden certainty—demanded, his arms crossed over his chest. "Are you
going to lie there gaping like a landed fish all day, or are you going to get up and face what you've been given?"
He Renxiao struggled to his elbows, still gasping. "What... who..."
"Don't play stupid. You know exactly who I am." Renren Xiao's lip curled in disgust. "I'm you. Or rather, I'm who you were before you went and got yourself killed like an idiot."
"I didn't—" He Renxiao started to protest, but Renren Xiao cut him off with a sharp gesture.
"Save it. I know every excuse you're about to make because I made them all myself once." He began to pace, his movements sharp and agitated. "Do you have any idea how rare this is? How impossibly rare? Rebirth isn't some common occurrence handed out to every fool who throws their life away."
He Renxiao finally managed to push himself to a sitting position, water still streaming from his hair and clothes. As he did, he caught a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision—something massive and serpentine, scales that shimmered with an azure luminescence. He turned his head sharply, but there was nothing there. Just the riverbank and the strange, twilight landscape that surrounded them.
"Looking for something?" Renren Xiao asked with a sardonic edge to his voice, though he didn't seem to expect an answer. He continued pacing, and now He Renxiao noticed more movement—shadows that weren't quite shadows, shapes that dissolved when looked at directly. A canine form, too large to be natural, with fur that seemed to absorb light. Another serpentine silhouette coiling through the air like smoke.
What is this place?
"This," Renren Xiao said, as if reading his thoughts—and perhaps he could, being the same person—"is the headspace." He stopped pacing and fixed He Renxiao with a glare that could have melted steel. "And you're here because apparently, the universe has a sick sense of humor."
"I don't understand—"
"Of course you don't understand!" Renren Xiao exploded, his carefully controlled facade cracking. "You never understood! You were so busy drowning in your own misery, so focused on your precious death wish, that you never once stopped to think about what you were throwing away!"
He Renxiao felt his own temper flare—a familiar sensation, like slipping into old clothes. "And what exactly was I throwing away? A life of betrayal? Of being used and discarded? Of watching everyone I trusted turn their backs—"
"Oh, spare me the tragic hero routine," Renren Xiao interrupted with a dismissive wave. "Yes, we were betrayed. Yes, Shixiong turned on us. Yes, it hurts like having our soul ripped out through our chest. I know. I lived it. But wallowing in it, letting it consume us until there was
nothing left but bitterness and death wishes?" He shook his head in disgust. "That's not strength. That's cowardice."
The words hit like a physical blow, and He Renxiao found himself on his feet before he'd consciously decided to stand, fists clenched at his sides. "How dare you—"
"How dare I?" Renren Xiao laughed, but it was a harsh, brittle sound. "I'm the one who lived through it all, who carried that pain until it killed me, who spent my last moments cursing my own weakness. I have every right to dare."
He stepped closer, and He Renxiao could see now that his eyes—their eyes—held something more than just anger. There was regret there, deep and aching. "You've been given something I never had. A second chance. A chance to make different choices, to be different."
"I never asked for this," He Renxiao said, but even to his own ears, it sounded weak.
"No one asks for rebirth, you fool. It's not something you request like ordering tea at an inn." Renren Xiao grabbed him by the front of his robes, yanking him close.
"You're going back. Back to a point before everything went wrong. And you're going to make the right choices this time, or so help me, I will find a way to drag you back to this river and hold you under until you learn some sense."
He Renxiao tried to pull away, but Renren Xiao's grip was iron. "And what makes you think I'll do any better? What makes you think I won't make the same mistakes?"
"Because you have something I didn't." Renren Xiao released him with a shove that sent He Renxiao stumbling backward. "You have the memory of how it all ends. You know where the path of self-destruction leads. You know what trusting the wrong people costs. You know—"
He Renxiao's foot caught on something—a root, a rock, he couldn't tell—and he went down hard. His head cracked against a stone with a sickening sound that echoed across the strange landscape. Pain exploded through his skull, bright and sharp, and for a moment, his vision went white.
"Oh, for the love of—" Renren Xiao's voice sounded distant, muffled by the ringing in his ears. "Of course you'd manage to injure yourself even here. That's just perfect."
He Renxiao lay on the ground, one hand pressed to his head, feeling the warm trickle of blood between his fingers. The pain was clarifying in a way, burning through the fog of confusion and disbelief. This is real, he thought. This is actually happening.
Through his blurred vision, he saw them clearly now—four shapes that had been hovering at the edges of his perception. Two serpentine forms, their azure scales catching light that didn't exist in this place, their eyes ancient and knowing. Two canine creatures, massive and ethereal, their forms shifting between solid and smoke, watching with an intensity that suggested they saw far more than mere physical forms.
One of each flanked Renren Xiao, and one of each flanked him. They didn't interact with each other, didn't acknowledge the humans they accompanied. They simply were, present and observant, like guardians or judges or perhaps something else entirely.
"Can you..." He Renxiao started to ask, but Renren Xiao was already shaking his head.
"See them? No. But I can feel them. Always could, even in life. Never knew what they were." He crouched down beside He Renxiao, his expression softening slightly—though only slightly. "That's going to leave a mark, you know. The injury here will follow you back."
"Back?" He Renxiao struggled to focus through the pain. "You keep saying that. Back where?"
"To life. To your new life. Your second life." Renren Xiao reached out, and for a moment, his hand hovered over He Renxiao's bleeding head as if he might heal it. Then he drew back with a bitter smile. "Actually, the injury might help. Pain has a way of keeping us honest, of reminding us that actions have consequences."
"You're insane," He Renxiao muttered, but there was less heat in it now. The pain in his head was competing with a growing sense of unreality—or perhaps hyper-reality. Everything felt too sharp, too clear, too present.
"Probably," Renren Xiao agreed easily. "Dying tends to do that to a person. Or maybe I was always insane, and death just let me admit it." He stood, looking down at He Renxiao with an expression that was equal parts frustration and something that might have been concern.
"Listen to me, because I'm only going to say this once. When you go back, things will be different. You'll be younger. The people around you won't know what's coming. You'll have opportunities we never had before."
"And what am I supposed to do with these opportunities?" He Renxiao asked, managing to sit up despite the throbbing in his skull. "Become some hero? Save everyone? Play the righteous protagonist?"
"Gods, no. That's not who we are." Renren Xiao's laugh was sharp. "I'm not asking you to become someone else. I'm asking you to be smarter than I was. Trust less easily. Question more. Don't let your pride make you blind to danger." He paused, and his voice dropped. "And for the love of all that's sacred, don't let Shixiong get close enough to stab you in the back. Metaphorically or literally."
The mention of Shixiong sent a lance of pain through He Renxiao's chest that had nothing to do with his head injury. The betrayal was still fresh, still raw, even if it had happened in what was apparently another life. "I trusted him."
"I know. I did too. That's why I'm telling you—don't make the same mistake." Renren Xiao's expression hardened again. "Trust is earned, not given freely. Especially not to people who smile while sharpening their knives."
He Renxiao wanted to argue, wanted to defend the bond he'd shared with his senior brother, but the words died in his throat. Because Renren Xiao was right. That bond had ended with cold steel and warm blood, with betrayal that cut deeper than any blade.
"I don't know if I can do this," He Renxiao admitted quietly. "I don't know if I can live through it all again, knowing how it ends."
"Then change the ending, you stubborn fool." Renren Xiao's voice was sharp, but there was an undercurrent of something else now. Desperation, perhaps. Or hope. "That's the entire point. You're not living through the same story. You're getting a chance to write a different one."
"And if I fail?"
"Then you fail. But at least you'll fail trying something different instead of walking the same path to the same destruction." Renren Xiao extended his hand, and after a moment's hesitation, He Renxiao took it, letting himself be pulled to his feet. The world spun alarmingly, and he swayed, but Renren Xiao steadied him with a grip that was almost gentle.
"I'm scared," He Renxiao heard himself say, and was surprised to find it was true. Not scared of death—he'd courted that for too long to fear it now. But scared of life, of the possibility of hope, of having something to lose again.
"Good," Renren Xiao said firmly. "Fear will keep you sharp. It's when you stop being scared that you make stupid mistakes." He released He Renxiao and stepped back. "Now, I'm sending you back. When you wake up, you'll be in your younger body, before everything went wrong. You'll remember this conversation, and you'll remember how it all ended. Use that knowledge wisely."
"Wait—" He Renxiao reached out, suddenly desperate for more information, more guidance, more time. "How will I know what to do? What if I make things worse?"
"You'll figure it out. We're nothing if not adaptable." Renren Xiao's form was already beginning to fade, becoming translucent like morning mist. "And Renxiao? Try not to die this time. I'd rather not have to fish you out of another river."
"That's your advice? 'Try not to die'?" Despite everything, He Renxiao felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up. "That's the wisdom you're leaving me with?"
"What did you expect? A manual? A step-by-step guide to not screwing up your second chance at life?" Renren Xiao's voice was growing distant, but there was amusement in it now. "Fine. Here's some wisdom: Be more paranoid. Trust your instincts. And if someone offers you wine that tastes slightly off, don't drink it. That's how they got us last time."/'
"Wait, what? They poisoned—"
But Renren Xiao was already gone, dissolved into the strange twilight like he'd never been there at all. The four spiritual beasts remained for a moment longer—the azure dragons with their ancient, knowing eyes, the tiangou dogs with their watchful intensity.
Then they too began to fade, though He Renxiao could have sworn he felt something brush against his consciousness as they vanished. A blessing, perhaps. Or a warning.
The river behind him began to glow, its waters turning from dark and murky to luminescent, shot through with threads of gold and silver light. He Renxiao turned to face it, his head still throbbing where he'd struck the rock, blood still trickling down his temple.
"This is insane," he muttered to himself. "Absolutely insane."
But even as he said it, he felt something stirring in his chest. Not hope—he wasn't ready to call it that yet. But perhaps... possibility. The faint, fragile sense that maybe, just maybe, things could be different this time.
The water rose up to meet him, no longer threatening to drown him but instead enveloping him like an embrace. He didn't fight it this time. As the luminescent liquid closed over his head, He Renxiao's last conscious thought was a silent promise to his earlier self:
I'll try. I'll try to do better. To be better. To make different choices.
But if Shixiong tries to stab me again, I'm stabbing back first.
The thought was accompanied by a flash of dark humor that felt distinctly like Renren Xiao's influence, and then the water pulled him under, pulling him down and down and down into darkness.
But this time, the darkness didn't feel like drowning.
It felt like waking up.