Reborn To Live Without You (and other stories)

The Immortal Who Wanted To Die

She got off of his body, her skin glistening and her aura rich, while he simply lay there unmoving and unmoved.  This was not an unusual occurrence; she would stop by his room once or twice a week to stir his physical body and use it for her own purposes.  Dual cultivation was what she called it, but he knew in reality that he was nothing but a furnace for her, a cauldron of elixir to be exploited.  Sure, his own cultivation had improved thanks to these nightly visits, it was just that he really did not want it to.

To cultivate was to seek immortality, an ever lasting life and what he longed for was death.

Done with her business, she left him to several low levelled disciples, who leered over his naked body, while roughly wiping it down.  Again, he remained still, for he could do nothing else, controlled as he was.  Their thoughts were crude as were their mouths.

"To think the Lady would lower herself to lie with this bastard."

"So true.  I heard that he was a dog picked up from a lower realm.  Not only that, it was a rural place and his clothing was just rags!"

"How disgusting!"

"But you know, he is a top rated furnace and is indispensable to the Sect.  No matter his low birth."

A little exaggerated, but not untrue.  He was born in the countryside of a land far different than the one he was trapped within now.  His parents had named him Xing Xia. Being of a lower realm, there was very little spiritual energy there, thus society had developed in other ways.  They did not rely on inner Qi, but technology, did not use swords but guns.  And life wasn't grass; the weak cut down with death's scythe simply because the strong viewed them as unneeded.  Of course that didn't mean that life was fair in his home realm.

When he was only ten years old, his identical twin brother, Xing Jia was involved in an accident, hit by a car on his way home from a friend's house.  Himself had been stuck indoors ill at the time or perhaps both of them would have shared the same fate.  His brother was taken to hospital and his parents wept as they were eventually forced to make a choice; hold on to slim hope and fall into even larger amounts of debt due to the hospital costs of keeping him alive or let their son go.

He was angry, he didn't like what the doctors were saying!  Xing Jia was still alive, why was it that they were saying that he would never wake up?  He fought with his parents, told them if they didn't want his brother, then they couldn't have wanted him either!  He would find the money to keep his twin alive by himself!  And with that, he had foolishly run away from home.

There had long been a rumour, that there was treasure in the mountains near his home, the results of ill gotten gains from bandits centuries ago. Of course, the adults dismissed these as fairytales, what fool treasure seeker hadn't combed those mountains until not a rock was unturned?  But children always kept these tales alive, holding onto the hope.

And so he had hoped.  He would be the one to find the treasure and use it to pay for his brother's medical needs!  By some miracle, he'd even found it, but it was not what he had expected nor would it save his brother's life.

After the low disciples left, Xing Xia remained on the bed, a thin blanket covering his dignity, despite his pride having been shattered over a century ago.  He fell asleep within his unresponsive shell now that things were quiet.  His peace would be broken soon enough.

As expected, the woman came back for him at dawn.

If he'd met her more than one hundred years ago, he would have stated that she was beautiful.  Her long hair was silky and a hue so dark that merely calling it black seemed inadequate.  It was like still water on a moonless night absorbing the darkness around it until not even sunlight could penetrate its depths.  Her eyes were much the same, but framed with a ring of dark crimson when one looked close enough.  Her skin was pale like milk and smoother than satin, richer than silk.  Her oval face was flawless with bow pink shaped lips and a delicate nose with her eyes shaped like peach blossoms.  She was not full of figure, but her frame was not lacking and would catch many an eye no matter the realm.