Remembering You For Eternity

2.18 Lei and Bian

However, if his siblings had the ultimate loneliness by never being able to undergo mortal incarnations, was Tian Lei really the lucky one for experiencing such privilege? Was it truly a privilege, and not a curse?

To undergo deaths, heartbreaks, to be loved and abandoned, to be betrayed, to see the ugliest of mortals' souls.

Although Tian Ming might say she wove the most harrowing of fates for the deities for their mortal incarnations, there were only certain patterns she could paint and dictate throughout their mortal journeys. More often than not, she was only certain of their ends, not the progress of the actual lives. The in-betweens, depended on a lot of factors that was outside her control and involved too many souls of strength and color.

Her duty as the Scribe of Fate, was also tightly linked with Tian Bian's responsibility as the Guardian of the Endless Water. 

If one wayward soul was to escape Tian Bian's intended path of course for it in the Endless Water, it could cause irreparable tears to Tian Ming's tapestry of fate that would ultimately affect billions of other souls linked to that one single string.

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More than his other siblings, Tian Lei had gone through thousands of lives of suffering. He had also gone through thousands of love, but none of them were eternal. After all, he was a deity, and the other mortals he had shared his life with in the past were not. They would forget him once they had exhausted their lifespan.

Lei would always remember, but none of the mortal souls remembered.

Except two. Two souls remembered; not in their minds, but they remembered him somehow, in a place inside their souls - no matter how hidden and indiscernible the memory was. 

One belonged to a mortal female.

They had met a long time ago and the soul had followed him through his reincarnations. He did not know at first, but at one time, that soul – her soul – was so white and bright that it finally attracted him, making him pay more attention to her next incarnations. That one soul – a tiny mortal soul that was thought to be insignificant by any other immortal – sacrificed her lives time and time again to save Lei's mortal incarnations. It did not do much to his inevitable death of course, but she finally accumulated her own strong good karma, and she was always linked to his existence.

Until one day that the soul refused to move on to her next incarnation – despite the common knowledge that mortal souls possessed no leftover will from their initial lives. The bright light that was her soul always stayed by the Endless Water's edge. Although it possessed no corporeal body or physical features, even Tian Lei could see that she was always watching him.

As one who had experienced thousands of lives, Lei knew more than to be attached. There was no such thing. But this soul... he could not help but to notice this stubborn soul.

As the Guardian of the Endless Water, even Tian Bian was unable to set the soul's course to her next incarnation. It baffled and irked The Seer as her stubbornness was a rift to his perfect record of being a guardian of the souls. 

It did not matter what kind of mortal riches and wonderful fate Tian Ming had woven for her, she would not budge. Until finally, Tian Lei and Tian Bian took a gamble: they decided to cultivate this mortal soul in heaven. If she succeeded, the mortal soul could gain a deity's sentience, and possibly cultivate in the heaven to become one of the immortal spirits and obtain her own corporeal body. If she failed, her accumulation of good karma would vanish and she would once again be subjected to cycle of reincarnations. Once her good karma was exhausted and her link to Tian Lei severed, she would not have any strength to avoid her next incarnation.