What Are You?

Bai Ling was ecstatic, but before she could move the voice told her to stay still.

[Do you want to explode your dantian points and become a waste?]

"What do you mean?"

[You have to wait till all the energy around you is absorbed once you start the process. You will hear a bang, and then you can move.]

Bai Ling was puzzled. The other girls took less time to absorbed the chi around them. Why was it taking her so long?

What Bai Ling didn't know was that the other girls took a month before all of them harnessed chi successfully. She was already a freak for taking a single night to do the same thing. After reading her thoughts, the voice scoffed out loud so Bai Ling could hear him.

Bang!

With that sound, Bai Ling sprung up without realizing. "What was that?" She got her answer soon after when the already magical world became clearer. When she came back to life, she could feel the forest breath around her. Now, she knew it was definitely alive. The things she saw before couldn't compare to what she saw now.

The trees had a faint hum that got louder when the wind passed through them. It was like a baritone singer harmonizing without pause. When Bai Ling looked closely, the little leaves floating in the sky were little beings.

Their laughter sounded out loudly, like an accompaniment to the trees.

Bai Ling became mesmerized by the different aura each living thing gave off. She stood frozen as she tried to take in everything around her. All of this excitement too the two away from the fact that her refined chi was not a deep firey red-orange like fire users. It was a swirl of colours and faint outlines of the different energies.

She was so taken in by everything that she didn't realize that her eyes were bleeding. Bai Ling suddenly collapsed after a while. When she fainted, a small spirit came out of her chest. It was a little boy with a fair and beautiful face. His brows were furrowed, and his hands crossed in front of him.

[Why do I have to follow this idiot?]

Although he said that, a tender look was in his eyes as he stared at the girl who had been through too much. He stretched out a hand and passed energy to Bai Ling.

When her eyes fluttered, the little boy went back into the tattoo.

[Are you finally awake? Next time, don't use your keen sight so much as a beginner. Finish reading the books that you requested from the library.] Fool. He wanted to say it but seeing how excited she got when she was looking at the forest spirits, he couldn't say it.

Bai Ling came to her senses when she heard the voice again.

"What are you? I can't keep pretending that having an internal voice is normal. Wait, is it normal in this world?"

"No, it isn't. I told you before; I am the red mark on your chest."

"So you're a phoenix? But why would you be inside of me? That doesn't make sense? How did you get there?" Bai Ling wanted to ask him about what he meant by 'past world' the first time they spoke.

[Yes, I am a phoenix. That is all you need to know. I am not here to harm you since we both need each other.] In Bai Ling, head, it was more like he needed her, but she didn't expose him.

After he spoke, he retreated deep into her subconscious as he watched her.

Seeing that he wasn't' going to speak again, Bai Ling spent the time reading the books she had. By the time she was done, the sun was coming up on a new day.

One thing she noticed when reading was how good her memory was. Good was a tame way to put it. If she thought back to the things she read, it felt like she was still holding the book and reading from it.

She knew she harnessed fire energy from the colour of her chi. However, when she refined it, it didn't condense the way a fire energy user normally does. It condensed into colourless.

She would have asked the voice she heard earlier, but the conversation strayed away from her cultivation. Why did it refine into a swirling sea of colours?

Bai Ling got up and stretched her body, eager to start practising the formations for the Raven Claw Strike. This was only the beginning.