The Princess Dai Tien Lai

Jasmine had barely emerged from her time shift recall when things started to go crazy.

She vaguely remembered seeing her aunt Tien Ha show up, claiming to be the Queen, and then suddenly, all hell broke loose. The old man in the royal robes was only a few yards away from her.

One moment he was fine.

CRACK!!!

The next moment, his head was tumbling to the ground in bloodless gory.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" People screamed and ran everywhere around them.

A voice bellowed not far from where she stood.

"Blake! Don't just stand there. RUN!!!"

Blake? He was here?

Jasmine scanned the area, but couldn't see anything.

Wasn't she able to see ghouls? How was it she couldn't see him? Did her past life recall mess with her mind's eye and now she could no longer see anything?

Before she could figure out what was happening, Aunt Tien Ha grabbed her arm.

"Come!" She commanded.

Jasmine did not have to be told twice. As unsteady on her feet as she was, she ran with her Aunt to the main road that intersected through the Holy City of Champa.

Waiting there was a Jeep and a driver who had seen them running towards him from aways. He turned on his engine and gunned it.

As soon as Jasmine and her aunt reached the Jeep, the driver did not even wait for them to settle and belt themselves. He had already begun moving.

Before the Jeep had managed to move much, the Overlord had tore open the door and slid onto the passenger seat.

"Run! Back to the city." The Overlord called out as he reached for his seatbelt.

The driver, having no further recourse, took off at a bouncy jaunt.

"What is going on?" Jasmine asked, as they sped away from the Holy City of Champa.

Anh Hai turned back to her, his dark eyes perturbed.

"For the Spirit Master to have been beheaded is a thing that only one who has achieved Deity System is able to do."

He gave a worried sigh.

"The only person I know of who has managed to reach that system is Tong Li, the man who sent you back to your past life. Since he didn't kill the Spirit Master, I have no idea who did."

"Tong Li is not the only person who reached Deity System. The one who beheaded Spirit Master is my ancestor, Dai Tien Hoang."

"Great Uncle Tien Hoang???" Jasmine gasped.

Her aunt nodded. "He is here with us. That was his voice you heard that told Blake to run."

"Blake." Anh Hai interjected. "He's the king I finally managed to kill."

Jasmine glared at him.

"In this life, he's just an ordinary person. What is the point in killing him? You can't go backwards, Anh Hai. You can only move forward."

He shook his head.

"We are given the ability to recover our past so we know the reason for being in this life instead of wandering around, lost and not knowing why we are here."

Jasmine gritted her teeth.

"Forge new paths! Make new reasons to live. Explore new experiences and learn new things. Make new friends." She waved a hand for emphasis.

"The worst thing that you can do is get stuck in the past without any way to move forward."

"I would move on if I could, but this is far larger than my single existence." Anh Hai narrowed his eyes. "We need to find that gravesite and restore the powers back to the Champa civilization."

"How? We don't know where to look," Jasmine frowned and scratched her head. Once her life ended in that epoch, she had no idea of what happened next.

"Yes we do." Anh Hai said and turned a steady gaze at Aunt Tien Ha. "There is one other person who was still alive at the time of our deaths."

"Aunt Tien Ha?"

The young nun nodded with some hesitation.

"I followed the funeral procession to the site and hid among the shrubs because I wanted to know where they buried you so I could pay my last respects." Her eyes were tragic. "I cried for you, but what could I do? I was a young frightened girl who was on the run from the authorities myself."

"You were a selfish weak fool," Anh Hai grounded out. "You could have taken her with you instead of running away and saving your own hide, leaving your little sister behind."

He snarled with deep seated resentment.

"To save you, she held the soldiers off for as long as she could until they captured her and delivered her over to the dog who killed me. He promptly killed her too." Anh Hai's eyes were murderous.

"No." Jasmine shook her head. "Blake didn't killed me." She tried to say, but Aunt Tien Ha spoke at that time, cutting her off.

"My debt to Jasmine, I willingly repay, but to me, this is not the way to do it. No good can come of unearthing the past. Let it die, and we move forward."

"But the past needs to be recovered so that there can be some closure for the present," Anh Hai closed his eyes. "Too much has happened that has been left ignored for too long."

Aunt Tien Ha shook her head.

"Do you understand what you are attempting to do? No one can restore the dead. Their souls have been reborn into other bodies, and more than once." She raised her hand in a gentle gesture.

"Let the past be buried in peace and try to do the best you can with this lifetime."

This lifetime involves the events of past lifetimes. I cannot move forward until it has been resolved."

He turned back to Jasmine.

"There are some things buried inside that royal grave which I must recover. The royal scepter and a large cache of royal wealth was buried with the body that was supposed to have been the Queen."

"We now know it was your body that was buried in the tomb."

Aunt Tien Ha sighed.

"You are an immensely wealthy man in this lifetime. What could you possibly benefit from the few remnants of a long-dead monarchy?"

"Again, you fail to understand me." Anh Hai's eyes were tortured. "My people, the Champa, have been persecuted and destroyed to the last individual within the past five-hundred years."

He turned back to face Aunt Tien Ha.

"We were once a proud and noble race, but now, we live in remnant communities scattered across the most inhospitable areas. We are almost extinct after having repeatedly suffered several genocidal assaults from aggressors. We need that history restored to us."

"Your history remains intact. There is no further good in digging up what has been left undisturbed for so long."

"The truth is what sets history and fallacy apart. Don't you think you owe it to Jasmine to under her truth and to validate her existence in that time period? It is not just for me, because although my remains were also buried alongside her, I have no trouble accepting the fact that I was once alive and powerful.

"Jasmine is the one who really needs to know, and you above all, should be the one who restores her legitimacy and courageous act, and not be the coward hiding behind the façade of a fake history."

Aunt Tien Ha sat silent for awhile. The pink aura of the new day framed her silhouette against the violet sky through the window of the Jeep, throwing her countenance into stark relief.

Traces of her noble features were once again apparent in the tilt of her head and the proud firmness of her mouth.

It all came rushing back to Jasmine and reminded her once again how much Jasmine truly loved her sister, the Queen Dai Tien Ha.

There was no denying the sincerity in Anh Hai's voice, but just how much of what he said went to further his own interests, Jasmine could not know.

Perhaps it had more to do with his desire to learn about his past than his desire for Jasmine to learn hers, but in the end, the one was a part of the other and it all amounted to the same thing.

Aunt Tien Ha turned back to Anh Hai.

"I will abide by her decision."

The two of them turned to Jasmine, waiting.