Fates Parallel Chapter 286 - Breakdown (Patreon)

Li Meili rubbed between her eyebrows and sighed. She still wasn’t sure how much was safe to reveal. She’d already revealed too much, and while she was prepared to shut Mingyu up if she had to, Pan Jiaying had made things complicated—she was just an innocent bystander.

“I needed help from a doctor, and I happened to find Luo Huang. Your father did his best to help, but it was beyond his expertise so he forwarded me on to you. He’s fine, by the way. I paid him for his services, and we left on good terms.”

Luo Mingyu frowned.

“I see. I’m sorry for overreacting—I didn’t know how else to take you handing me poison crafted by my own father. Which raises the question—why did he give you qi suppression pills, and why did you seek a mortal doctor in the first place?”

“Obviously because the one who needed help is mortal.”

Pan Jiaying stepped forward.

“The sister you mentioned?”

Li Meili glanced back at her and nodded.

“Yeah...”

Luo Mingyu rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“That doesn’t add up. My father’s no fool—he would never have given you qi suppression pills to treat a mortal. The only mortal illness that qi suppression pills could even treat is corruption sickness, but a case advanced enough to warrant them would either have already killed a mortal, or at least left them weak enough that the pills would just finish the job.”

“He did say something like that. Though he called it a congenital blood disease, not ‘corruption sickness,’ whatever that is. The pills were for...someone else.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Worthless old quack. Corruption sickness can be inherited, but it’s exceedingly rare and usually results in the infant being stillborn. Besides which, the child would die from the qi suppression just as surely as the mother.”

Meili bit her lip. Luo Mingyu had inherited more than just a passion for medicine from his father—he was sharp.

“There were extenuating circumstances that led him to believe otherwise. I only meant to use them as proof that I knew your father—it wasn’t some veiled threat.”

“Hmm. My apologies, again. I suppose I’ve spent too long in that horrible snake pit of a sect. Expecting the worst of everyone is what’s kept me—and my parents for that matter—alive this long.”

“Your parents?! They say they’ve never seen or heard from you a single time since you left.”

He nodded.

“Yes, exactly. I can’t be seen to be too close to them—it would be a weakness. My skills already put a target on my back, and I can’t afford to give my enemies that sort of leverage. Tell me, are they still selling that styptic ointment?”

Meili furrowed her brows.

“The gross-smelling stuff for bruises and cuts that stinks up the neighborhood?”

“That’s the stuff. They’ll always have buyers willing to pay top dollar for it, regardless of quality and for as long as they live. He could put a label on a bottle of water and call it an elixir of health and some wealthy merchant would buy his entire stock. I’ve seen to it.”

“That’s...very clever.”

Luo Mingyu continued to surprise Meili. She didn’t know what to think anymore. She was still angry with him for jumping to conclusions and forcing her hand, but he wasn’t at all who she thought he was.

“Thank you. I can see that we got off on the wrong foot, and I’d like to make it up to you. The least I could do is take a look at that patient for you.”

Li Meili grimaced and hugged her elbows.

“I’d really like to say yes—it’s the entire reason I came here—but I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”

He nodded.

“That’s—”

“Excuse me?!”

Luo Mingyu’s response was cut off by Pan Jiaying’s furious shout. She advanced on Li Meili, who had to lean back to avoid being poked in the face.

“You don’t trust us?! You just show up out of nowhere, turn my entire world on its head, then vanish just as quickly, and then it turns out every word you’ve said since we met was a lie! You beat my senior brother-in-craft within an inch of his life! How are we the untrustworthy ones in this scenario?!”

Meili staggered back away from Pan Jiaying.

“I only lied to protect myself! I couldn’t reveal too much while I was in the sect—and I shouldn’t say more now. I do trust you, Pan Jiaying, I just—”

“Then prove it! Who the hell are you, Li Meili?! The truth—swear it in the emperor’s name!”

Li Meili bit her lip, glancing nervously at Luo Mingyu who just watched the exchange impassively. She felt wracked with guilt. She hadn’t meant to hurt Pan Jiaying—but she had unquestionably used the girl.

“I can’t. It’s too dangerous to—”

Pan Jiaying turned away without letting her finish.

“Forget it, then. Senior Brother Luo, with all due respect, I think we’ve given this rogue enough of our time already. We should return to the sect.”

Luo Mingyu raised his eyebrows incredulously.

“I still have things I need to ask before—”

“She should consider herself lucky that we don’t report her assault to Master Qiao—to say nothing of her other aberrations. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do, Senior, but if you aren’t there to tell Master what happened, then it’ll fall to me.”

“Tsk. So the kitten has claws after all. And here I thought you were impossibly naive.”

In response to his comment, Pan Jiaying cast a withering glare over her shoulder at Li Meili.

“I guess I’ve been disillusioned. That’s one more thing I owe you.”

She threw the beast core to the ground at Li Meili’s feet.

“I trust that will suffice to cover it.”

Li Meili stared at the glowing crystal and clutched at her hair. How had she screwed everything up so badly? She felt lost. Yoshika would have found an answer, but she wasn’t Yoshika anymore. She wasn’t Jia or Eui. She didn’t have the answers, she didn’t know what to do, she didn’t even know who she was anymore. In her moment of confusion and self-loathing she blurted out the only thing that came to mind—the one thing she could be certain of.

“I’m not human!”

The two cultivators froze, and turned back towards her slowly. Luo Mingyu seemed interested, but Pan Jiaying’s face was a mask of pure horror.

“What?”

Li Meili gave up. It all made sense. She wasn’t a real person. Just a failed imitation. Her words no longer felt like they were hers—just the results of a thing driving towards its singular purpose.

“I’m not real. I was made as a crude imitation of my creators to serve their interests. Everything you know about me—that I know about myself—is either from them or a fiction created by them. I don’t even have any memories of my own that go further back than yesterday.”

Pan Jiaying furrowed her brows.

“What...what are you saying?”

Meili laughed mirthlessly.

“I’m saying that when you ask me who I am, I don’t know the answer. Am I human? Beastkin, half-spirit, demon, tennin, qi construct, avatar, foreigner, citizen? Am I even a person? I don’t know, alright? I might be all or none of those things, but I just can’t answer it.”

Pan Jiaying stood in stunned silence for a moment, just staring at Li Meili with an unreadable expression. Li Meili wished she could still sense emotions—or maybe just disappear entirely. Luo Mingyu ended up being the one to break the awkward silence.

“This...has gotten rather complicated. I think maybe I should get back to the sect after all and discuss this with Master Qiao Quan.”

Panic seized Li Meili’s heart. She’d already failed as a person, she couldn’t let herself fail to do the one thing she was made for!

“Please don’t! I didn’t mean any harm—I really was just trying to help. Bringing the sect elder into this would be...really bad for me. Not me me, but the real me.”

Pan Jiaying’s face twisted into a worried expression.

“Li Meili, you’re not making any sense. I don’t understand, what are you trying to—”

Luo Mingyu raised a hand to interrupt.

“She’s an ‘avatar.’ The elders warned us that the false gods can use them to infiltrate and spy on our sects. Near as we are to the frontier, we have to be especially vigilant against such incursions, and she admitted herself that she’s a demon just now—I think.”

Li Meili felt her heart break as Pan Jiaying took a fearful step back. She shook her head in denial.

“No! It’s not like that! I—I really shouldn’t have said all that, but you’ve got to believe me when I say that I’m not what you’re thinking. Would a god make a construct as shitty as I am?”

Luo Mingyu crossed his arms and frowned.

“Loathe though I am to admit it, I was entirely helpless in our fight once you stopped holding back. I might not be combat-focused, but I still struggle to find your argument compelling.”

“I’ve met real divine avatars, and either one of them could probably flatten this entire mountain range in an afternoon. I only survived either of those encounters because I was too far beneath their notice to matter. You think one of them would be groveling for help or having an identity crisis?”

He averted his eyes and scratched his cheek awkwardly.

“Fair point, I suppose.”

Pan Jiaying shook her head.

“I don’t get it. I thought you said you were born yesterday—when would you have had time to meet one of the false gods, let alone more than one?”

Li Meili sighed.

“It wasn’t me, it was—look, could you just come with me to the meeting place? At this point there’s no reason for me to hide, and they can explain everything.”

Luo Mingyu pursed his lips.

“How do we know this isn’t some kind of trap? A ploy to lure us farther from the sect and into an ambush?”

“First of all, I have absolutely nothing to gain from doing that. Second, I held back a lot more than you realize during our fight. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. I just want to get this over with so that you can help my sister and I can go back to...I can go back.”

Pan Jiaying crossed her arms and glared at Li Meili skeptically.

“Your sister that you supposedly have even though you’re a day-old fake person with a huge wealth of experience you couldn’t possibly have and capable of fighting a second stage cultivator to a standstill?”

Meili shrugged helplessly.

“Yeah.”

“Fuck it. Let’s go. I’m gonna have nightmares about this day as it is—I’m not gonna be able to live with myself if I don’t get some answers.”

Luo Mingyu nodded.

“I have to admit that I’m rather curious as well. You seem genuine to me, albeit...very strange. If nothing else, I’d very much like to meet the mind behind your creation—assuming what you say is true.”

Li Meili sighed and turned away, struggling to meet Pan Jiaying’s gaze.

“Great. Right this way, then. Thanks for hearing me out and uh...sorry for everything.”

Neither of them responded, following silently behind her as she trudged off towards the place where she could finally put the entire disaster of a day behind her for good.