Berry felt a strange, inexplicable link with the lights dancing within the crystal—a connection so visceral and intimate that handing the stone back to William felt like severing a piece of her own soul.
She expected the glow to dissipate the moment her skin lost contact with the facets, but to her shock, the lights remained vibrant, swirling with a life of their own.
"Look," William said, his voice dropping to a low, commanding hum. He held the crystal aloft, motioning for her to lean in. Without a second thought, Berry obeyed, her scepticism momentarily drowned out by the hypnotic display.
"Look carefully past the white dots filling the crystal. Can you see the red and golden specks weaving through them?"
She had noticed them, of course. They were impossible to miss against the milky backdrop. She nodded slowly, her breath hitching. "What's so special about them?" she asked, though her voice lacked its usual bite. She expected a vague theory or a porter's superstition.
Instead, William delivered a revelation that would flip her entire world upside down.
"You have a twin spirit," he said.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the rustle of the forest leaves. Berry gasped, her mouth falling open in a state of pure, unadulterated shock.
She stayed that way for several seconds, her mind racing to process a term she had never encountered in any of her clan's ancient scrolls. "Twin spirit?" she finally managed to whisper. "I've... I've never heard of such a thing."
"That's to be expected," William replied calmly. "After all, almost anyone born with a twin spirit faces a deadly encounter the moment they reach the ninety-nine spirit point bottleneck. Just like you are facing now."
"D—Deadly?" Her face turned ashen, the vibrant red of her cheeks draining away instantly. "Did you say deadly?!"
The doubt that had anchored her reality began to dissolve. Looking at William, she no longer saw a lowly porter kid; she felt as though she were standing in the shadow of a grand master, listening to a truth that resonated with the very marrow of her bones.
"It's not fatal yet," William clarified, though his mind was already miles ahead, re-evaluating the "suicide" from his past life.
"At least, not as long as you don't try to force a breakthrough. If you attempt to shatter the bottleneck through raw willpower or external elixirs, the conflict within you will tear your physical body apart."
As he spoke, the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. A spirit master from a grand clan with a twin spirit... her death in my past life was no accident, he realised. The "depression" story was a cover-up for a catastrophic spiritual collapse—or an assassination.
I'll save you, he decided, his resolve hardening like tempered steel. His master had taught him two things above all else: repay wrath with interest, and repay kindness with overwhelming generosity.
He hated owing favours, and Berry had helped him more times than she even knew. This was the moment he would clear his ledger.
"Then... what should I do?" she asked, her voice trembling. A wave of relief washed over her at the news that she wasn't in immediate danger, but it was quickly replaced by a desperate curiosity. "And what does a 'twin spirit' even mean?"
"Most are born with a single spirit to cultivate. In your case, you have two distinct, sovereign spirits occupying the same space," William explained.
"The red and golden dots..." she murmured, leaning over the crystal as any curious child would, her nose nearly touching the stone. "The red must be my Fire Dragon spirit. But what about the gold? What spirit could possibly be strong enough to halt a dragon?"
William nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the golden embers trapped in the lattice. "The red is indeed your clan's legacy. But the golden light belongs to a spirit that is the natural nemesis of any dragon. It is the Phoenix Spirit."
"What?!!" Berry recoiled as if she had been burned. She was a genius, a girl who understood the fundamental laws of elemental harmony. "How is that possible? How could a spirit so hostile to my dragon blood survive inside me?"
She looked down at her own hands, suddenly feeling like a stranger in her own skin. She was a vessel for two warring gods. William could only sigh, recalling his master's favourite proverb: Every disaster is merely a blessing in disguise, provided one has the strength to unwrap it.
"What's important now is the state of your spirits and their relationship with your stagnation," William said, his voice lowering to a sombre, instructional tone. He waited for her to fully process the gravity of his words, ensuring her focus was entirely on him.
"The two spirits inside you are currently locked in a war for dominance over your body. They are like two rival kings fighting over a single throne. If you continue on this path—letting them stay entangled and bleeding each other out—then no matter what manual you study or what elixir you consume, your spirit power will not budge a single inch."
Berry went silent. She stood amidst the ancient trees of the Blessing Forest, the moonlight filtering through the canopy to illuminate the pale shock on her face.
She lacked the decades of battlefield experience and the esoteric knowledge William possessed, but she was, at her core, a genius. With William's simple, visceral explanation, the mystery that had haunted her for eighteen months finally had a name.
The internal resistance she felt during cultivation—the heat that felt like a fever and the pressure that felt like iron bands around her chest—finally made sense.
"What shall I do then?" Her voice trembled, but then her eyes suddenly sparked with a desperate, fiery light. "You said you could fix it, right? You said you knew a way!"
Her voice carried the weight of immense, almost painful expectation. Until this moment, Berry had played her part perfectly.
She had acted tough, unbothered by her failure. She had laughed at the "stagnant genius" labels and joked about her father's panic, treating the slow death of her potential as a grand comedy.
But it was all a mask. No one—especially not a girl born from the lineage of the Fiery Dragon—could truly be indifferent to being a failure. She had resorted to humour because she had run out of hope.
Deep within the recesses of her heart, she had been suffocating. She had reached a point where she believed there was no exit from the dark tunnel of her life, so she had decided to dance in the darkness instead of crying.
But now, at the edge of the forest, a light had appeared. It came from the most unlikely source imaginable—a boy the world viewed as a footstool. She didn't know how he knew these things, but her instincts, honed by the Fire Dragon within her, screamed that he was telling the truth.
She chose to believe. Her wide, shimmering eyes and the raw, sincere tone of her voice conveyed a level of trust that William found both humbling and motivating.
"There is a solution," he said slowly, choosing his words with care. "But you must understand: this is not a quick fix. This path requires a great deal of time, a staggering amount of resources, and a level of effort from you that will push you to your absolute limits."
"I'll do anything," she interrupted, her demeanour shifting completely. The "High Angel" persona was gone, replaced by a focused warrior. "I am willing to do whatever it takes! As for your reward..."
She paused, her breath hitching. She wasn't pausing because she was stingy; on the contrary, the Long Clan's coffers were vast.
She paused because the sheer surge of hope was overwhelming her, making it difficult to speak. She bit her lip, resisting the urge to let the tears she had held back for two years finally fall.
Years ago, she had made a secret pledge: if anyone ever cured her, she would give them everything. Wealth, power, resources—those were trivial. She was prepared to offer her loyalty, her heart, and her life to the person who could give her back her future.
"Don't talk about rewards for now," William said, cutting through her intense thoughts. He wasn't an opportunist, nor was he the kind of man to exploit a girl's desperation for personal gain. "I'm doing this because you've been kind to me. I'm doing this as your friend."