The tale took the rest of the morning. An old story, the kind Hao loved, the kind he longed to hear spoken from his mother’s lips. It had been a long time since he heard her voice. The voice coming from the violet beauty would do; it sang in his ears well enough.

  It told how this valley was formed and split from the world of its origin. A sad story between an Immortal and a Tree Spirit with a Demonic Nature.

  From sung words came memories. Hao watched as the sky split and moonlight shone down on a tree with violet petals and twilight bark. After countless nights, its mind grew sharp and steady. Its spirit—A fleshless form—walked free from the trunk.

  It grew stronger and darker until a fruit formed. Her child hung from her sturdiest branch. A Yang fruit searing and bright born from a tree of midnight.

  Hao heard the story everywhere in the camp now. When noon came, he sat outside the tent, listening to them talk and forget what they were talking about. Over and over, people asked for the story, after hearing it again. And in the tents, close, they discussed who was at fault.

  When he could keep himself steady, Hao let the pass send him pieces of the scene. Many times, he nearly failed to escape.

  I’ve known this story all my life. Hao began to convince himself, but never before had he heard the tale.

  The scenes took him once again; the stench of death brought him in, the smell as rich as the smell of the violet peach petals.

  A man lanced in gold, his hair white, sharp, but soaked in sweat, floated from the sky. His youth had gone, and his days waned. In his youth, which he grasped at, he gained great strength, but it was all for naught; his Spirit Strength was dissipating.

  In his desperation, he stumbled upon the tree. Tall, slender, without a single leaf on its spindly branches. Just a fruit shining yellow like the sun. A fruit became more appealing by the second, glowing against the dark bark purple like the midnight sky.

  It had to be some kind of Yang fruit. That was the only way to describe it. It radiated spirit qi, surpassing that of any treasure the Immortal had found in his many days.

  With the fruit, his Qi would be restored and his life extended. A peach of the deepest red and brightest yellows. But its guardian was the deepest purple—the opposite of the fruit itself.

  The spirit stayed with the wooden shell, watching the man approach. It was born from the air of night. Yin granted her a strong mind and body. She was smart enough to know of humans and beasts of every kind and learned to fear them. But above all, she thought her constitution, for all it cost her, was her greatest gift, she could transform Yin to Yang and do the reverse.

  She didn’t care to use the power for selfish means. Instead, she used her skill to bear her son into this world. All her power and life went to forming a fruit that nurtured a seed.

  Half her life had passed since her last leaf fell and the budding fruit first formed. Yet it was in its earliest stages. Any energy left over was used for its sake. Her Yin deepened her shade until her beauty was undeniable. Her roots burrowed deep as the earth itself; everything the roots touched changed around them. She was not as meek as other trees.

  Hao was stuck in the air, standing off the cliff, watching the whole thing. Often, he escaped the dream to keep himself from getting dragged too far. He cultivated in the noon sun, trying to keep the memories he already grabbed from escaping him.

  It was a strange struggle—like gripping slime-coated eels. The tale writhed between fingers, an unwanted noise like the singing of a love-drunk ship’s captain. They slithered in his hands, in every direction, while the song hammered his ears. It was too much. All of it, the slime, the wiggling, the sounds.

  But Hao kept his composure the best he could. Holding the memories by their writhing tail, letting them thrash towards his core but never reaching it. And never, not once, did he let one go?

  After a breath, he sank into them like he was having another breakfast with Lingli.

  When the Immortal in gold and white reached for the fruit, she appeared, lips and eyes lavender, her skin like dusk.

  Weakened, the Immortal knew he could not fight. In desperation, he bowed his head and pleaded. For the first time in his life, he begged. To make it worse, the beast he asked for help was a monster, a demon. But he felt no shame in his final moments. He offered deal after deal.

  “Please,” he placed his head on the ground beneath her branches. Mouthing the word until his lips cracked.

  She rejected everything he offered. No deal was worth her child. But she could use him, if it was on her terms for her child’s life. For his property and betterment. Even if it cost her the moons that fed her.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Wait until my child is fully formed. You may have the yellow flesh around him only if you place him in the sun. A new sun will be born from his roots, eating the old. A sun far greater than our own.”

  The demon spirit was willing to admit that they both took a share of the sun. Even if it made her sick to offer a deal with a human.

  One year passed, and the fruit did not change; it was the same size and the same color. It gave off the same temptation.

  The Immortal waited; patience was never his strongest attribute. All his life, he took what he wanted, started wars, created waves, and cleaved mountains. Hao saw those old dreams pass while watching the Immortal’s hair turn white.

  He watched the Immortal change; his face became soft before it wrinkled, and he smiled while speaking to the Tree Demon—His only company. But it was not because he was alone he spoke to her, he expressed to her new feelings that blossomed in his dying days.

  It was hard not to fall for the Demon Spirit’s looks. If her words were half as elegant, she could hold every man in her hand that approached her.

  Instead of fulfilling such desire, she took the Immortal’s hand as she too grew fond of him in his fading days.

  However, the Immortal knew and was always told that demons and humans are enemies. Such a relationship was a fact in the oldest of Immortal tales. He did not care.

  The demon knew the same from the moment she touched World Energy. It was a memory in her core before her intellect was formed. She had a harder time rejecting the fact her bloodline told her.

  The tree set him a task, a challenge, a way to send him away, or the speed up the process of the fruit growing. “This place was changed by my influence. There is little left here for me to feed my child. Only the sun remains to give me true, pure Yang. and that is too far away.” And so the riddle was set for him to solve.

  An impossible task, he completed.

  Half the valley was transformed in time to a place that attracted the intensity of the sun while the other half collected the dark of night. With this task done, she accepted his love and expressed her own.

  The two married, and, to prove themselves to each other further, they bound their souls. An eternal bond that was far stronger than any ring, kiss, or ceremony.

  The fruit grew faster and the tree healthy, the man weakening further in his wait. He aged rapidly. It was the tree that came to the man with a solution, and the two coupled.

  A rather strange scene to see and hear for the Hao at sixteen. But confusion didn’t cross his face. The Islands didn’t have modest costumes like the people on land did.

  The Yang energy she could absorb, even some Yin she altered, was pushed into the man, and a silver of his strength was restored. They repeated the process until they were again of equal strength, and the man was handsome and young again.

  The growth of the fruit slowed.

  Hao had to shake himself awake. The number of memories still writhing in his hand—breaking free from the badge was enormous, and that seemed just the start of their story. Yet it was so much. Or perhaps that was all of it, but none of the emotion. None of the magic.

  The noon had gone, and he felt a warm splash on his face. A dribble of liquid stuck on his forehead, and a fair amount dripped over his eye.

  “Blood?” Hao questioned, touching his face. It was clear and thin; it was not blood, just rain.

  Why did I think it was blood? He wondered to himself if it was a guilty conscience or a premonition of what was to come.

  When he closed his eyes again, more splashed on his face. Thick, red, and hot like glowing iron.

  In the dream of memories, on the words spoken, there was a discourse in their contentment. Joy froze their lives, and the fruit stopped growing. If she ignored the man and let him die, would it be fully grown? This was a curiosity that haunted the demon. But when she embraced him, she forgot it. The man, too, let the world grow stronger around him, forgetting himself and his Cultivation. An Immortal who did not channel world energy or ponder the Dao was just a long-lived mortal at the end of his days.

  Another splash of warm blood struck Hao, coating him, and he thought only of the memory. Its warmth vanished, and the world grew cold.

  A harbinger of reality provoked them. A demon of ice and claw. Snouted with a thick neck, a tiger like the one Hao knew and slew. But monstrous, a real king among beast, approaching the level of an Emperor. Cold mist was his fur, and ice his tail.

  “With what I eat here. Feeding from the three of you, I shall transcend. I will walk amongst humans as one of their own and begin an endless feast. I shall become a Deity above sages.”

  The tiger spoke human words. Not hesitate in his stride with madness in his eyes. He didn’t care for who he ate, even when the tree spoke to him.

  Her soft voice rippled through the forest, both orange and blue. “You would take from your mother of mothers. The one who created the forest in which you grew.”

  Its claws rose as it stared at the fruit that hung from her branch. The two fought together against the beast, but the beast was equal in strength and free to move. His body was that of a demonic beast. His mind was addled and greedy. He fought without knowing pain, with no regard for his life.

  When the tiger lost its eyes, it fought with its ears. With no ears and its nose, let him find his target.

  It ripped down branches and tore through bark. And more than one his teeth found the human who stood too tall for his liking.

  But the battle was not his to win or lose. He could only charge. His front legs were severed, so he pushed himself along the ground, his jaw lifting his head to snap closed on those in his way.

  The Demon tree fell to a slumber, as its teeth sunk into exposed roots. The Demon Tiger did not stop it could, pushing forward still to fulfill its hunger, its dream. But the Immortal was there to prove his love once again.

  In her slumber, the Immortal dragged the beast away, taking a bite to his chest, which tore through him like paper. In exchange, he landed the killing blow.

  A desire to sleep fell upon him. He almost wanted to accept it. No longer did he fear and run from death the way he did; it was right before him, and he smiled, he felt fulfilled. And still there was more he could do with his last breaths.