For a moment, Ji Jue almost wondered whether he was having a nightmare.
A reflection without a self had awakened from a dream; an imprint without a mind had recovered its mind.
It was too bizarre, and far too terrifying.
Enough to make his skin crawl—
But when those eyes, seemingly familiar yet so utterly strange, looked at him, he could be certain this was no hallucination, no figment of a dream.
What was his name?
Faced with Ye Xian's question, he finally answered.
"—Ji Jue."
Then he took a step back and released his grip on Chun Jun.
Ye Xian lowered her eyes to the blade in her chest and nodded slightly, as though in approval. "Not bad."
"..."
Ji Jue could not speak. In the silence, he racked his brains.
This was—a simulated mind.
It was possible. After all, his teacher also possessed Chun Jun, and her attainments with Chengying were equally astounding. As one of the Present World's foremost Masters in Spirit Essence Refinement, she had been capable of recreating another, wholly Spiritual Substance version of herself even at the Rebirth Rank.
If Chun Jun had preserved a copy of her thought processes, it could likewise think and analyze as she did, making sense of the situation.
But no. That wasn't right.
However complete the copies within Chun Jun and Chengying might be, they still lacked souls. They could only rigidly focus on the current situation, never display such mental agility.
These thoughts came from Ye Xian herself, here and now.
Even if she was merely an imprint, a lingering shadow within time, the reflection of her original self was still complete, lacking nothing it ought to possess. And now, that self, originally as stagnant as dead water, had begun flowing again under the momentum of thought.