Secret (Middle)

Yan Chihuo remained silent.

The Flower Clan chief's eyes brimmed with tears. She continued, "Why am I talking about all this? Let me speak of the present instead. After enduring countless hardships, I finally returned to Spirit-Devouring Forest from the lands inhabited by humans, only to discover a grave problem. I was originally one body with two souls. The two souls were one and the same, inseparable—truly a single person. But this time, I had been away from Spirit-Devouring Forest for too long, and the other soul underwent a mutation. She actually no longer wished to merge with me, wanting to monopolize this body for herself."

"Enraged, I fought her fiercely and finally defeated her. But the divide between us had already been set; we could no longer merge. With no other choice, I transferred her soul into Hua Ying's body and used secret arts every day to temper it, intending to erase her independent consciousness. Yet over these years, although that consciousness has greatly weakened, it has never been eliminated. I have also kept her cultivation suppressed at the Origin Core Stage."

"Thus, I am her, and she is me. I know every move she makes, while she believes she has deceived me. I have exhausted every means, yet even now I can only force her to do one or two things for me. That is why she was willing to save you, yet refused to let you refine the formation."

She added, "Actually, my name is Hua Qingshi, while hers is Hua Qingxiu. I am the elder sister, and she is the younger. Originally, there was no distinction between us. But after she developed an independent consciousness, she believed I should not have gone to the human lands. That was why she began calling herself Hua Qingshi and