Chapter Ten; 

               Story of the Unicorn

For those people who have stuck by this fanfic even though I never update. 

Before the healer used the name ‘Lay’ or ‘Zhang Yixing’, he was Zhang Jia Shuai. He was only a little boy in a small village in the North of China. There he lived happily with his father and younger sister Zhang Li An.

The Zhang family had passed the art of healing from generations to generations. When his father decided to teach him how to heal, he warned him not to try to revive the dead. The innocent boy nodded obediently, and those words were engraved into his heart.

Years later, the boy became better and better at healing. He then became his father’s assistant. All the villagers praised him for being such a talented and caring child.

One day, he was asked to go up the mountains to pick a particular plant that could be used as a medicine. The journey took him three days. He was ecstatic once his completed his mission. His legs ran across the bridge that led to his village, just to find it completely empty.

His heart plunged. His brain almost shut down without his permission. He sprinted to his home to see his beloved sister lying on the ground with blood smeared over her petite frame. His mouth opened wide, ready to scream. Nothing came out.

He ran around the village, just to find bodies lying around. They were all dead. As a healer, he couldn’t even save one of them. He rushed to the lakes, and there, he saw his father. He pulled his father’s body back onto the land. His heart begged for some sort of movement from him.

Nothing happened.

Agony ran through his veins. A rush of fear stimulated in his stomach. The wind picked up as he cried, carrying his emotions to the skies.

Nights passed slowly. Despair was gnawing on his skin. He hated living alone.

He refused.

So he spent his time researching ways to bring the dead back to life. He won’t be greedy, he told himself. He’ll only bring his sister back to life, and then he would be satisfied.

After reading countless books, he found out that unicorn blood was needed to create the elixir. He searched for a unicorn for three years, and he finally found one in the Demon Dimension.

The boy had never seen something so magnificent. The creature was more beautiful than he imagined.

He told the unicorn his story, and the creature laughed.

“If you are sure with your decision, then use your knife to take my horn, and then use my horn to stab my heart. Only that way can you get my blood.”

The boy was stunned. He didn’t expect the unicorn to be willing to give its life away.

“Living can get awfully tiring. You’ll understand that very soon.”

He did as he was told. Once the horn pierced through the creature’s heart, its body dissolved into silver dust and danced towards the sky. The stood there in awe, thanking the unicorn as it went.

“I lived to discontinue this tragedy from continuing, but if you are willing to take such consequences to save your sister, then I shall give you my blood. Thank you, saviour.”

He didn’t understand what the unicorn’s last words quite meant, until he looked at his hands. The skin that touched the unicorn’s blood was burning until his bones could be seen. He hurriedly poured the blood into a jar and rushed back home.

Two days after, he finally completed his elixir to bring Li An back to life. He poured the mixture over her body and chanted the spell. Excitement filled his eyes as her body levitated he just with purple light emitted from her flesh. The ceremony was completed before nightfall.

The moment the light faded away, his sister was given light blue hair with a white dress. It didn’t bother him - he just wanted her to live again.

His chaotic heart finally rested once she opened her eyes.

“Li An!”

“B-brother?”

He beamed brightly at her. “You’re alive! You’re alive!” He embraced her with all his might. To his surprise, she pushed him away gently.

“W-what did you do?”

His happiness died down when he noticed her serious expression. He was shocked to sense a hint of exasperation lingering in her voice.

“I saved you.”

“You pulled me back here from the Spirit’s Dimension. How?!” Her eyes dropped on the unicorn horn on his desk. “You killed a unicorn?!” She rolled his sleeves up to reveal his disintegrating skin. “Father told us never to look into bringing the dead back to life!”

“It doesn’t matter! What matters is you’re alive!”

She shook her head. Her shoulder’s drooped as her hands held her pounding head. “Do you even know what you’ve done? Those who killed a unicorn will be locked up in the Spirit’s Dimension once they die. Before they die, their body will slowly dissolve into nothing! Is that how you want to live? With parts of your body missing?!”

“I-I…I just wanted to save you. Is that still wrong?”

“I don’t want this kind of life!” she cried. “Did you know that those ‘saved’ by unicorn blood will become a guardian? Guardians cannot die until they lived a thousand years of that dimension. I may still look like your sister now, but gradually you’ll see less of me until I fully turn into a unicorn. You want me to live just to see you die in such a painful way?! You want me to live remembering all this for the next thousand years?!”

Those words took his breath away. His heart plummeted like some sort of rollercoaster. One minute it was high in the skies and back down to the ground within seconds. He felt sick. He wanted to change his mistake.

After spending years to save his sister, he spent the rest of his time trying to find ways to kill her.

He also had to use a lot of his energy to fuse pieces of artificial skin with his own, just so people wouldn’t see how his body was decaying.

Author's Note: For those who still continues to read this, thank you~ Thought I'll post this before I forget this little section >>  I wanna finish this ASAP, because it's dragged too long. But I can't remember the ending, so I'll take a while ^_^'