Her nightmares flourished in a garden of nightmares.
"How come you're not affected by the blossoms?" Ye Xiwu asked Tantai Jin as he helped her down the tree she was tied onto in the succubus' living nightmare garden.
"Because I don't dream," Tantai Jin replied. He brushed off a purplish petal from Ye Xiwu's robes. "You need to be careful," he remarked, watching the petal fall to the ground. "You have nightmares of your own that might grow into these blossoms."
Ye Xiwu avoided his eyes. "I'm fine," she said, but her avoidance of him told him otherwise. Because before she woke up, Tantai Jin watched her once more weep as she dreamed. A thought momentarily took hold of him as he stared at the purplish nightmare blossoms, that she would fall asleep again just so she could be tormented by her nightmares again. He smiled coldly at the thought.
But when they fell victim to the fumes of the nightmare blossoms growing from his former nurse, Yingxin, and Tantai Jin reluctantly relived his origin, birth, and childhood again, he felt a tinge of relief that Ye Xiwu was beside him, witnessing his misfortunes.
For the first time, he felt that he was not alone.
When he was thrown into his own nightmares, Ye Xiwu was there to save him from himself. "You have to live!" her voice broke through Tantai Jin's nightmare. He was ready to succumb to the will of the dark voice inside his head, but the cold steel of the knife at his neck refused to budge. He opened his eyes and saw Ye Xiwu's face in front of him. Her eyes willed him back into reality, back into the life that he had once been desperate to leave and surrender to that voice in his head.
Or was it?
When he woke, Tantai Jin wondered if it was really Ye Xiwu who saved him. When she walked in with her maidservant Chun Tao, and he saw that hateful face again, all he thought about was using his newly-found power to end her life. But as she cried out in pain from mishandling the nail-cutting scissors, and he was about to act on those murderous thoughts, he saw her heavily bandaged hand – the hand that held back the knife he held to his neck to end his life.
"Ye Xiwu. It was you who took away the dagger in my dream," Tantai Jin said, half-questioningly, half-wonderingly.
Ye Xiwu rolled her eyes. "Of course," she said, in the petulant tone of Third Miss Ye. "Who else did you think it was?"
Tantai Jin moved away from her to hide the conflicting emotions on his face.
She saved me from my nightmares even if she had hers.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Her nightmares followed her even through a life-or-death situation.
Tantai Jin woke up to a whisper full of pain.
"Father…"
Through his good eye, the one not poisoned by his treacherous brother Tantai Minglang, Tantai Jin looked up at Ye Xiwu. She was still asleep, but tears were silently running down her face from her closed eyes. He lifted his blood-soaked hand to tap her shoulder gently.
"Ye Xiwu," he said softly.
Ye Xiwu opened her eyes. "Tantai Jin," she muttered sleepily. "What is it?"
Tantai Jin shook his head. "You were crying in your sleep again."
Ye Xiwu looked at him blankly, then touched her face. Its dampness told her he was telling the truth. She hastily wiped her tears away.
Tantai Jin's eyebrows knit together, perplexed at Ye Xiwu's strange dreams. "What are you dreaming about that makes you weep so?" he asked, half curiously, half exasperatedly.
Ye Xiwu shook her head. "It's nothing," she said. She noticed Tantai Jin's intent gaze on her, and avoided it.
"Ye Xiwu." Tantai Jin's stern voice made her look back at him again. "Why are you always crying in your sleep?"
Ye Xiwu forced a small smile. "It's nothing," she repeated. "It's nothing that has anything to do with you." She added softly, but not so quietly enough that Tantai Jin can't hear it, "Not if I can help it."
Tantai Jin's eyebrows twitched in consternation. He opened his mouth to say something, but Ye Xiwu raised her hand to cover it. "Just stay alive," she said, her eyes sincerely pleading with him. "Don't die." She turned to his bloody hand and unwrapped her blood-soaked ribbon. She turned to her inner gown and ripped the edges to make a makeshift bandage for his cut wrist. She took out some of the medicinal herbs she had crushed, spread them on his wounds, and wrapped the cloth tightly around his wrist.
When Ye Xiwu finished bandaging Tantai Jin's wounds, she finally met his inquisitive eyes which never left her face. "Stay alive," she said simply, and helped him up to his feet.
Stay alive, she said.
Tantai Jin could only watch as Ye Xiwu pulled him behind her to block the Heart Gnawing spell that Tantai Minglang's demon cultivator cast his way. He could only catch her unconscious body as the force of it threw them back forcefully onto the ground.
"Ye Xiwu!" he cried out. Her eyes remained closed.
Stay alive, she said.
Tantai Jin felt the World Overturning Jade in her sleeve pocket. He borrowed its power to fight against the demon cultivator.
If I can stay alive for a while, why should I fear death afterwards?
When the demon cultivator disappeared, Tantai Jin fell onto the ground heavily, exhausted by the fight. Left eye throbbing painfully due to the World Overturning Jade embedded into it, he nevertheless looked over Ye Xiwu's unconscious body and painstakingly approached her.
"Ye Xiwu.." he called out, but she didn't move in response. With his last remaining strength, he took out the Heart Gnawing spell from her. As soon as it was gone from her body, he fell beside her, darkness slowly closing into him.
You stay alive too.
When Tantai Jin woke up, Ye Xiwu was nowhere to be found.