Chapter 48 – Assimilation

Nuwa continues going through Heza’s memories and trying to find some sort of commonalities. They are both kind, with loving parents. That’s the limit of what they have in common. Nuwa is far too rational, manipulative, and smart to make naive mistakes like Iroh and Heza did with Lu Ten. If Nuwa did not have to be in this situation, she probably would have pitied and disdained Heza for her stupidity.

The tentacle re-enters and E-Nuwa emerges. ‘You’re just as stupid as her when compared to me, idiot! It’s not about finding commonalities between your lives. It’s about understanding her life at a deeper level than just looking to find commonalities. Stop trying to understand through commonalities. Just try putting yourself in her shoes from her perspective of thinking and feeling.

The tentacle exits and Nuwa returns. ‘Ok. Let’s try that then. Heza, when you were a kid and you ran into the woods on your own, that was super dumb. But I guess I can understand from your little kid perspective, you just wanted to have fun.’

‘Heza, when you traded your freedom for the little girl’s, I also think that was super dumb. There’s a limit to kindness that I maintain knowing that if I go past that limit, I’d be putting my safety in danger. In that situation, you could have ignored what happened, but then went to the military base to look for help using your status as leverage to pull up all those gangs.’

‘Instead, you naively believed in some sort of basic kindness within each person’s heart and that became your ultimate regret. Even then, you didn’t hate those gang members for killing you. You hated them for taking you away from Lu Ten and Iroh.’

‘From your perspective, I cannot rationalize any situation where this would make sense. I suppose if I turned off my ability to think before acting, I can understand why that happened. I still cannot understand your feelings though..’

‘Feeling what you feel? Maybe, you have no goals for yourself. You simply want to have as many happy moments as you can with Iroh and Lu Ten before you die. I see.. so the only thing in your heart is love. How simplistic and beautiful..’

The tentacle enters and E-Nuwa emerges again. ‘Good job Nuwa, it only took you 2 months of thought between all your pauses to think and feel to make those baby steps towards a true understanding of Heza. Keep going, you have to do this over and over again in order to assimilate.’

The tentacle exits and Nuwa returns. ‘A true understanding, eh? I need to lie to myself that I am Heza, but it won’t work if I’m still thinking like Nuwa. I need to build an underlying understanding of Heza and then practice thinking and feeling like Heza.’

Slowly, Nuwa’s mind becomes more attuned to the thoughts and feelings of Heza as she analyzes Heza’s life bit by bit. Each round of analysis takes a full month and E-Nuwa gives guidance on what Nuwa does right and wrong in between those analyses.

After 10 rounds of analyses, Nuwa can now communicate directly with Heza’s residual consciousness, because the understanding between them is enough to make up for the gaps.

Heza says, “Nuwa, thank you for persevering for my sake. You are wrong about one thing though. I don’t only care about Iroh and Lu Ten. I also care about Iroh’s future happiness.”

“Currently, he is trying to find substitute sons like Zuko and Kuei that remind him of Lu Ten. He needs to feel a closer connection to a child than that between foster sons or else it will leave a regretful ache until the end of his days. Despite his modern values and free-spiritedness, Iroh was always a traditional man.”

“He grew up with a deep respect for the values of benevolence, tradition, loyalty, and filial piety. Despite knowing that he can treat Zuko as a son, it hurts him deeply to know that he must turn Zuko against his real father, which is against the tenants of filial piety, and betray his loyalty to the state for the sake of benevolence to the commoners.”

“You have not seen these things in my memories because you cannot understand Iroh’s character without loving him like I do.”

Nuwa replies, “I see, if I am to become you, then I would also need to love Iroh.. sigh.”

Putting away any lingering regret, Nuwa steels herself to watch Iroh with the same tender, understanding, and unconditionally loving gaze as Heza did throughout her life. She continues replaying Heza’s memories and getting to know Iroh with her thoughts synchronizing with Heza’s.

Nuwa slowly becomes Heza and her Dao of Deception crawls upward from 70% comprehension to 80% comprehension as she deceives herself to be able to think and feel in a way different than her own identity.

As the long cycles of reviewing Heza’s lifetimes wind on, her comprehension reaches 90% as she deceives herself to believe that she’s in love with Iroh. Finally, Nuwa becomes Heza by deceiving herself that she no longer Nuwa, no longer chasing the goal of becoming a Sex Goddess, and no longer in love with Azula. She fully believes that all those memories were actually lies.

At the moment Nuwa’s comprehension in the Dao of Deception reaches 100%, she breaks through to Soul Tier 2 and fully remembers reality. Nuwa jumps up in panic as the Dao around her surges. She uses her Dao Seeds to vacuum back the chaotic daons floating around her which are beginning to affect the tree. She starts hyperventilating and staggers out of the Tree of Time’s alcove. She feels cold sweat drip off her body. ‘FUCK ME. I almost killed my own identity!’

*Host acquired Innate ability [Acting].*

Nuwa ignores [System] and slowly returns to where she was and drops her pussy on the same wet phallic protrusion of the Tree. E-Nuwa emerges and laughs happily, ‘We’ve finally broken through to Soul Tier 2! You’ve got your secondary Dao Seed of Deception. Nice job me.. but you’re also pathetic for showing fear and regret after the fact. As a Daoist, every breakthrough we make is rife with danger! Weren’t you talking big about not wanting to be a weakling!?’

‘The reason you broke through to Soul Tier 2 is that you got +50% comprehension on your Dao Seed of Sex while reliving Heza’s lifetime over and over again! It upgraded to a Dao Core of Sex. You’ve never experienced sex that only exists for the sake of love, service, and procreation. You’ve always taken your own pleasure from it. Moreover, you’ve never experienced the helpless despair of having non-consensual sex. It’s a blessing in disguise that you learned these things through Heza’s identity.’

‘However, it isn’t quite a perfectly stable breakthrough, since you’ve separated the innocent parts of sex and thrilling parts of sex between Heza and Nuwa respectively. Due to that separation, your comprehensions do not intersect. You’ll have to re-learn Heza’s understanding of the Dao of Sex with your own experiences in your identity of Nuwa.’

‘The primary gain out of this is not your undeserved soul tier or the Dao Core, but that Dao Seed of Deception and your new Innate Ability! They’re not directly relevant to your main Dao, but they’re the most suitable secondary Dao and Innate for your Dao of Sex. You should be able to complete your Main Mission now without a hitch, since you are also Heza.’

‘By the way, I spent 1 year reviewing Heza’s lifetime ten times over and you spent 100 years meditating on the Dao of Deception by assimilating Heza’s identity. Three days have passed in real life. Just pass off your coma as chi exhaustion from all the deprogramming you did. You won’t be able to fool Azula with that so your excuse for her can be that you were looking in the Spirit Realm for ways to get a viable pregnancy for her.’

As Nuwa gets off the wooden tree dildo, she bitches about E-Nuwa, ‘So what if I was scared? I have a lot to live for! I still haven’t had enough fun in my life, goddammit. Hmph! E-Nuwa, you’re no better than [System], perfectly fine with lying to Azula! I’ll just tell her that.. I’ll tell her.. um.. OK fine, I can’t tell her the truth. I can just lie by omission and still be honest.’

‘I’ll tell her exactly what I was doing.. that I was looking for a way to get pregnant, safely, without harming either of us! The thing that I won’t mention is that the baby is Heza and Iroh’s. Wait a second, that’s exactly what E-Nuwa said. Fuck, she’s too smart.’

‘Sigh, anyway. Let’s try out this Dao Seed of Deception.’

Nuwa activates the Deception daons within her and her entire identity changes to a middle-aged, gentle villager with a deep melancholy and regret within her eyes. Since Nuwa is still wearing Heza’s face, there is now no inconsistency between any of the aspects involved in Heza’s soul, such as her consciousness, face, name, and personality. Everything is a perfect match. She swaps back to Nuwa.

The longer that Nuwa spends outside of her true identity and fooling the world around her, the more Deception daons are generated. However, prolonged usage of the Dao of Deception assuredly leads to insanity, because the original identity is almost always forgotten or the soul itself is hijacked by a fake identity which has been created to be stronger than the original identity.

These fake identities produced via Deception lack intrinsic harmony with nature because they are artificial and should be used sparingly for the sake of assisting in the balance of the world, or else they will produce and spread excessive Deception daons which will tilt the world towards sin. However, the Dao of Deception is still a gray area. If a fake identity is smart enough to not sin, then it will not be persecuted by omniversal regulations no matter how much Deception daons it releases.

In the case of Nuwa using the Dao of Deception to fulfill a lifelong regret of a widower and his dead wife, this is the purest and most benevolent usage of the True Dao of Deception.

Ultimately, although Nuwa selfishly gained a lot of power from her Dao Seed of Deception, she committed to putting herself in danger of losing her identity, with the intention of making a huge sacrifice of carrying the baby of her other identity and that identity’s lover. It’s impossible to call Nuwa a selfless person, but she’s someone who does the right thing, no matter how hard it can be.

No one knows why she does it either. Maybe she read one too many stories about shonen protagonists in her first life as a fujoshi. Maybe she has dreams of saving the world despite knowing that plenty of people will hate her methods of doing so. Maybe she’s a hero for fun just like she’s a slut for fun.

Regardless, her journey has somehow coincidentally led her on a specific path.

On the Road of True Dao, seemingly exclusive to monks, saints, buddhas, scholars, messiahs, shonen protagonists, and superheroes, a wild Nuwa appears!

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Names: Nuwa Quest, Heza (Ty Lee Pea, Stella)

Race: Mortal Human

Age: 19 y/o body, 192 y/o mind

Soul Tier: 2, *sealed*

Dao:

[Bisected Dao Core of Sex] - Only half is available for each identity.

Comprehension: 0%

Ripples: 6830 daons

Secondary Dao:

[Dao Seed of Deception]

Comprehension: 0%

Ripples: 5

Innate Abilities:

[Induced Good Impression]

[Acting]

Soulbound Tools:

[Hidden Blade +2]

[Wakandan Extendable Arm Shield]

[Sex Therapist Business Cards]

[Strap-on Dildo]

[Vibe]

[Clit Re-sizer]

[Milk Maid]

[Smartphone]

Records:

Earth-0

Avatar, The Last Airbender

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