The sun had yet to set for the day, but the young girl had already holed herself in the Sanctum.
The little raven and small fox were eagerly deposited on the clay roof tiles of a nearby building of the Peaceful Road, nestled safely behind the chimney to obscure detection.
Nonetheless, whilst their small figures were practically impossible from the observing range of the people of the Bone Spirit Town, their appetite for anger and frustration were larger than the heavens.
The little raven hopped on its claws in anger, swearing to its immortal soul to thoroughly punish An Fei once it obtained its chance.
Whilst the raven fiercely muttered to itself in an obscure language as though the descent of melodious bells, the small fox was attempting to brainstorm plausible methods of exhorting as much meat from the young girl as possible.
After all, it was still a King of the Wu Ji Forest, even if it were a tiny infant!
Alas…
Caw!
Yip!
The two creatures howled their anguish and indignance towards the blazing orb of the sun, their cries rendered invisible to the pedestrians of the dejected Peaceful Road of the Bone Spirit Town.
–
“When they clashed… they produced that odd phenomenon…”
An Fei scribbled onto a sheet of paper before her with a bamboo brush trailing with violet ink.
The young girl scattered several diagrams onto the formerly pristine sheet of paper, the fingers of her right hand prepared to eviscerate any confusing analysis with a single, lethal sweep.
The young girl lay on her stomach as she wrote, embracing the relaxing and comfortable massage from the crystalline floor of the Sanctum.
Several books surrounded her on all sides, their pages open to random intervals to serve as references when needed.
The <Eternal Sanctum>, the primary methodology of cultivation to be undertaken by An Fei when she finally transcended the limits of a mortal existence.
The notes she had gleaned from reading the <Golden Lotus of Establishment>, with the actual tome laying besides the sheets of paper she had piled into a neat and organized stack.
The <Shadow Dance> that provided her movement-based martial arts technique, one that had saved her puny life numerous, numerous times and allowed her to contest against ridiculous differences in cultivation with ease.
The <Heavenly Secrets> that An Fei had obtained from the Three Lotus Sect… but the young girl had yet to read even the third page.
The <Heavenly Talisman> that she had mistaken for the <Eternal Sanctum>.
The young girl had felt the unexplainable urge to bring the book along, hence it lay with its ripped and tattered pages swaying with a nonexistent wind, further portraying its misshapen appearance compared to the pristine and obedient tomes.
These books fanned out in a semicircle around An Fei’s head, arranged to accommodate the fringes of her vision.
The young girl dipped the brush into the prepared dish containing freshly ground ink, her head tilted in thought.
An Fei had no clue that she was treading into dangerous waters, and the brush tapped onto the sheet of paper to viciously mar it once more.
“I believe… that I saw this when the collision occurred…”
The young girl drew a series of circles, with numerous numbers and characters circumventing outer edge of the circles.
Taking a deep breath, An Fei delved deep into the sea of perception, forcing her irritated mind to regurgitate the memories of the event just a few hours prior.
The scene of Tang Shiqi’s metal pole colliding with Fang Man’s palm replayed in her consciousness for the umpteenth iteration, the hazy recollection attempting to scrounge for any additional articles of information that could be of use.
The orange radiance was emitted once more, and An Fei willed her consciousness to painstakingly slow the replaying of the memory until she could see each movement of the vibrating air.
The young girl ignored the piercing pain assaulting her mind, her perception digging through the memory until the mysterious phenomenon occurred.
“There!”
At the epicenter of the orange radiance that erupted from the contact of two fields of spiritual essence, lay a single circular diagram independent of any specified coordinates.
The diagram fluctuated in the air as though it were not bound by any spatial or temporal coordinates, ephemeral and tangible at the same instance of time.
The aura of converged existence and nihility, An Fei was more than familiar with the sensation of the warm and prickly needles brushing against the tip of her heart as though a deadly and alluring temptation.
Hadn’t she played with the enormous, raw capabilities of the mysterious force that generated this exact aura in her dream?
The fingers of her right hand deftly manipulated the brush as she fervently copied the appearance of the diagram to the most inconspicuous detail behind the causal drawing of a thin circle.
The young girl strained her mind as the sea of perception flowed into overdrive, the memory tinged with a scarlet haze as her consciousness was cruelly ejected after five minutes of excruciating pain.
“Ergh…”
An Fei curled into a ball on the sky-blue crystal surface, her mind throbbing from the searing pain that threatened to wipe her consciousness.
The young girl’s groans and gasps of pain echoed throughout the solemn walls of the Sanctum, reflecting a severe pain that injured the soul.
The golden barrier of light quickly endeavored to repair the invisible wounds inflicted onto the young girl, surely but slowly reducing the pain until mere pulses of heat remained.
An Fei achingly pried her sore eyes open, blearily taking in the sight of the paper before her.
Of the two circles of violet ink that marred the white sheet of paper with vicious, trailing wounds, one of them had been completely covered by a massive array of symbols and supplementary diagrams.
Instead of a complementary sketch, what lay before An Fei was a true talisman in its essence, albeit the central mechanisms to trigger its intended phenomenon were not included as per a stroke of misfortune.
The circle’s circumference served as the external boundary of the whole talisman, with a series of characters circumventing the underside of the barrier.
An Fei frowned at the disorienting arrangement of the words, her mind gradually piecing together the characters to form coherent descriptions.
Combine. Manifest. Eject.
The three words had been disassembled into their fundamental strokes of calligraphy, not permitted to remain as base symbols that constituted the characters that formed the word.
The young girl carefully replicated the order of the strokes that lay underneath the external barrier of the talisman, only to realize that though there existed an order in the arrangement in the strokes, she was unable to grasp the particular rhythm.
When she had assembled the characters in an order that she found best suitable, she discovered the three words of combine, manifest, and eject.
However, An Fei had the nagging, subconscious thought that had she randomized the assembly, the words would become incoherent but possess an intricate, underlying meaning.
…it was just that the three words performed aptly in the description of the event!
The spiritual essence from both Fang Man and Tang Shiqi originated from the same source, the world that constituted the Shattered Star Continent.
The atmospheric spiritual qi was absorbed by the two practitioners in similar but different methodologies as per their cultivation techniques – but the same source permitted the combination of the two streams of spiritual essence without performing a negation.
Then, the adjunct of manifestation came into effect, where the circular diagram was constructed and permitted to remain in both existence and nihility.
The talisman flickered as the supplementary processes completed their tasks, adjusting the manipulation of its projection to erupt into the orange brilliance.
Eject.
The orange light that had erupted from the collision contained a trace of tangible warmth, as though it were declaring its physical manifestation.
Similarly, both Tang Shiqi and Fang Man were hurled backwards from the aftermath – a phenomenon possible only if the diagram was capable of interacting with the physical world.
But the three words of combine, manifest, and eject…
“How did they come into effect?” the young girl tapped the base of her chin with the brush as she fell into thought.
“Something in this diagram should have produced the physical effect that was observed… something…”
An Fei’s gaze drifted along the circle that had been attributed with the supplementary drawings.
The pair of scarlet irises ignored the external boundary of the talisman and the string of strokes that constituted the three words, instead falling onto the mass of symbols and shapes further into the circle.
