“Converge spiritual essence from two non-parallel directions to perform a collision, to manifest a physical phenomenon.”
Within the Sanctum’s Archive of Time, a young girl dressed in a blue chiffon gown whispered to herself with a solemn countenance.
She sat amidst the middle of an encirclement of books and papers, her long hair brushing against the sky-blue crystal floor as if seeking its encouragement.
Bathed in the golden radiance emitted from the crystalline surface and relishing in the warm sensation that was transmitted throughout her entire body, An Fei took a deep breath, permitting her mind to relax and detach itself from its accumulated stress and tension.
Break into the sea of perception, and trigger the unceasing flow!
The young girl willed the spiritual essence coiled at her heart to arise from its momentary slumber, tinged with a sliver of agitation and urgency.
The unrestricted coil of golden light erupted into a resolute brilliance upon her command, accumulating its mass before diving into various portions of her body.
An Fei observed the golden tendrils of light weave throughout the internals of her body, bypassing the bloodstream to inundate the refreshed meridians.
Under her command, the threads of spiritual essence streamed into the Bingfeng and Tianzong acupuncture points, the familiar sensations of bloodthirst and deception arising within her heart.
The golden light morphed into two miniscule whirlpools of orange and cyan, each carrying the attribute of death affiliated with either savagery or cunning.
Observing the changes within her body, the young girl hesitated for a brief moment, and her mind submerged within the depths of the sea of perception flashed with a thread of information.
Roar!
The Bingfeng acupuncture point shook as a dense stream of cyan light rushed from its epicenter to coarse through her meridians, bypassing the majority of her inner organs and skeletal structure to pool at the base of her left palm.
Similarly, the Tianzong acupuncture point scathed with a boiling wrath not to be undone in intensity, orange light immersed into her right hand.
The young girl held two sources of Yin and Yang attributed spiritual essence within her hands, concentrating them until two circular disks of light were hidden underneath the delicate and fragile skin.
“One, two…” the young girl released heavy breaths in anticipation as she stared at her hands, a sliver of unease rushing throughout her veins.
“Three!”
Pa!
An Fei slapped her palms together before her chest, willing the spiritual essence confined within both palms to rush towards the other without hesitation.
The young girl anxiously released her pent-up breath in slight disappointment, her mind flickering with a tinge of confusion.
Nothing?
Other than the slight sting in her palms that usually occurred when slapping another’s prideful countenance, there wasn’t the expected emission of extraordinary light.
Three breaths of time passed in eternal silence, yet An Fei continued to feel nothing out of the ordinary.
The young girl was about to part her hands and return to the painstaking process of brainstorming when a faint vibration brushed at the base of her palm.
“Ah?” An Fei’s lips parted in surprise, before quickly morphing into a scream of terror.
“W-w-w-wait! Don’t – AH!?”
BANG!
A massive shockwave ripped through the air as the young girl’s palms were forcibly separated from one another, and the invisible wave of particles hurled An Fei through the seventeenth Archive of Time until her back slammed against the wall of sky-blue crystal.
The young girl remained suspended as the barrage of particles continued to assault her body, only permitted to slide down towards the floor after a few breaths of time had passed.
“…ah.”
A broken wheeze escaped An Fei’s lungs as she groaned incessantly for a few brief moments, and the young girl painfully dragged herself to her original position. When she finally reached the encirclement of books, her heart nearly bled from anger.
How come even the loose sheets of paper and the brush were perfectly intact, whilst she had to be tossed towards the wall as though a rotten egg!?
An Fei howled in her heart, her body curling against the warm ground as she sought its calming warmth.
The young girl’s muscles and flesh screamed from their abuse, howling for the administration of justice.
“…hurts, ah.”
The young girl groaned, scrabbling for a fresh sheet of paper when the pain searing through her body had quelled. An Fei grasped the brush with her fingers, applying a fresh coat of violet ink as her mind submerged itself into the sea of perception once more.
Her consciousness flitted towards the memory of just a few minutes ago, and the Sanctum froze into a world of blue ice.
An Fei stared at a young girl seated on the ground of sky-blue crystal, her palms planted firmly against the other as though undulating a spiritual mantra.
The environment was suffused with a monochromatic hue of light blue, the passage of time slowed to the minimum the young girl’s mind could handle.
One breath, two breaths, three breaths…
The pools of orange and cyan light confined within the young girl’s palms remained within their respective habitats, not daring to cross over even when the palms were pressed.
Only when prodded and cajoled by An Fei’s will did they transform into swift streams of light that surged towards the unison of the two palms, forming an independent reservoir detached from her body.
Though An Fei could see the new lake of orange and cyan exist where her palms were pressed tightly against the other, her mind callously informed her that the constructed reservoir was actually independent of spatial coordinates.
Just as the circumstance of the orange diagram between the clash of Tang Shiqi and Fang Man, the reservoir’s appearance was indistinct and translucent, practically invisible to the normal eye.
The reservoir existed in both reality and nihility, the orange and cyan lights sloshing around as they sought to define the boundaries of their new confinement.
Neither dared to intermingle with the other, and the two superfluid existences attempted to break through the reservoir’s barriers and return to the young girl’s palms.
Alas, An Fei’s scarlet irises revealed a deeply unsettled shock as she gazed towards the transparent reservoir, a horrid premonition arising in her heart.
“Don’t tell me…”
A contraction not unlike that of a beating heart rippled through the spatial and temporal boundaries of the Sanctum’s seventeenth Archive of Time, displacing the blistering radiance of golden light contained within the sky-blue crystal.
The reservoir’s undefined boundaries abruptly blazed into existence, diminishing its volume by half.
The two superfluid existences of orange and cyan colored spiritual essence howled with panic and fear as their movements increased in speed and frenzy, ramming against the encroaching walls of the reservoir.
Nonetheless, the cold and unfeeling reservoir heaved for a second time, once again crippling its volume by half and forcing a portion of the two liquids to merge into a unified solution.
In the span of less than a tenth of a second, the reservoir experienced hundreds of contractions, each successfully forcing more and more of the two superfluid existences to compress their volume and assimilate each other into a composite material.
Neither gas, nor liquid, and definitely not of crystalized structure, the grey plasmic substance rippled with a terrifying intensity of pure energy it remained still at the epicenter of the reservoir.
The unknown substance remained placid and unhurried compared to its two components’ frenzy in their desire to escape the unusual confinement.
Almost… as though it were a hard fossil, only the constant emission of energy reminded the young girl of a purified ore of uranium.
Ta!
The reservoir trembled and collapsed once more, its walls heading directly towards the unmoving plasma with unbound vigor.
The instant the constricting walls of the spatial boundary contacted the surface of the grey plasmid substance, the entire world burst into a myriad of colors.
And thus, An Fei saw the mysterious diagram for the second time.
