An Fei pushed the curtains to the side, allowing the soothing rays of sunlight to storm into the darkened bedchamber. The young girl frowned as she gazed outside with a scrutinizing gaze, returning to the dim comforts of the room only when she had approximated the passage of time for the day.
“Sometime in the afternoon… perhaps around five hours – just before the evening?”
Shaking her hands and massaging the muscles of her neck, An Fei couldn’t help but release an exasperated and annoyed sigh.
The young girl pursed her lips as she monitored the door, lapsing into a brief moment of thought in silence.
The room provided by the Yang Clan had been defiled twice in such a short period of time.
Once was due to her menstrual cycle’s ambush onto her body as part of a series of unexpected and unfortunate events. The other was the attempted assassination conducted on her head merely fifteen minutes ago.
“I guess this room’s reputation has truly fallen down the drain in entirety now?”
An Fei chuckled at her horrible joke as she stepped forward, her hands grabbing towards the decapitated body of a man resting on top of her bed.
The young girl tied a strip of clean cloth around her face and neck, taking cautious steps towards the stiffened corpse.
The clothes on the assassin… were made of threaded cotton dyed black with an unknown strain of ink.
Due to the tunic having been stained in its wearer’s own blood, the originally smooth and sleek texture of the cloth had been reduced to a minefield of warm and soggy stains reeking with a metallic odor.
Combined with the fetor of a corpse beginning its entry into the hell’s pit known as bacterial decay, the room became effused with an unbearable stench and humidity.
Nonetheless, An Fei could only grit her teeth and pray for her hands and fingers, and dig through the man’s clothes and pockets whilst avoiding as many flooded swamps as possible.
Soon, after she had fished through the surprisingly numerous pockets on the cotton tunic and trousers, the young girl had discovered a few intriguing artifacts.
Stepping back, An Fei took a deep breath to steady her quivering emotions, and steeled herself to excavate any remaining items of notice from the five other corpses.
No sooner than she had obtained the artifacts from the assassins’ corpses, the young girl directly fled into the Sanctum with her spoils of war.
In her haste and momentary forgetfulness, An Fei had forgotten to dispose of the corpses. Thus, whilst she languished in the Sanctum, the six rotting corpses inundated the room with a warzone of bacterium.
–
“Six eagle emblems, two taijijians, a letter, and a dagger with a snake’s fang engraving. Furthermore, there’s even three vials of liquid, and two small caskets of powder.”
An Fei fanned the contents of her spoils onto the crystalline floor of the Sanctum, before taking a step back to admire her arrangement.
Just as the young girl was about to clap her hands at her handiwork in cleaning the artifacts of their former owner’s stench and essence, the Sanctum’s reaction prompted her to take a step backwards in surprise.
The crystalline floor released a light tinged with a crimson-violet hue, in stark contrast to the golden light that usually suffused the interior of the Sanctum. As An Fei drew closer, she noticed that the sensation of the light on her skin had changed from its previous, warm and gentle brush.
She felt a cold prickling sensation stab into her exposed skin, as though she was being pricked by innumerable needles dipped in an unusual toxin.
“The swords?”
An Fei raised an eyebrow as she extended her hands forwards to wrench away the two taijijians from their original position, discovering that the swords were indeed responsible for the needle-like, prickling sensation. The young girl’s glance toyed over towards the dagger engraved with a snake’s fang, a simple thought rushing through her mind.
Surely, the qama and the butterfly swords were much superior in either quality or grade of enchantment, so why did the foreign weapons emit a much more potent aura?
“Perhaps…”
An Fei pursed her lips as she thought for a solid minute, then sat herself onto the ground before the three weapons salvaged from her fight against the assassins.
The young girl nibbled at her lower lip, bracing herself to withstand the nonlethal but surely uncomfortable sensation racing throughout her body.
Then, in one sweeping motion, she grasped both taijijians in her hands.
“If I recall correctly, all I needed was to do…”
The young girl took in a deep breath of the cool and refreshing air of the Sanctum, clearing her mind and heart of any unnecessary fluctuations. An Fei began to sway her body from side to side as she allowed herself to relax, parting her lips after the time of a cup of tea had passed in tranquil silence.
“[Become mine].”
The torrent of melodious bells accompanied her voice as she uttered the sacred words in the Sanctum. The realm of sky-blue crystal quivered as it received her command, the bastion of golden light responding to her order without question.
Before the young girl’s eyes, thin rivers of golden light surged from all directions towards the two weapons, submerging the elegant taijijians in their entirety until even the gleam on their polished Damascus steel blades could not be discerned.
The golden light branded itself onto the swords’ core, handle, and blade, numerous characters of an unknown language stamped onto the intricate creation of human knowledge and steel.
As An Fei prepared herself to utter another word, a few strands of light diverged from the twin suns of gold in the Archive to swallow up the dagger engraved with a snake’s fang. With another subtle quiver, golden light seeped from the corners of the Sanctum to pour into the dagger’s core components, altering the weapon at its bare fundamentals.
“All I have to do now is wait, huh…?”
Thus, the young girl was left with nothing to do except to watch the three golden suns of light hover in the air, left in complete boredom. An Fei shook her head, her hands reaching for the folded letter placed alongside of the six emblems marked with an eagle with spread wings.
–
When twilight eventually dropped, Shen Ming Yue finally returned to the Yang Clan’s inn with Tang Shiqi following after her step at a respectable pace. The youthful girl pranced on her tiptoes as she raced throughout the streets of Dong Lin City, bulging bags of fabric clutched in her grasp, or slung over her back.
…she had fallen to her desires of shopping for clothes, but for a young girl who had seemingly lost all of her possessions in their trip to Dong Lin City.
“A begonia spring dress, an autumn cloak of mink and Flowing Snow Silk, and accessories that are so… ahem!”
Reminding herself of the youth of the Tang Clan following her steps, Shen Ming Yue halted her fantasies of forcing An Fei into the dresses that she had purchased throughout the day.
Brushing through the main doors of the inn and rushing up the platforms, the youthful girl of the Shen Family stood before the door to her room, heaving for breath from the exertion.
Father and the others wouldn’t return from their drinking trip until at least midnight – she could obtain some quality fun with Xu Lingxue without any needless worry…
With optimistic and slightly lecherous thoughts blazing through her heart and lighting her soul with brilliant ardor, Shen Ming Yue shoved the door open and stomped in. The youthful girl took light-footed steps into the room, before she came to an abrupt halt.
“Blood?”
Shen Ming Yue frowned, her countenance becoming aghast as she gazed around the room.
Five corpses desecrated the room allotted to her and An Fei, their rotting bodies scattered across the floor, a pool of congealed blood soaking the wooden planks.
As she examined the room in further detail, the daughter of the Shen Family noticed several disturbing and ghastly details.
Deep gashes rent the walls and slashed the curtains into shreds, all decorations and ornaments shattered into hundreds of pieces. The spiritual array that gathered and dispersed atmospheric spiritual qi into the room had vanished from her perception, and both beds had been ruined as though gnawed by razor-sharp teeth.
Three shattered taijijians were sprinkled across the bloodthirsty, wooden floor boards; their blades had been broken into equally sized shards of Damascus steel, their hilts embedded into the wall at oblique angles.
…and when her gaze finally landed onto the ruined bed with the decapitated body laying on top, soaking the blankets, sheets, and even the mattress with a generous supply of scarlet fluid and a powerful practitioner’s vitality…
“LITTLE SISTER!”
