An Fei didn’t know when she finally awoke from her trance, her scarlet irises overcome with a faint mist.
Upon feeling the golden light emanating from the crystalline floor and warming her bones, the young girl sighed as her body slumped onto the ground in relief.
She seemed to have experienced a nightmare in her abrupt blackout, of which a dragon with gleaming red scales crawled out of her leg.
The dragon had howled toward the sky in a fit of rage, but ultimately cowered and entered into her body to seek refuge from an unknown source of danger.
The recollection of which the dragon’s claws had latched onto either side of her right thigh to extricate itself from her body, then return…
Urk!
An Fei’s body lurched over into a fetal position as her esophagus howled in disbelief and disgust, her muscles trembling with horror.
The young girl’s throat dry-heaved for a few minutes, until her mind gradually began to return from its period of stressful trauma.
“Don’t think about it, don’t think about it…”
An Fei muttered to herself as she hauled her body into a seated position, her legs crossed against the other as she faced the pattern of weapons placed onto the ground before she had blacked out. The young girl extended her right arm towards the stack of weapons, before coming to a sudden halt.
A scar?
On her right thigh?
“…when was my robe loosened?”
An Fei’s back shivered with an uncomfortable sensation as she attempted to remember the sequences of the events leading to the sudden blank in memory.
The young girl rocked back and forth as her mind flew into an uncontrollable frenzy to sift through her memories, but resulted in a blank regardless of her efforts.
…it was as if someone had tampered with her memories, forcing her to recall nothing of the events that had transpired directly before her collapse.
The last memory was of which she had placed the last weapon, a small throwing knife laced with a neurotoxin, besides a longsword with a sawtooth blade.
After which, An Fei had stretched her arms and summoned the handle-less sword and venomous dagger to compare their appearances and auras.
However… that was at least half an hour before her unusual blackout.
“…just what… happened?” the young girl checked her body to ensure herself of her current situation.
“And how did I get this scar? Why do I remember none of it?”
The scar on An Fei’s thigh was a long, thin line of scarlet that raced from her inner leg to rest at the base of the right side of her shoulders, directly below the collarbone.
The scarlet line conjured a harsh contrast against the smooth and slender skin of her body, prompting the young girl to nearly cry from the shock alone.
The scar’s length… was a far too long to be nonchalantly disregarded as though it were nothing but a misplaced mark of rouge.
Though it could be easily covered up with ordinary clothing, the mysterious origins of the mark on her body were terrifying enough for the young girl to tolerate at the present moment.
An Fei struggled to restrain her mind from concerning itself about the creepy combination of the sequence of events that had transpired since she entered the Sanctum a few hours earlier, forcing herself to grasp onto the hilt of a nearby weapon with her left hand.
As if to seal and disregard the discomforting matter for a later date, the young girl wrenched the robe shut with her free hand, and forced her gaze onto her fingers latched around the cold metallic hilt.
The weapon… was far different than she last remembered.
On the tang, an insignia of a dragon coiled around an ember was engraved onto the metallic surface, with a series of scarlet inscriptions racing along the length of the blade of the longsword. Though the overall structure of the weapon did not differ from its previous appearance in An Fei’s memory, the aura had significantly changed from its prior manifestation.
The swath of cold had been replaced with a murderous edge, as though the blade could sever anything upon the slightest contact.
Furthermore, all of the weapons arranged onto the ground displayed a similar transformation.
A swift glance revealed to An Fei that the scarlet dragon’s insignia had been embossed onto the tang and guards of the weapons, and their aura had metamorphosed into a variant of their original combined with a touch of violent and sinister intent.
“What’s going on?”
At the end of the pattern of scattered weapons, An Fei discovered the handle-less sword and the venomous dagger formed from the two snow lotus petals that she had created utilizing the <Golden Lotus of Establishment>’s concepts.
The young girl quickly brought the two artefacts closer to her eyes, her gaze sweeping through with a scrutinizing gleam.
The scarlet dragon’s insignia… was indeed present on even the weapons that did not originate from the Sanctum, though their aura had not been tampered with at all.
Perplexed and utterly baffled by the unexplained change that had occurred during her period of unconsciousness, An Fei sank into a seated position as her mind began the arduous journey of calming itself from an intense fright.
The young girl closed her eyes and regulated her breathing to be even and controlled as possible, before calling out in her mind.
“Return!”
Whoosh!
The sound of steel slicing through air graced An Fei’s ears, but the magnitude and intensity that was transmitted to her senses far exceeded her expectations, causing her confusion to return after a moment of hesitation.
The young girl abruptly opened her eyes, her brows furrowed and creased at the next instant.
Thirty weapons graced the air to encircle her from all directions, hovering level with her heart.
The hilts were proffered towards her, and the murderous intent that once reeked from their blades had been suppressed to the minimum. To An Fei’s surprise, the handle-less sword and the dagger laced with python venom were amongst the massive fan of weapons, as though they were an integral factor of the arrangement.
The weapons that encircled her on all sides with their fangs bared towards the world, the young girl… couldn’t find anything wrong with the appearance of such a mobile formation.
Be it their physical appearance, aura, or order in their arrangement, An Fei could only reply with a perfect evaluation.
The daggers for swift intervention of an enemy foe, the halberd to break through any extended defenses, and the swords to hack through to pave an unhindered path.
However, why were there thirty weapons hovering around her, and not two?
“What is going on…?”
An Fei found herself unable to coherently speak at the incomprehensible scenes before her. The young girl steadied her rampant emotions as she extended her right hand before her, the right palm facing the sky.
“Withdraw.”
The moment the order was given, the thirty weapons exuded a bath of scarlet light that obscured their presence from detection.
Tentative threads streamed to gather at the center of the young girl’s offered palm, coalescing into a small bead before expanding into a ring.
When the scarlet light dissipated after the span of thirty breaths of time, the various weapons floating around her had vanished from sight.
As An Fei lowered her gaze onto her palm, she discovered that the ring of light had been replaced by thirty evenly-sized lotus petals of snow white, arranged into a small wreath.
The wreath lay at the center of her palm, each petal glimmering with a faint shadow of scarlet radiance.
“I… advanced?”
An Fei muttered with an unusual voice as she continued to stare at the ring of lotus petals, but could not find it within herself to become the slightest bit joyful.
The young girl didn’t know what to think at the staggering display of lotus petals, and could only remain silent in thought.
She knew from experience that the Sanctum’s actions were unpredictable and sometimes violent, but never had she experienced something in which her memory itself was tampered with. The sea of golden light tinkered with her physique and soul each night, but An Fei had not expected it to actually dare seal off her memory of any transpiring event.
Just what had happened whilst she was unconscious?
And why were there thirty lotus petals in a single ring? Unless…
The Sanctum had broken and modified her derivation of the <Golden Lotus of Establishment> to create a mutant monster?
