Peering into Multiple Mysteries

Lien Hua strangely woke up much earlier than usual that morning. Looking up at the sky and seeing that not even one ray of sunlight had shown itself yet, she was a little weirded out, it was the first time she had ever woken up so early in this world. Getting up from the grass she was sitting on and detaching her back from the tree that had supported her all night with a little caress on its bark, she looked around the garden in curiosity.

Everything was still lit up, only now Lien Hua was used to all this brightness so it didn't bother her anymore. Lien Hua took her hand off the bark and felt the same sensation she had felt yesterday, the sadness, only now it was a little louder than before.

Lien Hua, intrigued by this lament, put her two hands back on the tree's bark that was brighter than yesterday and immediately entered the tree's subconsciousness and was still surprised. 'But this is absurd... In not even one night has it grown so much? If yesterday it was a small phalange of a pinky, now it is half of a little finger, an absurd growth.'

Looking around through the subconscious of the tree, Lien Hua noticed in the centre of it a small ball of spiritual energy. Strangely if it could have been considered ellipse-shaped before, now it was more of a spherical shape.

'Now I know what it looks like in some light novels I've read when objects or plants manage to create a spiritual core inside them. But I've never heard of it happening so fast. Could it be my connection with the spiritual force that has accelerated the process?'

Lien Hua looked around inside the tree's body some more and noticed how it was beginning to develop primal emotions. In fact, as soon as she got too close to the neo-spiritual core, she could feel happiness, while if she moved too far away, she could feel sadness.

'Wow! But it's developing at extreme speeds. In some novels it even took thousands of years just to develop simple emotions like the ones this one's showing now!'

Lien Hua was a little amused by this and experimented with it some more, but feeling the warm rays of the rising sun outside her body, she had to get out of the tree, and as she looked at the first rays of dawn, a small smile appeared on her face.

Lien Hua thought, 'It's like becoming a mum again, although it may seem strange. But I'm happy about it, that's the important thing, and I'll keep it under control.' As Lien Hua walked, she could see that she didn't even have a bit of fatigue even though she had woken up earlier.

Curious by this phenomenon, Lien Hua looked inside her body and was quite surprised. It was as if a couple of crystals had been deposited inside her. Lien Hua, was perplexed by this mystery. Some, if not all of her muscles, now had a tiny part of them that were starting to crystallize, just a few tiny strands but it was noticeable by how bright they were.

Shocked by this whole phenomenon, she cautiously moved her perception closer to these muscles, noticing how the filament of crystallised muscle was nonetheless flexible. It was simply a crystalline colour where all kinds of colours could be seen inside.

'Fascinating, but at the same time worrying. What will it be? Should I talk to the Sect Elder about this? I don't know... What if they take me as a lab rat? Hmm, but from what I'm seeing, they're already evaluating me quite a lot as it is. I'll try and mention it to him this afternoon.'

As she descended further and further into her body and noticed more and more strands of muscle with this 'problem' of crystallization, Lien Hua didn't pay much attention to it anymore, denoting it as a transformation, but noted to report it to the Sect Elder. Lien Hua, after she arrived in front of her Dantian which had now become the size of a peanut, was surprised at how much it had grown. ''And to think that it was the size of a particle of dust before; you could hardly notice it except that it looked like a black hole inside this brightly lit body."

Lien Hua looked towards her Dantian and chanted in her mind 'enter' and not even a second later, as if she had been teleported, Lien Hua found herself back inside the completely dark room in her Dantian's dimension.

Lien Hua, without getting too distracted by this, looked directly towards the centre of the hall. Lien Hua approached towards the black cloud with lightning in it and could see that the lightning was wilder and had increased in size, even if it was millimetric. On top of that, Lien Hua looked more carefully at the pitch-black cloud and noticed that it was no longer shaped like a perfect cube, but was starting to smooth out on all sides and already on the top side bumps could be seen.

Lien Hua, looking at how much her martial spirit was improving, was proud. 'Ah... Even though it's growing so fast, it's still too slow. I don't hold anything against it though; everything has to have its time, and I definitely won't speed things up to the point of destruction.'

Lien Hua didn't want to create any initial problems for her body or martial spirit to become strong right away. She didn't know, or simply wasn't sure if this might create future problems for her when she perhaps established himself as an expert.

So, Lien Hua took one last look at her beloved martial spirit with a smile of affection and stepped out of this dimension.

Lien Hua, however, did not notice, that right after she had come out of this dimension, from the pitch-black cloud that she believed was still inanimate in the centre of it two eyes opened. They were completely formed by lightning bolts running through them and they were looking at where Lien Hua had stood before.

This being, after only a few seconds of looking intelligently at where Lien Hua had been before, closed its eyes and all became silent again; only the continuous rumbling of lightning that streaked through the cloud could be heard.

In the meantime, Lien Hua, who had come out of her Dantian and hadn't sensed anything strange, opened her eyes again and noticed that she was still in her garden. She sniffed the air a little and relaxed as she smelled all this nature around her.

'*Sigh*... If only in my old world could have had air quality of this magnitude that world would have already been much better off.' With a sigh of happiness, Lien Hua continued to move towards her home, and as she did, she looked at it in more detail, noticing something strange.

Lien Hua squinted a bit and could notice things she couldn't before, like tiny teeth in the wood or even some dust particles lying around. The whole thing was quite shocking for her. She thought she had cleaned her house completely already... Besides these trifles, she could also notice small insects in the grass near the steps leading into the house.

''Absurd… My sense of sight has improved so much already. Even if I'm not used to it yet, it will surely take a short time to get used to it again, however, it's shocking.'' Lien Hua with a toothy smile entered her house overjoyed.

Looking through her house, she could see things more clearly here too, from the grains of the wood on the table to the little particle of dust flying in the air. Approaching her bed, Lien Hua curiously picked up the locket that Lin Yue had given her.

Bringing the locket closer and closer to her eyes could finally notice some things she hadn't noticed before. Shocked, Lien Hua looked at the face of the locket even more carefully. 'Wait a minute… Are these by any chance engravings? Oh God, they're so small that even with the improvement in my eyesight I could barely notice them! How on earth did a person engrave such tiny characters on top of this locket?''

Lien Hua thought about it for a while and realised that she was pretty sure they were there for some important reason. 'Surely a person doesn't write such small symbols on top of a locket at random. These would definitely have a use.'

Lien Hua, however, lost her interest when even after a few minutes of trying to figure out what was written on them, she could not decipher them because they were too small, no more than a particle of dust and she could not distinguish them. So, sadly at that time, she could not understand what was written on it.

Defeated, but not completely, Lien Hua placed the locket on the bedside table and turned towards her bed. She had already prepared her clothes for the upcoming day. The clothes she had by now were all the same, namely those of the sect. When Lien Hua had just been awakened, the sect, as magnanimous as it was, had given her a set of seven garments which she could change into every day without running out of clothes.

Lien Hua didn't mind. In the end they were comfortable, they looked good, and above all, they were of high quality and looked great. Lien Hua then changed out of her dirt-stained clothes from her meditation last night and put on her clean, lavender-scented freshly washed ones.

Getting up from the bed, Lien Hua fixed some of the creases in her uniform that had formed once she put it on, stood in front of her mirror given to her by Old Li, took a small brush also given to her by Li Wei, and began to comb her hair, making it straight.

So Lien Hua, having settled in for the day that was to come, adjusted the small ornament adorning her head a little more, and with a sigh of relief at seeing that everything was perfectly in place, walked over to the door, opened it, and stepped outside.