43 Undesired Presences

With everything having been done, as she was bypassing the bed to go back to her own courtyard, Huan Meirong remembered, 'Right, I might not have a Kinship Blood Stone yet but I will get one latter so as not to make another trip, let's take some of his blood now.' She turned around with her thought and went to the City Lord´s bedside; she took out a jade bottle and made a small puncture in one of his foot toes, letting drops of blood fell slowly into the jade bottle.

"All done, then," she whispered after keeping the jade bottle and make sure that the puncture was closed. Then, she returned to her backyard without any mishap. For the next two days her daily life went back to what she had been doing and the night of that second day when her soul strength had been recovered to the fullest, she entered the marquis-shaped black stone to begin the refinement of the liquids and pills that will make smoother her cultivation.

As her alchemy with only the soul was still so-so, she chose to refine the easiest of the liquids from her list. It was the Body Strengthen Liquid which required of only three herbs to make. However, despite being so, she had to divide the refinement process in two as she needed to take a break to recover her soul force; but this was only possible because the sixth layer of the pagoda could preserve well the first two liquids she had obtained. She only rested for a day and then, she finished her refinement with the quality being better than she had expected.

"Good thing it is of good quality or else I would have felt reluctant to use it," she sighed as she saw the blood red transparent liquid before putting the lid and store it. And with how tired she was, she slept like a baby once again, not waking up till night.

Because she wanted to recover completely her soul force before beginning the refinement of the next liquid in her list, she retook her agenda and she was going to dance.

Everything was going just alright but just an hour before she was over with her dancing that night, she lightly heard five pairs of nimbly steps coming in her direction from afar. To not raise any suspicion, she kept dancing but with her guard upped.

'Who are they? And what could they be up to?' she wondered as she danced without any flaw.

'Huh?' Their steps came to a stop on the trees behind the wall of the City Lord's House; she had heard them clearly, though others might have not heard anything.

Her dancing time ended with her heart being uneasy; those five people had been adamantly watching her every move that she was remembered that before there was also someone who had been watching her but that had suddenly disappeared. Even so, the stare of the first one had been fixated and not much a scrutinizing one. Hence, the last hour left her mentally exhausted as judging by their stares there was no way they were easy people to handle; though they might be overconfident as to think she wasn't able to detect them.

*Creak* She closed the little cottage's door and went to her bed right away to feign being asleep; there was no way for her to do anything aside from that as she still could feel their gazes keenly.

She didn't sleep at all, those gazes didn't move even a bit from where they were along the morning so she got up from them three hours before noon and ate breakfast with Zhi'er; she got a headache too, though.

'What's with them? Don't they have anything better to do? Even the previous person only stayed as I danced,' she thought while eating. Aside from being stressed, she was going mad, how was she supposed to cultivate and even more so, how was she going to enter the space of the little black stone if unknown people were keeping an eye on her?

Even though she didn't feel any soul sense as a way to watch her as she was inside the cottage, she could feel how sharp their eyesight was; it was as though they could see her every move. Hence, that day she was totally idle and didn't do anything aside from eating and taking air in her backyard during the day while in the night she did her usual dance.