Chapter 17: Night Out

After showering and changing into a simple calf-length gown, Wong Yazhu ate the warm meal her mother had prepared and then tried to sleep. However, every time she closed her eyes, the haunting image of Deng Sai's empty, dead eyes forced them open again. She chuckled bitterly to herself, 'No way I'm traumatized but didn't unlock at least one tomoe—' She pushed the foolish thought out of her mind as she kept tossing and turning on her bed while listening to her mother cleaning around the house.

After an hour, Wong An came to check on her, so she had to hide her open, restless eyes behind her dark hair. Not noticing this, she patted her head. "Sleep well," she said softly before closing the door, leaving Wong Yazhu sighing in the silence of her room.

'How many hours till night?' she wondered. She decided to 'get rid' of Deng Sai's body during the night when most villagers were asleep. She planned to take it to the forest and hide it there, where, if found, it could be assumed she was mauled by an animal—and she also had to make it look like so.

Time seemed to crawl, so she decided to pass the time by cultivating. Laying on her back, she stared at the ceiling and started using the Tang San Cultivation Method. Although it didn't increase her cultivation base anymore, it still slightly improved her physique while also widening and strengthening her meridians, and it seemed to make her soul power better.

Three months ago, she could only hold the Tang San Tough Hands Technique for about one minute before total exhaustion of soul power, but now she could hold it for about nine minutes. This wasn't only because of her better mastery of the Tang San Tough Hands Technique—which allows her to judge how much soul power she needs to keep it active, so the excess soul power wouldn't be wasted—but also because the potency of her soul power increased.

The increased potency meant she would need less soul power to perform techniques, and she could think of it as 'one unit of her soul power is equal to ten units for an average rank ten spirit master.' She wasn't sure if that's how potent her soul power had become, but it was something like that.

She decided to keep cultivating, and as expected, hours quickly passed, and night came, and her father finally came home from helping with the harvest. She could hear them discussing, with Wong An explaining to her husband what had happened. She couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but she didn't care. Both of them came to check on their daughter, noticing her sleeping peacefully, with Wong An coming in to close the window and curtains before returning to the living room, where they stayed for an hour past night before going to their bed.

Wong Yazhu stayed cultivating later into the night, when the two had gone to sleep. Even then, she didn't think it was the right time. Midnight came, and Wong Yazhu opened the windows and curtains before sitting in a lotus position on the bed and quickly completed her nightly short 3-minute Rinne Sharingan Preparation Technique with the midnight Qi.

After that, she decided, "It is time." This wasn't the first time she had snuck out at night, as she had done it multiple times before to check on the God Tree, so she knew what to do.

She got off her bed and went under it. It was getting later in the year, so it was colder, meaning it would take longer for Deng Sai's body to start decomposing, which was a good thing, or else it would have started smelling if it were still summer. She slowly pulled her out from under the bed while forming a plan.

'I have three hours before Father or Mother comes to check on me.' This was a nightly occurrence. 'So I need to get rid of this body in that time, which doesn't seem like a lot of work. The only problem would be sneaking through the village to the west and then into the forest.' She grunted as she slowly pulled Deng Sai from under the bed. 'It wouldn't be any work if my Byakugan could activate!'

She had overexerted her eyes due to running out of soul power to keep the Sharingan active but still forcing it to stay active, which put all her eye power out of commission for a few hours. This had happened once before, when she tried to see how far up into the atmosphere she could see with the Byakugan telescopic vision, so she knew it wasn't permanent.

'But somehow I forgot I had the Sharingan activated, which led to my eyes fucking bleeding.' She thought while putting Deng Sai's body on her back. 'How does one not notice bleeding eyes?'

She looked at Deng Sai's legs dragging on the ground, then sighed. 'I need to fix this.'

She placed her on the ground and then removed her pants, leaving her with only her pants. She then folded Deng Sai's knees backward, with her heels touching her buttocks, then used her pants to tie her legs and thighs in place. She then carried her again, this time with her knees barely touching the ground, nodding.

She carried her to the window, then carefully moved her body through the window, which was much harder than she could describe, lightly placing her on the ground. After that, she climbed out before closing the curtains, then the window, but not locking it—'not that I can lock it from the outside.'

As Wong Yazhu looked around the dark backyard, with moonlight barely shining through the clouds, she sighed. 'Now I have to make it to the forest without being seen,' she breathed. 'Easy enough.' She planned her path, deciding to follow the outskirts like she always did when she snuck out. 'All I need to do is pass a few houses, and voilà!'

Carrying the dead weight of Deng Sai, she walked slowly, keeping her senses heightened. 'It happened so quickly, one second training and the next second she was dead,' she mused. 'What even possessed me to think she would survive that? I mean, no matter how strong she is, she's still human. Hitting her head that many times with that amount of power was bound to cause some damage.'

She snuck into the backyard of her neighbors' house, knowing they were asleep as they usually went to bed early but were the first to wake up for early work. 'And during the slow-time perception granted by the Sharingan, I was able to think of every way to continue my chain combo attack to finish the Siete Deadly Wombo Combo Sin Execution, yet I wasn't able to think of the possibility of her death?' she questioned herself.

The only reason she had even been able to complete the combo was due to the Sharingan's slow-time perception, and if she hadn't had it on, she wouldn't have even been able to get to number three, considering how much movement and calculation went into it.

'But that illusion was clean though,' she thought with a hint of pride. The only reason she was able to pull that off was that she had put the thought of only being able to create two of herself, which made it easier for her to use her Eye of Hypnosis to create two illusions while erasing herself from Deng Sai's sight and sense of smell. She was so focused on the two that she didn't notice the real Wong Yazhu running directly towards her, flipping over her, and landing behind her in a plank position.

'If I didn't have the Wind Walk Stealth Track, she definitely would have heard me,' she considered. 'But that's why I didn't have to waste soul energy to erase myself from her hearing, as she wouldn't have heard me unless she had somehow gained an understanding earlier that the two of them were clones.' She chuckled. "I mean, she should have known that, seeing as they were moving much faster than my peak speed, but I guess she thought my peak speed wasn't actually my top speed because of me telling her, 'one should never let another know the true extent of their power,'" she mumbled, repeating what she said earlier with a slightly deeper voice, mocking herself.

She then paused her thinking and crouched under a window with a candlelight glow shining through. 'Of course, she is still awake.' Inside was the girl who was once Prime Wong Yazhu's best friend before they grew apart after the awakening ceremony.

The girl was the one standing beside Wong Yazhu during the ceremony and awakened the Martial Spirit River Grass with no soul power. Even after that failure, she had still been studying hard, saying she wanted to go to a university in a big city and become a researcher in the Spirit Hall studying spirit beasts.

'I doubt she will make it,' Wong Yazhu thought, not out of malice but stating facts. She wouldn't even be able to go to certain places to study spirit beasts because she was a normal human, and a single breath from a strong spirit beast would turn her into a mist of blood, disintegrating her.

Right then, she reached the west side of the village, smiling internally. "This was easy." But just at that moment, she saw a massive creature she soon recognized as Tang Hao taking a piss in his backyard, the blacksmith's back to her.

As Wong Yazhu tried to quickly back step to where she came from, Tang Hao suddenly turned towards her, their eyes locked. Tang Hao stared at her, then at the body on her back, and then at her again, before he returned to pissing.

"You're not saying anything?" Wong Yazhu said to him, and Tang Hao didn't reply. For the three months Tang San had been in Nuoding Academy, Wong Yazhu had barely spoken to Tang Hao and only went to him when the villagers asked her to. "Yeah, that's what I thought," Wong Yazhu said as she continued walking.

"Just so you know, no one will believe you." She said as Tang Hao finished pissing. "No one will believe the cute little Wong Yazhu killed her teacher; I mean, how could---" Tang Hao ignored her and stepped through his backyard door, slamming the door shut.

'Bitch is acting up despite being a normal human,' Wong Yazhu scoffed. 'Even though he is almost two meters tall, I can fuck him up and put him six feet under. Matter of fact, should I do that?' She pushed the thought away and decided to focus on the task at hand.

She continued walking and finally made her way to the outskirts of the forest without getting caught, 'at least by anyone that can make the villagers believe what I had done.'

She started traversing the man-made path, a path she had walked lots of times now, which wasn't hard, so she started jogging since she didn't need to be silent anymore, though her movement was still almost silent due to the Wind Walk Stealth Track. Even when jogging, she was moving at around 11 m/s, faster than most runners back on earth, crossing one mile in two and a half minutes, and soon reached the oak tree that marked the path she could diverge towards to go up the hill.

She didn't stop and continued following the path for five more miles, reaching the red-painted tree that marked the forest beyond being dangerous. She ignored the tree and passed it, and the canopy above became thicker, blocking off the moonlight more.

After following the path for another mile, the moonlight was only passing through the canopy as rays of light, casting shadows, with the forest being silent except for the sound of insects and the rustling of the leaves in the wind. Though she had long passed the red tree, she would need to go much deeper before having a chance of getting ambushed by a wild animal.

Leaving the path, she walked for about half a mile away from the path, dodging trees and low-hanging branches with practiced ease, and she finally reached the first of the 27 trees the God Tree is now connected to. These 27 trees were massive, all towering over their mate, with the smallest—the one she just entered the range of its canopy—standing at over 30 meters in height despite being an oak tree. Its canopy spreads more than 64 meters in all directions, providing shelter for an area of over 4096 square meters of land with branches that unusually penetrate the ground below then re-emerge, seemingly supporting its massive weight.

The roots of this oak tree grew out of the ground like veins, sneaking out in all directions, blocking sight of the soil below. Once she entered this area, for miles to come, all she could see was total and utter darkness due to the canopies of all the trees the God Tree controls having thick canopies that allow zero moonlight through to maximize their sunlight gain.

'With the size of all the trees the God Tree controls, it probably has over thirty acres of land under its control.' She chuckled. It was so silent here, even more so than the rest of the forest, as if no animals lived there. 'Well, no animal does.' It was as if they could feel the presence of the diabolical creature known as the God Tree. 'Whatever.'

Wong Yazhu tossed the dead body of Deng Sai into the shadows, then turned around to return. 'The God Tree wouldn't be stupid, and it will definitely absorb her, so that takes care of that. I just have to sneak here in the morning and hide her clothes.'

As she walked, she looked back at the shadow. 'How much longer for you to bear your first fruit?'