A little invisible shadow (1)

Though the spear with three prongs had vanished from Bone Spirit Town, the artificially implanted afternoon sky refused to quell.

Hence, the citizens of the continent were forced to usher themselves out of their beds, permitted to enjoy an extra half day of daylight as a reward.

Though this reward, nobody wanted!

Give our pitiful, well-deserved sleep back!

The farmers complained in their hearts, their minds flitting to their sore and nearly torn muscles and the work that awaited them in the fields.

Scholars groaned in their misery to have been deprived of their few hours of sleep, forced to study beyond a limit their minds could endure.

Practitioners rolled in their abodes as they howled towards the sky in objection, demanding for the expected compensation for ruining their precious nighttime.

Save for a glum Lu Jing Yi, the emperors and influential ministers of the continent struck a finger towards the artificial afternoon, the dissatisfied sighs of their concubines and wives prompting angered veins to erupt on their countenances.

Thus, almost everyone that stood in the Shattered Star Continent followed a single routine.

Straighten thy back and ignore the burning pain in the abdominal and pelvic muscles!

Stretch and relax the muscles and ligaments of the right arm, rolling back the sleeve to expose the flesh to the sky.

And with a deep breath that infused thy sincerity into the soul, unleash a powerful uppercut towards the sky with only the middle finger extended, a sorrowful cry to be expelled from thy lungs!

"Damned heavens, give my fu*king sleep back, right now!"

BOOM!

The sky quaked in anger at the unified disrespect, seriously debating to itself whether it was wise to dispatch a heavenly calamity onto every standing human on the continent.

The afternoon, cloudless sky quivered with slivers of lightning as it stamped its feet with anger, before capitulating with an uneasy sigh.

The fault wasn't even on its head, so why were the people complaining to it with such vigor and strength?

Not my fault, go stick your fingers to the real culprit!

The skies roared back towards the hundreds of billions of humans living on the Shattered Star Continent, the soundless howl causing numerous mountain peaks to be blasted from the rest of their bodies.

Horrifying gales struck the corners of the earth, and another portion of the earth's groundwater reserves were stolen as punishment.

As if to pummel the disrespectful mortals in the mortal world, the skies recalled the dissipating natural disasters that had been enhanced by the three-pronged spear's intervention, only to amplify it by a considerable magnitude.

"You roar at me, I roar at you!"

Thus, on this artificial day, numerous sects were toppled from their feet from a slew of earthquakes, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and fires.

Some were even submerged with tsunamis that had traversed hundreds of kilometers inland, simply to vent the sky's anger.

As lucky as it ever was, Bone Spirit Town no longer housed the calamitous object, the spear with three prongs.

Thus, the only mishap that the citizens experienced afterwards was a massive rise in temperature for the day, causing thousands of people to collapse onto the ground with a painful groan.

When the sun finally glanced from behind its horizon to begin its tedious and usually non-rewarding task, it couldn't help but gawk in confusion.

Why was the sky already so bright, when it was so early in the morning?

…and what the hell happened to the earth in a mere few hours?

As if sensing the ball of fire's confusion, the mortal denizens all prepared themselves to enact their prepared routine for a second time.

After a shiver and angry bellow, everyone sighed and returned to their daily lives.

Although, that daily life had to be repeated twice for that day.

–

After cruelly ditching the little raven and the small fox in a safe and secure area, the young girl fled to the Sanctum.

Reaching the haven of sky-blue crystal, An Fei collapsed to the ground to hug her knees, her teeth chattering in fright.

"Ah… ah… ah…."

Nonsensical blabbing escaped her lips as the young girl's consciousness attempted to regain its senses.

Gradually gathering the fragments of her memory, An Fei rolled into a ball as she relied on the warmth of the crystalline ground to calm her trembling soul.

The others may have seen the night transform into day and the natural disasters receive an insane and powerful stimulus, but the young girl had glimpsed into a truth far more sinister and cruel.

Her soul was far less than adequately developed to contend with such a massive flow of information, thus causing her temporary mental instability.

As a result, her memory of the mysterious vision that had struck her had scattered into numerous fragments, many of which were nearly impossible to fuse together.

Nevertheless, the portions An Fei could indeed recover, were sufficient to tear her apart to smithereens.

A secret that surpassed the mortal worlds, surpassed the mortal domains of immortal beings, and surpassed the Realm itself.

A fatal, legendary secret that questioned the Forefather of the Realm, and the Progenitors that stood behind it.

"No more, no more, no more!"

The young girl clutched her head as she wailed, her pained voice causing the fluctuations of the golden light within the Sanctum to quiver in surprise.

The monolithic realm of sky-blue crystal anxiously extended several threads of light to wrap around An Fei's body, the streams of warmth gradually quelling the young girl's turmoil.

After the time of several joss sticks had passed, An Fei could finally stand to her feet, albeit she possessed absolutely no stability.

"I… need to work."

The young girl staggered over to the sea of stacked paper and open books within the seventeenth Archive of Time, her body completely supported and held upright by the strands of golden light emitted by the Sanctum.

An Fei shook the agonizing premonitions from her mind, forcing her consciousness to toss the matter to the back of her head before sitting at the center of the now disorganized mess.

The young girl took a cursory glance at the diagram sketched at the top sheet of paper on a nearby pile, and took a deep breath.

The sea of perception opened its arms as her mind delved deeply into the depths, her soul releasing a pulse that prompted the spiritual essence in her heart to arouse itself.

Pulses of her mind's will and vigil issued command after command to the sea of spiritual essence in her chest cavity, and the mass of energy began its movements.

A small strand with the thickness of a hair's width was extended, before segmented into ten segments – each attributed with the length of a nanometer.

The segments were isolated from another, until the young girl delicately grafted them onto the other pieces.

One segment at a time, she constructed one strand of seven and a half segments and another of two and a half segments, drifting around in an empty region in her chest cavity.

At the essence… this was quite literally the projection of manipulating spiritual essence a single gram at a time, only with a different standardized unit.

"…go!"

An Fei commanded the curated threads of spiritual essence to traverse throughout her body to reside into her Taizong and Bingfeng acupuncture points, for she was the most familiar with them.

The young girl observed as the two streams surged into the pair of whirlpools, her mind still as undisturbed water.

The longer strand had permeated the Taizong acupuncture point; with her physique, she required a greater quantity of Yang attributed spiritual essence to achieve a thorough balance.

Shuu!

The two whirlpools released their respective strands now dyed with their attributes, and the two streams raced down An Fei's arms to reside at the center of her palms.

The young girl hesitated for a brief moment, before parting her hands to deliver a resounding clap.

The next instant, An Fei retreated with spiritual essence infused within her eyes, prepared to observe the formation of the reservoir and the mysterious diagram.

The young girl stilled her breathing, prompting her mind to stimulate the sea of perception to the greatest level she could muster in the span of three breaths.

As she had witnessed before, the interdimensional reservoir formed, contained the spiritual essence, then collapsed around its epicenter.

The reservoir's compression sequence was completely ordinary and usual – even the emission of spiritual essence that signified the formation of the diagram was ordinary and within the young girl's expectations.

However, the diagram formed from this experiment did not possess any color, and was completely invisible.

Other than the periodic fluctuation of spiritual essence that resonated with her heart, An Fei was unable to identity where the diagram was located, or even its appearance.

However, the young girl was indeed privy to the information that the diagram's existence had far surpassed three breaths, but did not appear to dissipate.