Chapter 11: Arc 1: Chapter 10

Her tired legs took her to the most familiar place within the woods east of the village – the spot where she and Song Ming spent their time training together.

When she reached a good place to sit, she nearly fell onto her seating location of choice, and managed to keep hold of the training manual and planar shard by some miracle she couldn’t give a name to. As much as she wanted to jump right into it, she gave herself a brief while to relax and calm down, or else she suspected she would have no success in this regard no matter what dantian she did or didn’t have.

‘I didn’t think that would work, nor that it would be quite so difficult to talk to a beautiful woman like her… Maybe cultivators have that effect on people, who knows,’ she shrugged, glancing onto the shard in her right hand.

It was small, about the size of her thumb, resembling a gemstone or crystal of some kind. The shard was long, with sharp points on either end, tapering towards the ends and quite wide in the middle.

What captured her interest was the manner in which the contents of the shard almost seemed to be out of this world, some kind of portal to a violet, misty realm, making the shard partly opaque no matter how thin or thick the part she looked at was. If this kind of thing existed back on Orbis, it would certainly sell for billions regardless of size or quality.

“… It makes me strangely hungry, though. I don’t think that should happen…”

“Hey, Bianca!” Song Ming burst into the clearing, “Congratulations on obtaining a planar shard! I… I see you haven’t used it yet. Should I leave you alone until you make an attempt?”

“Well… I’d love for you to stick around, but you probably should,” Bianca said regretfully, “I’ll come right over if I succeed, or if I need to ask you for advice on what to do. I’m sure I won’t manage it in one go, anyway.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic. I’m sure you can do it!”

‘That feels familiar, somehow…’ she frowned, but her stressed out mind couldn’t quite recall the source of this feeling, “Perhaps. Now, I’ll get right into it, so feel free to wait a short while away.”

Song Ming nodded and back away, almost vanishing from sight a minute later. Thus, Bianca was left alone, and true to her word, she switched her focus from the planar shard to the small manual in her left hand, a brown book with no more than thirty pages within it.

Since she could read the language of this world through some kind of miracle she had yet to comprehend, she imagined that it shouldn’t be too difficult to read through, especially if the fundamentals were concentrated in the first few pages. Her reading speed wasn’t the best – roughly average for people her age, according to some statistic she’d seen – so even the most convoluted of language and the smallest of fonts should let her finish within an hour or two.

That might seem like a long time, but not after sitting around for two full days. After that, actually doing something for an hour or two felt perfect.

She held the planar shard tightly in her hand, then opened up the manual.

 

All of a sudden, darkness flooded her vision, and a moment later mixed with crimson and violet. This storm overwhelmed her, almost seeming to flood her body and mind, and it was only a moment later that she realised the origin of this darkness – the manual before her.

It poured out from the pages and into her, somewhere into her core, and as it did so, she felt something unlock within her mind, though that was the full extent of it. She couldn’t find that insight, nor could she guess its nature or origin, even if she could guess at the latter, but she only knew that she had it now and lacked it before. A shiver went down her spine, the very thought of something changing her mind scaring her.

Before she could give it much thought, though, the darkness quickly ceases, and her attention shifted to a thing that appeared before her.

A flat panel rimmed with a mixture of black, crimson and purple, resembling the very edges of storm clouds, and looking very similar to the light that poured from the book before this. Nevertheless, her attention was on the thing in the middle of this panel, which seemed a lot more familiar than it really should have been.

Six slots, like one may find in a game or computer application, one in the middle and the other five surrounding it and forming the points of a pentagon. The middle slot filled right before her eyes, fading in to a pair of words.

‘Tyrannical Deity… what the-’

Two more words appeared beneath that, in smaller and fainter letters.

‘Cultivation Technique. W-What the fuck is this? What is any of this? What just happened?’ Bianca clutched the shirt by her chest as she felt her heart beating with such intensity as if it wished to break right out of her body, ‘Appearing in another world is one thing. Learning that magic- no, cultivation, is a thing is another. However, this fucking panel… screen… What is this? What kind of thing appeared in my mind, and… why?’

Involuntarily, she focused upon the concepts that appeared inside her mind, and made the connection a moment later, when she felt something blowing towards her, like a wind that came from all directions.

That wind flooded into her, passing through her skin without issue and filling very particular spots within her, slowly outlining channels that partly mimicked her blood vessels. As more and more gathered, and as it flowed around, she could see a dark energy building up within her, the same shade as the darkness framing the strange panel simply floating in front of her.

Hints of crimson and purple also manifested, occasionally sparking within the darkness, and all of it was focused upon a spot within her abdomen, exactly where the dantian was supposed to be. It was hard not to find a potential answer at that point.

‘The Tyrannical Deity thing is a cultivation technique. I opened a manual describing a different one, but something poured out of it and added something to my mind. When I used it, I managed to cultivate – I think – so that must mean…’ she glanced at the panel before her, ‘I somehow absorbed a cultivation technique from the manual, and now it’s displayed here… That… That answers so few questions, but at the same time…’

She shut her eyes and tried to reach out, to feel with the sense that cultivators supposedly had. At the same time, she focused upon that cluster of unknown ideas within her head, letting it act out.

Then, she felt it. She felt something around her, many individual particles of it, flowing in her direction when she used the technique. It was faint and vague, but she could feel it nonetheless, and when she ventured inward, that sensation became much clearer.

Despite having her eyes shut – and lacking the proper equipment to look inside the human body – she somehow saw her muscles, her bones, her flesh and blood. It was perfectly clear and obvious, and the closer she reached to her abdomen, the easier it became, until she passed some unknown, unseen boundary, and her inner vision seemed to plunge into another world entirely.

There, she saw a structure of white bone, and a black, crimson and purple mist gathering within, building up slowly but surely, filling up an unseen sphere that sat within the structure.

‘This… this must be spiritual perception, and the energy must be planar energy, focusing within… the Energy Condensation realm. Does that mean… holy shit, I’m a cultivator now?’ Bianca opened her eyes, gasping in amazement.

She wasn’t sure what kinds of things she should be able to do in the future, but she did remember the one thing from what Song Ming told her. If she truly absorbed this energy and could now control it, that meant that she should be able to circulate it throughout her body and strengthen herself, whether she focused on her muscles or some internal organs, like the heart or stomach.

While it would be incredibly nice to have a stronger stomach and the like, only two things came to mind. The first would be easiest to test, and that would be physical strength, and the second was far more important to her, so she decided to attempt that first.

‘I think this was one of the first things I had considered when I heard that cultivation could assist me… Seeing as my periods don’t tend to be particularly comfortable, I should also have all the motivation I need to keep circulating my energy there and avoid it… Provided I don’t need to do anything specific to make this work,’ she glanced down at her abdomen, ‘Yeah, I hope I don’t somehow fuck things up… I never had plans to have kids, but just in case I change my mind, I hope this doesn’t do anything bad just because it looks… scary.’

Her energy was clearly not what it should have been, based on the demonstration provided by Liu Min. The Glimpse of Sky should have produced a soft blue light – presumably, given that she had not read the actual manual – but her Tyrannical Deity was blatantly something else. It crackled ominously with strange shades, and made her feel like she was looking at something that should not be.

However, it didn’t hurt her body yet, and otherwise seemed to act as she expected planar energy to act from watching Song Ming’s cultivation. In fact, she was able to absorb energy as well as the young woman, perhaps even better, so aside from appearance, there seemed to be no reason for concern.

‘Alright, so I have to control my energy… somehow… and circulate it down there…’

She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but there was one thing she could rely on, and that was the strange ideas in her head and the floating panel they were associated with. It was hard to be certain that they were necessary one and the same, but since they appeared at the same time, she chose to interpret them as such.

It seemed to help, though it might well have been a placebo. Her energy emerged from her dantian and surged around her abdominal region, and she immediately felt… odd.

‘I… I hope that this is the right way to go about this, or else I may regret this…’ she clenched her hand and tried to ignore the odd sensation down there, instead trying to spread out that energy among more of her body.

Whether it would dilute the effect or expand it to her whole body, she didn’t know, but she would need to experience it one day. Better do it now rather than in front of a group, or perhaps in a fight with Lin Shuming when he inevitably finds some other problem with her. She seemed to meet with a manner of success, as the dark energy within her spread out, not filling her body entirely, but it certainly made her tingle all over in a manner that she couldn’t call horrible, though neither was it great.

Strangely enough, she also couldn’t call it just fine, either, forcing the more roundabout description. It just… was, and it might be something she’d eventually get used to.

It did make her wish to stand and move about, which she did right away, finding that her previous exhaustion had almost vanished. There was still a hint of it behind the renewed vigour, but it felt like it was enough for her to run a short race or perform a longer series of exercise if she so wished.

Hence, she decided to test something basic, something that she could reasonably do even without excessive strength.

‘Push ups! My record with my full stamina is eight, so…’

As a test of raw strength, of pure physical force, it wasn’t the greatest. Since she could lift her own body weight up once, her greatest limit was stamina, but that was where she felt the greatest difference at the moment, so it seemed appropriate enough.

Finding something heavy to lift with and without the circulation of her energy was always possible later, when she had the chance to rest and… celebrate.

‘Alright… One,’ she began her count as soon as she got down on the ground, ignoring the dirt beneath her hands and the tickly stalks of grass that grew from it, ‘Two… three… Not significantly easier, but it does feel like I’m getting exhausted less easily… six, seven… eight… n-nine- fuck!’

She felt her arms give out, and crashed back to the ground the moment she attempted to bring herself up. It was a familiar sensation, except it came just one step later and when she had thought that she would be able to do more. In fact, as she lay in the grass for a few moments, she felt herself recovering far more quickly than usual, though she could also perceive something else – as a strange kind of instinct that came naturally despite being completely new and unfamiliar – draining away at a quick pace.

With some effort, she forced her gaze inwards, back to the dantian and the ball of mist within, and confirmed that as she circulated her energy, it was able to recover her exhaustion but also expended it.

The amount she had accumulated quickly, and she was suddenly concerned that her cultivation would vanish just as quickly as she had obtained it. After all, the mist was her cultivation, at least as she understood it, so it seemed like preserving it was necessary.

Again, her thoughts returned to the strange panel that seemed to reside in front of her whenever she wished to see it, even now that she was lying on the ground with dirt and grass being mere millimetres from her eyes. She could see it perfectly now, and it was unseen as soon as she wished to move her attention elsewhere, seeming to respond directly to her thoughts and wishes, at least in so far as its visibility.

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Focusing on the Tyrannical Deity text, she felt energy surging towards her again, coursing throughout her body and ending up in that mass of mist, and her eyes widened in understanding.

That mist recovered quickly, but it did not accumulate beyond that as quickly. It took her a moment to recall Song Ming’s brief explanations of the matter, and when she focused her spiritual perception on the energy she had absorbed in the first few moments, she saw that some of it was still passing throughout her meridians in a strange manner while the rest was already inside her dantian.

‘Right, so this can be recovered more quickly, but it takes longer to actively cultivate, to advance my stage and realm… I see,’ Bianca felt some satisfaction from finally understanding a thing that had previously eluded her, raising herself back up and returning to her original seating position.

Given the length of time it took Song Ming to advance in her cultivation, she had no reason to believe that she’d make any significant progress within a day, so she didn’t even consider spending that much time on it. Instead, she activated the technique again and waited until her stamina had once again recovered, the discomfort in her muscles fading away with her general exhaustion, then ended it and stood up.

‘Ah, my planar shard… I’m almost impressed by how quickly I forgot about… it?’ she glanced at the hand that had gripped the shard and found it empty, besides some violet dust.

It was also on the ground, where she had been doing push ups, but this time the conclusion came to her quicker than before. Since she had used a cultivation technique and managed to accumulate what seemed like a decent amount of energy within her planar aperture, some of it must have come from the shard. Most likely, it was responsible for most of it, since her current speed was much lower.

She wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but she did feel rather proud of herself for figuring out that one.

‘Not sure if there’s some proper way to dispose of this stuff, so…’ she just blew away the violet dust on her hand and pretended as if she hadn’t seen it, ‘Now, I want to have some private time, so it would be best not to show myself in the village, and to the sect disciples.’

Whatever reaction people might have to her particular form of energy, she wanted no part of it before she had the opportunity to celebrate with the woman that had supported her most within this world.

 

Song Ming couldn’t help but pace back and forth, occasionally glancing in the direction of their shared training ground. From the manner in which Bianca requested the planar shard, it was obvious that she had a significant interest in cultivation, and so she feared what might occur if she found herself incapable of it.

Of course, Song Ming would not wish such a thing on anyone, but it wasn’t uncommon. Even in the golden age of the Planar Continents, some nine hundred thousand years ago, most of the population lacked a functional dantian with which to cultivate, the reasons for which were still unknown.

Had she known about Bianca’s background, she might have been able to make a guess regarding her abilities, but to this day, Bianca seemed to remember nothing of her past, or at least shared none of it with Song Ming. Hence, it was very possible that she was the child of two people with no ability to cultivate, and managed to inherit their lack of aptitude and dantian, or that she was the result of some secret affair between two sect masters from the world’s strongest sects, and inherited their incredible talents.

‘I hope she is at least able to cultivate…’ she considered praying to the heavens, but she recalled her father’s advice and thought about it a little longer first.

However, she never got the opportunity, as the figure she had been waiting for appeared in her vision, travelling in her vague direction at first. Bianca paused for a moment and it felt as if their eyes met, for she then changed course and headed straight for Song Ming, her gait getting more excited with every step she took.

That was a good sign, though it proved almost nothing on its own.

“I did it! I managed to reach the first stage, or whatever it is!” Bianca exclaimed as she got close, keeping her voice quiet.

That did prove a lot more, putting a smile on Song Ming’s face as well.

“That’s great! You seem to have managed it quite quickly, too, so that’s great! You might be able to catch up to me in a few years!” she said, “Would you mind if I checked your dantian with my spiritual perception? I’m curious to see if I can offer you any assistance, or confirm something, or… I’m just really curious!”

“Um, about that…” Bianca hesitated for a while, her gaze darting about before she sighed and focused her attention on Song Ming, “I’m not sure what happened, exactly, but I think there’s something odd about my cultivation. It seems to work, though.”

‘Concerning, but… okay,’ Song Ming frowned and released a strand of her spiritual perception, keeping it near her hand as she brought it close to Bianca’s belly, blushing a little as she glanced up into her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but as she did not object, Song Ming continued and willed the strand into Bianca’s body, leading it straight to the dantian.

There, she felt a chill travel across her whole body, and a moment later her spiritual perception took in the sight, if one was to call it that. A strange dark mist, crackling with crimson and violet flame that surged up from within, but more importantly it had this aura of… wrongness.

She could find no better word for it. It certainly wasn’t what the Glimpse of Sky – or the Calm Skies Mantra, for that matter – should have been able to produce, and there was no technique she had ever heard of that could, at least not from the major sects. From Xi Wu Lin’s many lectures, she had heard of some techniques that would have similarly negative descriptions, and there was one label that she heard attached to them.

‘Demonic… No, I can’t say that. Clearly, she has no idea what happened, so it’s not like she slaughtered a village full of innocents to cultivate, or something of the sort… I know for a fact she had just sat there and cultivated like I had so many times before, and like I did the day I began my own cultivation…’ Song Ming restrained the word from coming out of her mouth and withdrew her spiritual perception.

Only then did the unpleasant feeling dissipate, but she noticed that her back had become covered in cold sweat.

More importantly, Bianca had clearly spotted something about her reaction, as her expression filled with concern, which she presumably intended to hide but managed it as poorly as Song Ming hid her own thoughts and feelings.

“It’s something weird, isn’t it?”

“W-Well…”

“Please be honest with me. I can trust you more than anyone in the village, and I need to know if this… whatever this is, may cause issues for me.”

“I’m not entirely sure, but it’s clearly not what it should be. If I knew more, I would tell you, but…”

Bianca nodded, her face relaxing a little, “I get it. In that case, my plan to sneak around the village seems like it is even more sensible. I’m sure that a quick bath should make things a lot easier for both of us.”

‘For both of us…’ Song Ming gulped, “Could we… finally…”

“If you are still interested, sure. I know I’m up for it,” Bianca offered her a warm, inviting smile, though her concern still lingered beneath the surface.

Nonetheless, she was happy to forget that concern as well, since she had been looking forward to this for... well, an exact time would be hard to find. She had some thoughts about Bianca from the moment she had first glimpsed her in the nude, out there in the woods, but it was only when they bathed together that her mind fully delved into the possibilities. Possibilities that she could now explore in full, together with the one that captured her dreams.

 

They remained quiet as they navigated around the village while holding hands. Song Ming knew where to go and how, so she led Bianca until they arrived at the river, but then that lead left her, and she suspected that she would not regain it before the day was over.

In part, she didn’t mind.

“Do you actually want to bathe first, or…” Bianca asked as she removed her clothing, doing so more quickly than Song Ming was able to, “I recall how interested you were in me when I had gotten all sweaty. Could you give me a bit more honesty and confirm that I wasn’t just imagining things?”

She parted her lips to reply, but found that she couldn’t get the words out while gazing in her direction.

“… Yeah. Your look, your… your scent… It drove me crazy, and I wanted to feel it as long as possible,” Song Ming muttered, feeling her cheeks burning up.

In the corner of her vision, she saw Bianca approach and bring up a hand to her chin, gently forcing Song Ming to look back at her. Their eyes met, and she saw Bianca blushing as much as her.

“Yeah, me too.”

Her lips parted and eyes shut as she leaned in for a kiss, and Song Ming accepted it without hesitation, her heart fluttering as their lips met. She tasted Bianca, and Bianca tasted her, and the world around them seemed to fade away.

With such proximity, it was impossible to ignore her natural smell, the mixture of sweat and other scents that Song Ming associated with her. It was intoxicating and sweet, and she wanted to get more of it after the first sniff, making her do exactly that, inhaling more and more as she also brought out her tongue to taste more of Bianca’s soft lips.

Only a moment later, Bianca did the same, their tongues meeting and tangling as their kiss grew deeper and more intimate. Song Ming felt herself being pulled into an embrace, one arm going around her chest and the other grabbing her ass, a gasp bursting out her mouth for a moment.

It amazed her how firm and dominant Bianca was, tempting her to simply melt into her arms and let her do as she wished. She almost did exactly that, more than willing to drown in the affection, but another wish took over – her desire to please Bianca, to give her a good time, to help her get over the negative aspects of the last few days and weeks and to feel all of the pleasure and happiness that she deserved.

Hence, aside from just returning the kisses, Song Ming brought a hand up and touched Bianca’s breast, fondling it and focusing on the nipple, trying to mirror what she might do to herself.

Bianca’s moan, getting lost into amidst their kiss, was followed by a tightening of her grip on Song Ming’s ass, and when they parted for a breath, there was an undisguised smile on her face. Although Song Ming wished to return to the kiss right away, Bianca instead leaned in and whispered in her ear.

“Want me to teach you how to please me?”

“Y-Yes, please…”

“Very well, my good girl…” her voice wavered, the blush of embarrassment flashing on her face, “Let’s get somewhere a bit more comfortable.”

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