บท 13: Her Secret (2)

After everyone had their own fill of the food, Shen Tianyu proposed to bring the leftovers back for the ones that were left behind. As they walked back on the quickly brightening streets, they greeted people on the streets, farmers, scholars and store owners alike.

"Sung Ming. I want to rest tonight. Can I start work tomorrow?" Shen Tianyu asked in a low voice to the Manager walking beside her.

"Alright." He agreed.

When they arrived back at Lavender Palace, Sung Ming informed everyone of Shen Tianyu's "adjustment night". Everyone nodded understandingly. 'Of course. Despite her demeanor, she is still a poor little girl. She just got sold by her father. Naturally, she is upset,' some of them thought. 'What is our Miss up to?' was the thought of others.

Without regard to the misunderstandings surfacing in certain people's minds, Shen Tianyu bid goodnight and returned to her room. As she closed her door, she walked over and sat cross-legged on her bed. Then, her body became completely still, even her breathing was even and shallow, as if she was sleeping.

Shen Tianyu opened her eyes and saw a black. Endless darkness surrounded her as she got up from her initial lotus position. Though to anyone else, this endless darkness would have been suffocating and unsettling, she didn't feel so in the slightest. And rightfully so, this space was hers. She walked straight ahead, following a small road of blue light only she could see. She then stopped on the road. Though the light continued on, she knew she couldn't go past it. She tried before, it was as if there was a barrier, preventing her from going forward. In her previous life, she was only able to access the initial part of the space, where she appeared when she came in and actually wasn't able to see the road nor go forward. So, she just treated it as a pocket, since she liked pockets, but women's clothes rarely had pockets so she used it as a large, dimensional pocket. She also found out, through experimenting in her previous life, that these special restrictions in the space were only for her. Certain people she sent into the space merely wondered about endlessly, never bumping into any obstructions or anything, as if they were in an illusion of endless darkness. Of course, she let them go when she was done experimenting and just told them it was a nightmare, not that she needed to explain to them, they weren't exactly good people.

When she was first reincarnated into this world as an infant, she had been able to see the light road, but had not been able to pass it. After practicing cultivation at Yaodu for a while and breaking through to Qi Condensation First Stage, did the barrier retreat.

She reached out her left hand, as if trying to touch something in the darkness, and stopped when her arm was fully extended. She stared at her left, where her hand was stretching, still visible in the seemingly all-consuming darkness, as if waiting. After a short while, or maybe a long while, there was the sound of chains breaking. Then a blinding light, originating form her left enveloped her, as she closed her eyes. When she didn't feel the intense light in front of her eyelids anymore, she opened them.

She was standing in front of a vivid red torii gate. Behind it, was a big red Japanese shrine with a slanted, tiled roof and a sign that read "Wind Shrine". The shrine itself was about as big as a palace of the Forbidden City.

She walked through the torii gate and slid open the wooden paper doors. As she stepped in, she surveyed her surroundings. In the center of the room was a wooden offertory box one usually sees at Japanese shrines. At the other end of the room was a long ancient bench couch in front of a paper screen. Around the room, the things she had "collected" in her previous life was scattered into organized piles. In the northwest corner, were the academic books she'd collected. The northeast corner contained literary documents that weren't books. In the southwest, to the left of the door, there was her manga collection. The southeast, the right of the door, was the little gimmicks and weapons she had collected. She had experimented with weapons and explosives rather extensively, claiming it was for "protection", and it certainly was now, with the failures and successes all organized there in their own stacks.

She started walking around the shrine. The shrine hadn't opened until she reached Qi Condensation Stage, which was pretty recently.

Even though, she had researched weapons, it doesn't mean she could effectively use them. When she was staying with her Master, she had focused on learning how to use her favorite ancient weapons. Good thing Yaodu had many martial experts too so she didn't need to go outside to find an expert to teach her. Though cultivation was certainly important, so is being able to master a weapon. What's the use of cultivation if you aren't strong? And being a master at a particular weapon would make her stronger. Now that she was fairly good at using them, she can focus more on her cultivation. The weapons were unavailable in the her old world so she was unable to make them. Therefore, she had Muo Jeng, her Master, order them from the best blacksmith, and these weapons were currently sitting in their own small pile to the right of the door.

Actually, Shen Tianyu had only broken through about a week ago but then she was informed that Shen Chiang was coming to pick her up at the shed she was supposed to be in and had to hurry back to hide that she had any association with Yaodu. After she came back, he dumped her in a small, seemingly abandoned corner of the Minister's Estate. The next morning, he had rudely woken her up and brought her to Lavender Palace. Therefore, she didn't have enough time to really explore the space. However, though she couldn't enter the shrine until she broke through, she had been "gifted" by it years before, when she was 9. That was when she developed Lavender Palace as a brothel and an underground information broker.