The new daggers looked quite nice on her belt; at least that's what Kou thought. A little bit of narcissism has never killed anyone, right?

Kou was currently preparing. After what happened the last few days, she decided that she should work on stepping into the next realm. That would make everything a lot easier. Apparently, there was something called "Closed door cultivation."

It was a term for time spend focusing solely on cultivation. You could sit in one place and do nothing but cultivate for as long as you wish! That sounded amazing to Kou! Still, before she vanished, she gave notice to her friends. She told Xiu Shihong, Li Zhi and Hei Tian that she would not be around for a few days while trying to improve, and while her friends seemed somewhat confused as to why she would not do that at home, nobody stopped her.

It was just something every cultivator did now and again, they looked for the place they were most comfortable with and stayed there for as long as they needed.

And for Kou that place was not at home. She liked Xiu Shihong and the occasional company of her other two friends, but the place she felt most “at home" was at Shi Shi's cave, simply because that woman made her feel safe and sound.

She had pushed talking to Kiel back, and the thing Li Zhi wanted to do with her could wait a little longer. She had not confronted Jie Ciao and his cronies, either, but she did certainly plan to get back at them for what they did in the future; she was just biding her time for now.

She made her way off - leaving the outer sect behind for a while – and it did not take her to long to enter Shi Shi's sanctuary. She had not warned the spirit woman of her plan; she simply would tell her now. Weirdly enough Shi Shi was not even around! However, that not stop Kou. She set up camp next to one of those lush trees that grew there. She had taken a whole bunch of dried meat with her; she had not had the money to buy any supplementing pills that would keep hunger and thirst at bay so this would have to do. Water she could just get from the pond.

Her "camp" was pretty much a few blankets that she piled up on the ground while sitting on it. For her, that was comfy enough to stay for a few days or weeks. After all, she had lived inside a box just about a year ago; even all that time sleeping in a bed did not pamper her enough to not be fine with less comfortable places.

The first thing she would work on was her Spiritual weapon art. Finally getting the hang of it was important – at least on the first step of it. The rest she could figure out later with the help of a tutor. After that she would work on opening her Meridians to regulate her Qi flow - stabilizing her foundation and taking the step from there to attempt a breakthrough to the first realm. She had it all planned out!

You might wonder, why she is doing all of this now? For one, there was the still open revenge towards Jie Ciao and his cronies; she would not forget about this, and would pay them back for their betrayal in due time. But that was not the main reason. Others might find it hard to believe, but for Yun Kou cultivating was fun! She could sit still all day and look at the Qi inside her slowly growing denser and her body more powerful.

Kou's life was like that of a tiny pebble in a wild endless stream: she was pushed and thrown around, always on the move and never in control of what was happening to her or where she was going. And now this tiny pebble suddenly found herself capable of becoming a giant boulder to split the stream and remain strong in one place, just growing in size.

In short, for her, it was liberating and almost addicting!

Her fluffy ears tilted down against her head as she closed her eyes. She steadied her breath, focused on the technique that was deeply engraved into her mind: Spiritual Weapon. She had picked this art because it would give her another weapon to use, but she struggled immensely with it. Unlike Shadow's Bounty which immediately clicked with her, this art fought her for every inch.

A tutor from the sect had not been found by then, and she was slowly getting tired of waiting, so she simply was planning to brute force it.

And with that, she began, calling up an image in her head. This time it was not a sword or something complicated but a simple staff: straight, long, and thin, no curves or anything. She filled the image with spiritual energy slowly and carefully. In front of her, a slightly glowing long thing appeared, but when Kou opened her eyes it started to wobble back and forth like a wet noodle.

But she was ready for failure. There might be people that excelled at everything they touched that understood things with minimal effort, but she was not one of them. She was prepared to sit here for days and force this technique into her brain if she needed to!

The next few hours were exactly that. Kou sat there and continuously tried to summon a staff, and every time she failed. Most of the time the staff came out like a noodle. Sometimes she lost her mental image and the energy she had carefully gathered and filled into the staff was lost, evaporating into thin air.

Slowly, darkness set in and Shi Shi was yet to return. Kou still sat cross-legged under the tree on her small pile of blankets, thick beads of sweat on her forehead. This was exhausting, to say the least; she had tried this technique continuously almost 50 times now!

Her newest failure lay in front of her, somewhat sad; it was like some kind of slug: boneless and without stability. Kou slowly turned the thing around in her hands to see if she could find any clues as to why that was. Her spiritual weapon was almost paper thin and long.

Suddenly it clicked in her head. "Maybe... if I rotate the image in my head, make sure that I imagine its thickness - backside and front - it will be more stable!" With a flick of her hand, the spiritual weapon dissipated. Closing her eyes once more she narrowed her brows.

Slowly she called forth the image of the staff. She had been doing this for hours now so she had a clear mental image of what she wanted. This was step one. Then, as she started to fill it with spiritual energy, she rotated the image. While it filled up with energy, it was no longer just a thin noodle; it had stability!

When the weapon materialized in front of her, she quickly opened her eyes and stood up, grasping the staff between her fingers... Solid! She was just about to jump up in glee, but her legs lost all power all of a sudden. She was exhausted, that was for sure, but… she should still be able to stand!

Touching her legs somewhat confused she closed her eyes, trying to feel what was wrong with her. The meridians in her legs were completely overused. She had not opened any more, after all, so her channeling naturally went through her legs. She actually did that almost subconsciously. Both of them were still attuned to darkness, so channeling the light Qi thru them was wasteful and exhausted her a lot more than they should.

Her cultivation technique was a fusion between light and darkness, and that made channeling dark and light at the same time possible for her, but doing it in this way was overly exhausting. Kou slowly propped herself up with the spiritual staff, her eyebrows twitching slightly.

She was so stupid! Of course, the lack of more Meridians – and a Light-attuned one – was the biggest problem she had with all of this! Actually forcing the light Qi out in the way she did - it was a wonder she had succeeded this one time.

Ruffling her hair in frustration, she threw the staff to the side. She had wasted so much effort on all of this! She was angry at herself. She could've just asked an elder, or Shi Shi, even her friends could've told her if she went into a little more detail then just "I can't make my mental image stable."

Heck, she had asked Xiu Shihong! And the girl would've told her what she did wrong if she had just gone more into detail!

Letting out a huff, she slowly sat down again, massaging her trembling legs. She had wasted all that energy, but at least she was able to call forth a solid object now. Once she opened more meridians it would be easier. She would focus once more on her head, even if it meant she would maybe get this pain of a headache again. Better Qi flow in her head would stimulate her mind and she would be able to process complicated things like mental images a lot quicker, which was the original plan. Now she would also attune this meridian to light.

She curled up on her pile of blankets, letting out a frustrated huff. The next couple of days would be a cultivation marathon, but her mind was determined. She would maybe fail a few times… but as long as you run against the wall long and hard enough, it will eventually fall down, right?