After having finished her talk with Xia Xuefeng and Zhang, Bing Meilu lay down on her bed. Her small body sank into the soft mattress. For a few minutes, she simply lay there, staring up at the ceiling.

Her eyes traced the wooden planks that made up the roof of her rented room. They were dark brown, with just a hint of green, she noted.

Slowly, a sinking feeling began to encompass the girl, her mind slowing. She lifted a hand to her mouth, letting out a soft yawn. She was well and truly exhausted.

Weeks of running through the woods of the Bird Talon Continent, the constant stress of her journey through the Flesh Mountains, the Qi she had expended, the mental stress of the revelation of the Moon Crying Swan Palace's destruction - All of that added up to ensure Bing Meilu was left feeling more tired than she had ever felt in her new life.

As a cultivator of Qi Condensation, she could sustain herself without sleep and other basics necessities like food or water for much longer than the average person but, ultimately, she was still just a mortal. A mortal who needed to sleep.

Bing Meilu blinked, rolling over and yawning again. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. Slowly, the ebony-haired girl began to drift off to sleep.

---

Bing Meilu ran through a meadow of tall green, her skin brushing against the soft plants that grew from the earth. Drops of morning dew fell off of the disturbed flowers, splashing against her dress.

Dozens of fluffy white rabbits jumped alongside the girl in lockstep, their fur shimmering as if made from metal thread. One rabbit jumped in front of her, slowly growing in size until it was face to face with her.

The rabbit's tiny red eyes seemed to glimmer in the soft morning sunlight.

"Can I have a carrot," the rabbit asked.

"Oh, alright," Bing Meilu responded, reaching into the basket of fish by her left side.

She began to dig through the cold silver corpses of the fish, grasping onto the firm shaft of a carrot.

She pulled the carrot out of the basket, handing it to the rabbit, who began to chew on it.

Then, suddenly, the rabbit shoulder's began to shake, a deep chuckle erupting from its mouth.

"You fool! After all these years, I've finally found you!"

The rabbit's hands flew up to its head, pulling it off. It was just a mask! And below that mask was the face of the old man whom Bing Meilu had stolen her fish from twenty-five years ago!

"After years of hunting you down, I've finally caught up!" the man laughed. "Now, give me back my fish, you rascal!"

"I'd rather die!" Bing Meilu shouted. "Take this!"

She jumped forward, palm splayed. Lighting burst from her skin, forming a blade of electricity that stabbed towards the old man in the rabbit suit.

Yet as her thunder blade made contact with the man's chest, it did not kill him.

Instead of penetrating the exposed flesh between his ribs and stabbing his heart, the man's body simply fell apart, dissolving into hundreds of snakes.

The snakes wrapped around Bing Meilu's body, slowly constricting her.

'You can't hurt me,' the snakes laughed. 'I'm made of snakes!'

'Oh no! He right!' Bing Meilu thought in despair. 'If he's made of snakes, how will I defeat him?!'

---

Late at night, Bing Meilu lay asleep, gently dreaming. Her chest rose and fell with each breath. Her long ebony hair messily spread out across the mattress of her bed, fluttering slightly as she moved in sleep.

It had been hours since the girl had fallen asleep, and she was deep in her dreams.

As she dreamt, the girl's body suddenly froze. Every muscle, tendon-bone and ligament locked into place as a terrifying feeling slammed into her body.

In the night sky, a massive blood-red moon had appeared. Ghostly howls filled the air, crying and shrieking in agony. The screams were almost oddly musical, like a hellish choir of the damned had risen up from the underworld to haunt the living.

An overwhelming aura filled the air, mighty beyond comparison. Like a god had descended from Heaven, all living beings in the city froze from the terrifying feeling, completely unable to move.

Chests froze mid breath, eyes froze mid-blink, mouths froze mid-bite.

Bing Meilu awoke from sleep, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to open her eyes to see. All she could feel was that horrifying pressure crushing down on every part of her. It was like being submerged in the depths of the oceans, hundreds of fathoms of seawater weighing down on you.

Still delirious from sleep, Bing Meilu struggled, trying to move. Yet it was no use. She couldn't even twitch a toe. Slowly, the fog of slumber cleared away and Bing Meilu realized what was going on.

That horrifying, soul-crushing pressure weighing down on her was unmistakably familiar. It was the sensation one felt when they were exposed to the Aura of a cultivator much stronger than themselves.

Then, just as suddenly as before, Bing Meilu felt something. A shiver through her spine as if someone were watching her. Then, a surge of bizarre foreign Qi gushed into her body, forcefully flooding through her meridians.

It was the Spiritual Sense of a cultivator, inspecting every nook and cranny of her body.

Her heart shook at the feeling of violation as the foreign Qi explored her meridians and groped around her Dantian.

Bing Meilu's Dantian rumbled as she gathered her Qi and slammed it against the foreign Spiritual Sense invading her meridians. Her assault battered against the invading Qi like a snowball against a city wall. Utterly useless. After a moment, she gave up.

All Bing Meilu could do was sit still and wait as her body was thoroughly inspected by the Qi.

'I'm going to fucking kill whoever is responsible for this insult!' Bing Meilu swore mentally.

A cultivator's meridians system was their most secretive and intimate place. It contained the very essence of their cultivation and being. Generally, the only time a cultivator would ever allow it to be inspected would be a medical examination. To forcefully inspect someone's meridians, as was happening now, was the height of disrespect.

Of course, to cultivators, disrespect did not matter. Only strength did. If you were strong enough to get away with it, you could do whatever you wanted.

'Once I've regained my cultivation, you're going to be the first on my list to kill!" Bing Meilu thought. '...Although, now that I think of it, I do have to kill that scum bitch from the Golden Dragon Celestial Firmament first... and that heiress of the Vajra clan... and that bastard duke from the Free Cities Deathless Domain Alliance... Actually, I have a lot of people I need to kill once I get my cultivation back.'

As she lay frozen, Bing Meilu heard the balcony door of her room open, loud footsteps ringing through the air. A draft of warm wind followed, flowing over her still form.

At the same time, the Spiritual Sense invading her meridians retracted.

Then, she heard a voice speak. It was not the voice of a human. It reverberated and echoed with the cadence of a thousand men.

"So... it actually is the Crystal Providence's legacy... I really can't believe this! Even after so long, fragments of her inheritance are still around yet all of mine are long gone, even though we both died at the same time! Just another thing for that bitch to gloat about, I can already imagine what she'll say next time we convene!"

Bing Meilu could almost feel the words moving through the air, slamming into her chest with physical force. White-hot pain shot through her torso.

"I could kill you and ensure her legacy is just as destroyed as mine..." the voice continued, now sounding thoughtful. After a pause, it sighed before continuing. "But... she's still the Second King's favourite. If she complains to him that I interfered with her successor, he wouldn't be happy at all."

Bing Meilu's mind jolted as she began to process the voice's words. The Crystal Providence was a mighty goddess from the ancient past who had lorded over the Dao of Yin. She was also the creator of the Crystal Providence Absolute Tome that Bing Meilu cultivated. It was a superb cultivation manual the girl had received from the dying last member of a sect that practiced it back when she was still a bright-eyed youth in Immortal Realm.

Yet somehow, the source of the voice seemed to actually know the Crystal Providence personally. Wouldn't that mean they were also some kind of god?

Without warning, the force-crushing Bing Meilu disappeared and her head shot up as she began to spew blood, heaving and choking as her injured lungs expelled the thick fluid. Her eyes shot open and she caught sight of the source of the voice.

A few feet from her stood a tall man. His skin was as pale as alabaster, smooth and without flaw. His hair was long and ebony, spilling over his shoulders like a sea of ink. In the place of his pupils glowed two red-moon that shone eerily. Black robes wrapped around his thin body, decorated by images of red moons that dripped with blood. He was supernaturally handsome - flawless in a way that was uncanny and inhuman.

"Your little subordinate tells me you gave her the instructions to my Anthem of the Crucified," the man said. "Now, where exactly did you find that? I don't recall ever teaching it to anyone!"

Bing Meilu froze. The Anthem of the Crucified? It was the cultivation method that had been used by her close friend Ruan Hua, who had looted it from the corpse of the... Blood Moon Spectral God, an ancient god who had perished epochs ago. A being that could certainly have met the Crystal Providence in the past.

'But... The Blood Moon Spectral God is long dead!' Bing Meilu thought furiously. 'And even if there were still some lingering fragment of his spirit alive, why would it take notice to me giving its Anthem to Xia Xuefeng but not to Ruan Hua's use of it? The only difference between now and then is... time...'

Time in the millions and millions of years, in fact. Bing Meilu had forgotten to account for the fact that the present moment was the ancient past compared to her old life.

Ruan Hua had cultivated the Anthem of the Crucified without issue - but millions of years before she had done so, Xia Xuefeng could not, because the Blood Moon Spectral God was still around in some form, and would notice.

As Bing Meilu was deep in her thoughts, her body automatically answered, compelled by the power of the Blood Moon Spectral God.

"I received it from my junior sister, Ruan Hua," Bing Meilu answered robotically.

"...And where did she get it?" the man continued, sounding almost exasperated.

"She found a manual for it on the corpse of the Blood Moon Spectral God," Bing Meilu said.

The man opened his mouth to speak, before pausing. Then, his eyes widened, fury plastering across his face.

"She what?!" He screamed.

The physical force of his words once again slammed into Bing Meilu, sending bolts of burning pain through her entire body.

"You... You mortals really have balls!" he spat, face dark with rage. "To dare deface my grave..."