Chapter 11. Calamities

"How do you feel about this new Art?" Marr, who still hadn't climbed down from his temporary nest atop her unworn hair, spoke. He took a quick glance down at her distracted eyes and seemed to gauge something in them. “I see that you’re busy thinking about something.”

"It's quite good actually." Wei Zhiruo didn't really think much before she replied briskly. However, a second later, she turned to him seriously and continued —"I was just thinking of how, in all these years, I’ve never felt this sensation before. This tranquility, you know? And that's quite odd. Twenty years is still a very long time, for some creatures it's all they can ever experience."

"What's so odd? I don't see what you mean here. Do you mean, the contentment itself," Marr took quite some time to understand her doubts, but when he did, he couldn't help but give her a slightly concerned look before turning away surreptitiously, and said, "Or the fact that such feelings never stayed with you in peace?"

Wei Zhiruo looked up, indulging a little in the warmth of the noon, before she chose to reply. She actually knew why such a sensation pulsed within her right at this moment like a burning wick of a candle left alone, and why it felt so strange and odd; it was nothing else, but results opened up to her by a shifting viewpoint. Like ignorance lost, this gain also meant realizing how painfully deprived her life had been, and how brittle were its foundations laid, arid like a desert—she had hardly ever cultivated her body or mind solely for her own sake and this feeling of peace was definitely rooted in this act of self-care.

"Both, maybe." Wei Zhiruo replied, narrowing her eyes, after much deliberation and stopped.

Shaking away some imaginary losses, she stood up, and started dusting off all the twigs, leaves and dirt clinging onto her skirt. In the mottled sunlight her slightly pale and faded skirt looked worse for the wear, and made her figure a tad bit more morose, and when her back straightened, her silhouette looked a lot grayer. But this moroseness too didn't reign all too grievously, because her immediate surroundings— birds calling and cricket chirpings, breeze billows and softer shaking of boughs and leaves therein —didn't allow her much restlessness in their thousand flavored musings.

She breathed all that in and told Marr, weighing down her words, "I feel like I've spent most of my Spiritual Consciousness striving to achieve this result, and that —after today it will take an absurd amount of time for it to heal back in this mortal world, which to me is definitely a risk, but seeing that this Art is working as it should is still gratifying enough—there is hope. Maybe there is satisfaction after successfully getting something against all odds, especially when there was nothing to rely on. But you can also say...There is also this tiredness, akin to the loss of something inexplicable lingering inside of me, or so to speak, maybe it is all that accumulated grains and dust and chagrin and exhaustion —as they all start to catch up to me."

"Don't say it like that! You are just too tired right now and a long sleep will wear it all away." Marr said as he swats his paws against her head gently, in a slight show of his dissatisfaction. "However long the night might have been—at least we got the best results in the end, didn't we?" Obviously here the night mentioned wasn't the last one.

"That's true."

She broke into a smile.

"I am not complaining. It's just the tiredness which you justly blamed. I know, it will go away."

Wei Zhiruo bent down to pick out a few more stray twigs sticking on her skirt's hem. Her eyes fell down onto her dirty bare feet as she bent and recoiled at her current state. “Ah—anyway these thoughts and concerns can wait—I am dying to get some sleep right now. A good bath, some food and then...a day of well-earned sleep. That sums up our plan for the day."

Wei Zhiruo, with all the chaos she had been through, didn’t expect herself to look decent enough. But she realized she might not look too unsightly as her imagination had her believe; and yes, she really didn't appear like an ogre coming out of a blood-feast at least—particularly when she wiped away all the traces of blood from her face and a blush slowly crept to the twin peaks of her cheeks brightening their vitality, while almost dyeing them pink —at that moment she looked like a healthy child. Her sunken figure and that horrifically gaunt body, bones sticking everywhere, had finally disappeared under a thin, but still a layer of flesh.

In fact, now she looked more like a person rather than a starving ghost! It was just that these sudden changes on her physical body now needed an explanation. How should she dissuade her maid from calling out the family elders and putting her through a trial, after seeing her in this new 'avatar' and convince her enough that she hasn't been replaced? Or cursed?

Wei Zhiruo frowned as she thought about the future days to come; she became still graver as she thought about how to hide her changes. Acclimatizing was one aspect, but facing the hidden secrets, relationships and her own identity here, sifting everything like rice from chaff; naturally, she wasn't quite keen on integrating in her new role here with all these additional troubles following suit. Especially now that she had Marr with her, she didn't have any reason or desire to agonize over all this extraneous stuff. She saw no reason why she shouldn't be running away from this mansion—

"Ugh!"

"Hmm? You’re, okay?"

Wei Zhiruo saw Marr's red quail egg-like eyes glistening in the dark as he peeked from atop a willow branch, emerging out of the rustling green leaves, so she nodded at him and said, "Let's hurry, we are going back to my chambers. I'm just too tired. I need rest."

Unconsciously her lips pursed into a fine line, outwardly showing the effects of a lingering headache that had started bubbling, making her head a little dizzy. Wei Zhiruo took a few long strides leaning closer and hugging the tree's trunk to get out of the ditch. However, the moment she touched the rough bark, suddenly she was roused by a ripple, like a spur of an energy touching her spirit!

Struck, she looked down at her hands still touching the bark and stopped in surprise. She looked up, wondering whether she had heard it wrong or not and stilled for so long that even Marr, who had long been out of her sight, had to turn back and find her.

But by now, Wei Zhiruo had fallen into folds of meditative trance, her eyes dilating and fogging like a mist covered mirror, while a faint echo which had previously collided with her own thoughts became more pronounced as time progressed—and there, finally after trying for a few times to sink in better inside the folds of its rushing throes, she saw a rippling green shadow of a tree.

The figure was ethereal, full of rippling gold and green weaves of plentiful aura, with even the roots underneath clearly visible to her mind's eye, stretching for miles and miles under the ground —she looked all around the island like space she had been called to and softly stepped closer to it. She knew well that it wasn't the tree itself, but its spirit, wavering between material and spiritual, and just because of that she was slightly surprised.

This-this wasn’t usual; spirits hardly tried to interfere in the planes which never intersected with their own.

Their aloofness was an uncontested truth. Had this new world evolved differently, she pondered.

Wei Zhiruo thoughtfully looked back, recognizing its swaying and rippling green branches as well as the softness it radiated outwardly. This willow spirit was arguably one of the kindest she'd met, she immediately decided.

It's temper was sorted amongst those she'd consider one of the mildest tempers upon coming across them by chance and she knew it owned much of it to its age, so she slightly bowed in front of the old spirit to show her respect —however, she heard no answering greetings she expected as everything got swallowed in a venerable, frothing voice so old that it sounded ancient, whispery and melodious, all these elements conjoining and resounding within the same sound!

'Ungracious words that lay asunder, plenty of time have shaketh me; bits and pieces of them I say, but only some here hear to it. They bode not well to friend, nor kin, so,

O child of a kindred spirit, I tell you still this to see. Danger approaches thee, close. Not south, nor north it lurks underneath, where my roots are shuddering like my leaves before, when a thunder clouded their horizon, deep.

Go before she comes for ye.

She prowls in search; she looks for a new skin is what she says, and I listen through my roots and say to ye. Leave before that skin is turned you, your future unredeemed. She stands close, too close to not come for you, too far to reach you instantly.

Hurry, take your chance and leave.

She is a fiend, an anomaly. Beware.'

Silence. Somewhere, afar, a ripple broke into the pond.

Wei Zhiruo heard the spirit convey these broken lines, and by the time she came out of her semi-stupor-like state, the tree's aura had dimmed considerably, and suddenly, it was all lost in shadowy darkness —the tree had gone to sleep. From this she knew how much strength that spirit had vested in this small conference between themselves.

In the midst of feeling speechless, she also felt impressed by this show of care.

"How out of the blue…" she mumbled.

It was nine o'clock in the autumn morning, the sky was clear, despite not much being visible to her, but the clouds today, run like cotton brushes swiped over canvas in thoughtlessness. Cerulean was the color of that crisp, fresh sky.

Wei Zhiruo couldn't help dwelling on those words' authenticity with decided suspicion, having caught a few compelling and significantly rich keywords in them. That 'skin-snatcher'—however cryptic it might've sounded at first—bore nothing auspicious. At least it sounded like a predator was at large.

She needed to leave. Not from this courtyard alone, but also from the mansion itself. If the danger appeared so close to here, she had no qualms in fearing that someday it would definitely reach her own backyard —after all, things like 'skin-snatcher' in a normal human realm felt a little too incongruous.

Skin-snatcher, is it?

'Agh, what's this intense headache again?'

"What happened? You're not going to tell me anything, or are you?"

When she opened her eyes, fresh frozen and faultlessly misty, she saw him looking at her piercingly. Marr seemed suspicious but she felt she could explain it all a lot better after getting out of this dangerous spot.

So, she said, "I'll explain when we're back. Let's hurry up. It's not a place to keep staying for long."

This admission seemed enough for him. So, they started walking towards the courtyards' gate quickly—one step, two, three…Wei Zhiruo hadn't even taken the fifth one from under the tree's shade when heavy pangs of pain rushed right into her head, blindingly. Without even a second's gap, Wei Zhiruo's mind snapped —she fell down on her knees with a thud, the surge of pain becoming so blinding that it started filling all of her body with a strange sensation of being eaten alive by millions of ants!

"Cough, cough!" Wei Zhiruo vomited out a thick phlegm like, mouthful of blood, dyeing the grass red and her eyes swam flushed with tears. For a whole minute she couldn't register what was happening to her!

“Amaranthus, are you alright?!”

Wei Zhiruo turned towards his voice and spoke hastily as she cut through his words– "I was talking with the tree spirit. It wanted me to leave...somewhere, somehow. Said, there is danger approaching here, and then suddenly, it turned like this. I cannot understand what's happening to me, but I'm afraid it's something related to that warning."

"Let me see." Marr wanted to go back into her body and check.

"No, not now, don't return to your real form yet. I—I might go into these spells a few times and I don't want to make a bigger mistake by..." Immediately she shook her head at him, explaining, "I couldn't feel her internal thoughts before I woke up. Let me just see if there is another message or warning she left before falling asleep...this doesn't look like something a mere skin-snatcher, whatever that is, can do. Maybe she didn't complete her words…? I'll be more reassured if you're guarding outside."

Marr nodded but still synced his mind with hers and immediately hissed at the grueling pain. "You didn't tell me it hurt so bad! Is this what the tree's warning mentioned to you? What is this thing you've been forewarned about?"

"I am so sorry! I forgot to warn you about that. I am checking on all that. Wait." Wei Zhiruo apologized as she coughed. Although her limbs were becoming heavier as she walked, she did pick up her pace as she fell back a few steps and sat down in a proper pose to start meditating.

"Don't fret over this, you hurry up."

He followed her, hunched his back facing the opposite direction, giving furtive glances everywhere with his body taut into an alert posture, extending into a stiffened bow-like shape and twisting and straightening his spine to look all around. He was crouching, when he started darting his misty red tentacles everywhere in search of any signs of danger. “You do you — I'll see if someone’s hiding nearby.”

"Skin-snatcher, is the thing she named." Wei Zhiruo's head followed, taking in the mystical scene as a few more red droplets rose up into the air, like rain ascending backwards into the cloud and disappearing in the canopy of darker green leaves. She looked down and then she fell into another spell of trance.

There was no spirit there anymore —in a blink of an eye, that space which wielded such an ancient soul, now it was just a shadow of a sleeping tree. Nothing else. Wei Zhiruo saw this and knew instantly, no new clue could be found this way.

She woke up, stood and walked out. Three times, successively, she collapsed like a bag of bones at her attempt to see what was happening to her. Soon, blood dyed the places on her skirt, and that worn out fabric supported two more big splotches over the places of the kneecap.

"A ban—?" She muttered softly. This sudden impending trouble, as well as her current inability to move out of a restricted zone immediately reminded her of a ban. And 'bans' to Wei Zhiruo were clear indications of being —

'Watched?'

Again, she started another round of testing. The results of that specific torture were also significant —one, she found that the ban wasn't as restrictive on her at certain moments as other times, very much like a set of trigger words or thoughts initiated a chain of repressing curse. And secondly, some set of restrictions really wouldn't allow her to leave this courtyard at all! Ban—this was definitely a ban, she thought.

Soon she quickly found the words. The trigger itself was thought provoking.

"Escape—?"

She kept rewinding this thought again and again in her mind like a spell, again and again till she successfully narrowed down her suspicions.

The timing was too sensitive — the order quite ‘arranged’ — the headache came even before the warning, the warning alerted her to a danger — but imagining that the danger wasn’t a part of the trigger of the ‘ban’ itself, and more likely an action of a bystander who watched and decided to alert her, what else was this if not a ban induced to keep her imprisoned? Right — She had been just thinking, thinking at that moment — she was planning to…escape. Again and again, it was the same word.

Puzzledly, she watched the results of her investigation, as the pain grew in waves overlapping over one another, as she kept thinking of the same word. The trigger was just a common verb that became pretty bizarre in her current context, or maybe, not so odious as it was —alarming.

After she had the proof, Wei Zhiruo immediately put several barriers on her mind. Then she plunged herself headfirst into her noisy stream of alien thoughts. The effect was instantaneous.

"Is it done, whatever it is you're doing, Ama?"

Marr asked. He might have noticed the pain leaving her, but then, he gave her a shocked look at being barred from her thoughts. "Now —tell me, what's this for?

She didn't say anything; her mind eased by taking in the changes in the wind speed, as hitting of leaves echoed and rustling filled up her imagination, rising up from somewhere a wave like thunderous tremor surged above her head, leading her to look up to those billowing branches of willow. Wei Zhiruo, said abruptly—

"You haven’t found anything yet? Increase your scope, look elsewhere. I want you to go check something for me."

Nobody knows what Marr thought, but he didn't even ask her what she wanted to be done before he ruptured into a swarm of round ruby like droplets which grew thinner and thinner till, they were no more than a red cloud, then the mist dispersed.

"You, connect to my vision."

She did and watched her sight becoming a familiar red. Then they both looked past the abandoned courtyards long and winding corridors, hallways and ghostly looking antechambers, black and moldy roof tiles that had fallen on the ground, and a deep layer of leaves rotting, covering the land —after going a long way back towards the pond following the same meandering path they had taken last night, Marr, quite abruptly, stumbled upon a weird scene.

As expected, Wei Zhiruo thought. She dubiously looked on at the soul, a very powerful human one —if anything, there was nothing 'mortal' about the soul.

A ghostly looking dark aura surrounded something lean, yet robust. A slender figure of a woman was hovering over the pond, while clutching a book in her long fingers. Although Wei Zhiruo saw none of her facial features, from her stature she immediately judged it to be a human soul. Then she heard it, a whispery, amused yet frustrated voice.

"But she is hiding, and she is alive...alive you say. How can you persuade me to chase her now? If she'd drowned it'd have been a faultless cause...The karma of doing such a heinous thing —you have a method, you say? That's something...it's good enough. Then what are you waiting for? Lead the way. I want to see how such a mortal dared to slip through my fingers."

Through Marr's sight, Wei Zhiruo watched on coldly. The direction that soul had gone towards…she remembered that was the same direction that 'beauty' had taken last night. That girl had clearly shown traces of coming out of water —immediately Wei Zhiruo made the necessary link between these two strangers from the soul's incomplete speech.

This looked like a grudge. What to do? Should she interfere? After all that soul was a real threat, and anything that could keep it from achieving its purpose should be judicious— Wei Zhiruo observed the aura receding, curling like black tentacles of a deep ocean behemoth, sweeping over everything in its path. It was…too domineering.

Marr suddenly crept back to her.

"Damn it! Did we just stumble across someone who looks like the Mages equivalent of this world?! Or did I see it wrong? Is she really —"

"You didn't make a mistake, I'm afraid; that's exactly what she is. She is after someone, and most probably with no decent intention of her own. I intend to do something next —you might have to go to that place quickly. I'll show you the way." Wei Zhiruo replied, deciding to intervene. One could even feel that growing coldness reigning over her face, as she started taking action.

"With Rune?" Marr understood immediately.

She hummed in agreement. She decisively bit the tip of her ring finger and used the bare ground as a surface to write something in gushing blood.

"I'm worried she will find us here, after failing over there. This- this whole arrangement looks too seriously thought out." Now sitting on her lap, Marr looked up restlessly as a golden Rune flared with licks of fire, dancing into a figure of a roaring bear, etched in the outward ring like it was tumbling down a hill while chasing a prey. He then met Wei Zhiruo's eyes, too lost in concentration to even heed to him with growing concern.

When he saw her use that Rune, though, he became more alert. The [Phantasm] Rune was an illusion type Rune, but this one had a slightly wider application due to one of its attributes. It was a good distracting, confounding rune that slightly affected nearby people’s sense of direction. “This-I will be back soon.”

“Be careful." Wei Zhiruo warned and started deliberating her next move. Although she was now free from the general impacts of the ban, and could go anywhere she wished, to do that was tantamount to alerting someone who had imposed this 'ban' over her.

She also knew that her own small Rune wasn't a permanent solution and would even endanger another innocent person if that soul decided to change her target. Of course, all this worry was due to supposing that by ‘skin-snatcher’ the tree spirit did indeed mean a ‘body-snatcher’ of some sort, and that soul was the one being warned against! But then, Wei Zhiruo could hardly take care of this as she knew that even if she was mistaken at this point, the next few steps would completely depend on what that soul intended to do herself! Just that, her instincts weren't happy at this turn of events.

What she feared most was the possibility that that soul really needed a body...that would show, and it would be really troublesome. How long could she ward the soul away from replacing someone's soul in this huge house full of humans everywhere? That wasn't practical nor safe. Rune was useless when faced with that scenario!

Wei Zhiruo felt the soul's strength more deeply than ever—a deadly, heavy gloom had started settling over the land. And it wasn’t just the willow tree now, many spirits vibrated the same thoughts around themselves, urging her and whoever came across them to hide. The whole area seemed to have come to a simmering halt. The winds, the grass, the rolling water in the pond and every little creature hiding from her eyes and ears, seemed to have started dreading something and were preparing to flee or arouse their neighbor’s attention. Some had even started burrowing into their holes and nests! Each sound, each vibration she sensed was unequivocally tense.

Wei Zhiruo took in a deeper breath and started pulling up her feet again. That familiar pain didn't jump scare her anymore, but that too wasn't a long-term solution. Jumping down that river of thoughts was but a delaying step; to root out this problem entirely...she needed to know what this ban was made of —was it a curse, a spell or something more heinous?

Banning thoughts in her world could be said to be the domain of Telepathic Mages who specialized in control of Psyche. The process wasn't all that complex and heavily relied on a Mages personal level. A level twenty Mage, so to speak, could make it so inconspicuous that one wouldn't even realize till death that they had been 'banned' from thinking of some things! But that was a high-level, almost the domain of an Archmages spell, close to perfection.

As for normal ban once administered, a specific trigger word would keep pushing the cursed one towards pain, till the person subconsciously feared thinking of such an idea. A very covert method, but it was also quite difficult to administer at first, and equally difficult to keep hidden. Some even needed a link, a physical object that would hide inside the body’s spiritual domain, hiding and manipulating thoughts at all times.

Wei Zhiruo experimented a few more times to check a few principal differences and similarities of its properties and surmised that this was really in line with the ‘ban’ she was familiar with, a "Seeded ban" —in the back of her head, she sketches the shadowed area in her Spiritual Sea, that looked suspicious. But she didn't immediately venture out to pick it out or throw it away.

'A ban — a threat. Now, what else could be the meaning of that person, but to plan an immediate confrontation between two actors? Or why else would he constrict my movements at this sensitive time?' She thought and grew more precautions. 'No, it's not the time yet. The best way right now is to follow that person's immediate arrangements. But first, let's create a safe way out."

Good, if she knew the problem, at least discovering a solution was not an issue for her.

"Tsch."

Wei Zhiruo quickly took action. She started agitating her steady river of thoughts, pulling away all the barriers she had painstakingly forged, till they were brimming over like a full jar, muddled and murky enough to lose their previous order and form. Even if she was soon overwhelmed with millions of scattered, endless chitter-chatters of sounds, loud and soft, she found that her own thoughts had become too insignificant in comparison with others, unrecognizable in front of that jumble. Right now, she was like the noise fitted in a box, where the noise came from a particularly lively marketplace. Everyone was haggling, throwing stuff at the tables, cranking at something, yelling, shouting, crying, or even laughing at one or other things. It wasn't just the thoughts of spirits that filled her, stones and hearth, brooks and air, even the not so sentient 'old building and courtyards' started to generate some noise and bubbling thoughts!

The results were gratifying. But she couldn't stop here.

Her thoughts branched into several streams, some desperately thinking about when she fell into this trap so inconspicuously, while other channels thought of how to confirm her suspicions, to which, she found out there was just a simple test —if, and only if that soul decided to come her way, despite being surrounded by hundreds of breathing humans, this act in itself will confirm that the same 'person' was involved in arrangements of such a face-off, the one who had so painstakingly put a ban over her! Wei Zhiruo couldn’t help feeling a shiver run down her spine — all of these troubles were so timed that…she feared she was being closely watched.

However, before she could give this some more serious thought, she felt the tremor in the ground. Marr had returned.

"It's not something good, is it?" Her blue eyes sought his red ones.

"No, the soul didn't find that girl, so that's good news. But now—she is heading this way."

"How far is she?”

“Back where we found her. And she seems to be talking to her…book? What now? Shouldn't we be running away before she reaches us?" Marr growled. "Amaranthus?"

When she failed to reply to several of his calls, Marr waited. There, in the blue of her eyes he found a strand of gold flickering like a trailing comet. For a long time, she was staring at him with muddled eyes, then she turned her head asking tentatively, "Say —if you have an opportunity to find a way out of this mortal realm, will you stake your life for it? I need your consent."

Marr looked back and frowned at her. “What did you find out?"

"I examined her...aura. There is something volatile in it, like inappropriately volatile. Two kinds of energies are intermingling together too quickly and trying to...subdue one another. Also, I smelled a trace of a wormhole in her energy. "

"So, you think that the soul might not be indigenous to this world?" Marr wasn't immediately convinced. "I see. But can you subdue that soul with your current zero-level physique?" Marr scoffed.

"If I use my life-essence, I can. I have Runes."

"No-! Not that talk again. You have already wasted much of it. Do you think you're an immortal?!" Immediately he started refuting her vehemently, even shaking his head to show how badly he thought of that plan.

"You listen to me first, okay? It's for just this one time." Wei Zhiruo tried to persuade him. "You know I won't play with our lives. And — I have pretty much thought out a way to...trap her. Believe me just one more time, okay?"

Long silence stretched but the pressure increased simultaneously as if urging him to make a quick decision. He growled at her, and then as if defeated by the circumstances, he nodded in agreement. He knew that this was a great chance if she wasn't mistaken—a chance to completely leave this plane and go to a more suitable place for them.

"This better be the last time." He scoffed, grumbling in distress. "What's your plan?"

"First, lay an ambush. Unsettle her. Then drag her down with Runes and your skills. There are some in your inheritance and I know a few are naturally destructive to high energy."

"Continue." The cat's feline pair of eyes narrowed, looking uncharacteristically focused.

"If we are ignorant, she isn't familiar with our moves either. The information gap is quite real, it may or may not help us, but it will definitely become an element of surprise if we wield it properly. If what I think works—using a medium like life-essence as a reinforcement to Runes magic—it can help us some more; we can keep bluffing her till she is injured and then…in essence it's just to keep dragging her and second guessing our moves till she is too weary and worn out and ready to converse with us." Wei Zhiruo didn't elaborate further.

"Okay," Marr pondered, and asked, "But you know that it's full of loopholes everywhere, right? Your strategy completely depends on whether that soul falls into your illusion and lies. If she sees through your weak body, have you thought about the consequences?"

"Don't worry, I think we won't have to deal with that. It's better if she is a little wiser than most. A sound brain will be trapped faster." Wei Zhiruo replied distractedly.

"Let me check her out a little closely. I want to see if what you said about the aura is real or not." Saying this, he didn't wait for her reply, instead disappeared immediately.

"Don't alert her."

Wei Zhiruo didn't forget to follow him closely. The moment he was in the soul's proximity, a hissing sound like that of water falling on top of a heated surface sizzled out, which was transmitted to Wei Zhiruo through their link. She shared his feeling as Marr felt a strange trepidation settling over himself; Marr's whole being shivered in a recoiling fury.

Something like a gaping mouth of darkness unraveled its tentacles propelling themselves around and waving like hungry claws, and black holes as well as several strange vortexes started forming and opening up, gravitating, sucking, ready to absorb anything that came in its way.

It was both too volatile and domineering, swallowing everything material, immaterial as its fodder! Marr saw that the woman was checking out a nearby abandoned courtyard, spending a little more over a place which was embedded with —what to him looked like yellow stones.

“She's too strong! At least a level six Apprentice Mage, no less — and you’re not mistaken. The traces of the portal are glaringly obvious, like she just came here! You better start choosing your Runes quickly or we might die in the blink of an eye."

Marr gasped, sitting over Wei Zhiruo’s shoulders taking in deep breaths to clamp down his own panic.

"Level six? Level six is not that bad.” She said this while she bent down over the soil, bit open the skin of all her ten fingers, and then used both her hands to start writing Runes.

"You won't change your decision? We still have time. There must be another way to seek out where this magical realm is. A safer way than this... and even if there isn't a way out, in a couple of years with this new technique in place you'll be a level three or four practitioner, and much better equipped to seek a way out!" Marr once again persuaded her.

Wei Zhiruo didn't directly refute him or tell him about her hanging suspicion. She needed to escape quickly, because maybe, the one hiding behind and watching this show unfold might not always indulge in whatever plan he had in store for her. For people like that who could administer such thought-provokingly sophisticated ways like ‘ban’ to handle a target, there was only one possibility. She was, at least for the time being, a useful tool — and the thing with tools is that, once they start showing off their own edges, they lose their charm and become too difficult to control, hence they become useless. She didn't want to be treated like a useless tool.

“She has already sensed us, Marr. I fear even if we escaped right now, it would hardly help. It will just start a chase, and I don't like pushing things to the future and it would hardly change the power dynamics between us. If I could hide for ten or more years, I would gladly take the chance, but I know that we can't. There are too many variables in that."

More than all that…she was worried that she won’t even get a few months to live like a tool. That was why, when she noticed that small trace of wormholes' remnant energy, she knew it was her only chance!

It wouldn't surprise her if the one watching her had found out that her body's soul was…'snatched away' or rather the whole process of her replacing the ‘original owner’ and her later antics immediately alarmed that person so that he was moved to even use up this ‘ban’. If she was right in her judgement, next a number of incidents would have happened to her, pushing her to show her skills, fighting one after another stranger, unraveling more and more secrets of her body for those peeping eyes to see and judge her worth! Creepy and invasive as it was, anyone in their position would use this very efficient way to handle an ‘alien’ suddenly intruding on their well thought out plans and Wei Zhiruo was now suspicious, she had unconsciously stumbled onto something big.

While she was thinking of such, she covertly pointed towards the sky to gesture at Marr, who was still barred from linking with her thoughts. The moment she did that, the cat’s pupil enlarged in surprise and then narrowed abruptly. But he still continued the previous conversation.

He hissed. “Go on – explain it to me.”

"I must remind you first of a soul's nature – the dead are the most conscious about life, it's the truth, but not to such an extent as her. She seeks things using something else than her own senses for one. That tool, maybe it’s the book she holds, I am guessing, or it could be a magical artifact, it must have some map-like attributes. Remember though, we are surrounded by living humans, so the target must qualify another attribute to be chased after. That's one reason I strongly doubt if she is seeking out a body or there is more to it." This was true.

“Uh-huh."

“So, she is driven by interest, her choice isn't arbitrary. As for us, we lack information. She has information. Our purpose is to make her talk or show us where the portal is." Wei Zhiruo explained. Again, there was no falsification in her intentions.

Marr looked thoughtful as he nodded, "But now there is a problem, isn’t she going to suspect that she had been interrupted by a practitioner? From the looks of it, she isn't wildly chasing after her target like before and each of her steps seems a little...wary?"

He shared what he was looking at with Wei Zhiruo. They both saw the soul hovering, stopping and searching several houses consequently, all of them Wei Zhiruo found had that yellow stone embedded. But she moved closer and closer to this courtyard.

And yes —despite her accuracy in searching the correct way, she did look slightly deterred.

Wei Zhiruo rolled her eyes at this and explained further – "Isn't that exactly what we want? A suspicious mind? What do you think that thing is searching for if she is a body snatcher that we fear she is? A living body, right? So, will she kill us first or play with us till she is done playing and then erase our spirit and occupy our body? Does that sound familiar? It’s the most common way a body-snatcher works! If her intention is impure, she will hardly try to kill us outright; she will be looking and judging each of our steps, calculating our strength. I need her to be so conscious, so thoughtful.”

While she might appear to be arguing passionately, Wei Zhiruo's both hands were flashing hard, putting strokes after strokes to form Runes, release them, bend down again, and start the process from writing.

They both fell silent. Marr, because he was searching for his own attacking skills while on the other hand, Wei Zhiruo was trying hard to hide her pain by not wincing too much.

Her mind, it was really...bad in there. Thoughts, dark and sober, cruel and unforgiving...stormed inside. Rage, anger and killing intent were filling her pores, and swelled in her breast, becoming one with her heartbeats. Instincts were going haywire too! And all this, Wei Zhiruo observed, was coming out like a surging wave from inside her Spiritual Sea!

"Win, win this battle and you are safe– and if you don’t, you will lose everything –do you dare? Something is being written in the void, happenings and fate…and this is an enemy arranged for you…it comes seeking you. Kill her, destroy her. If she lives – you die. If you kill her, you will find all the things you wish for—treasure, magic and a way out of this rotting mortal place! Isn't that what you are after? Earn your chance this time, kill her before she becomes your life-hurdle."

Wei Zhiruo suffered this internal upheaval till she was writing her five thousandth Rune. The moment she put the last stroke down, she let go of all barriers in her mind, flooding it with continuous stimulation from intercepting all the sounds in her vicinity. She jolted up coughing with the process's vexatious aftereffect.

“Cough, cough, cough! Don't worry, I forgot to breathe...it's no trouble." She gasped. Unnoticeably, a mocking smile crept on Wei Zhiruo's lips.

'Fate, is that it? Is this the game?'

How coincidental!

Wei Zhiruo herself believed in fate. Fate to her was interlaced indefinitely in one’s own choices — a string of causes and their effects, so meshed together that one had no beginning, the other no end in sight.

As such, how could she believe that an action which hadn’t even happened, could show all its precise and true outcomes? Possibilities of it maybe, but outcomes —no. That went against all her beliefs, against her understanding of the universe's laws that fate was never absolute. Outcomes, dangers, and speculations of loss…as if that person believed that fate could be framed in words like an oracle.

Wasn't this hilarious?

'Oh fate — what a magnificent enchantress she is! She keeps coming under my feet like a stumbling block. How many more oracles do I require to curse my new life anew? As if the past life wasn’t enough…!'

She broke into a small smile.

“Marr, do you know what?” She laughed suddenly, taking him by surprise as he looked at her heeding to her soft whisper coming out like a wheezing noise, “I just cannot fathom — this gap is so huge. But my courage is as tall as the sky and I keep refusing, as someone keeps telling me to accept their interpretation of my fate. Marr, don’t you think I sound a bit crazy? I feel like that brave ant who wants to wage a battle against an elephant again.”

“Did you just realize this?” Marr hissed and rolled his eyes. Although she knew he was not privy to many of the things she hid deliberately, Marr himself was too sensitive to not notice her mind's turmoil, and right now, she believed, he was just giving her enough space to breathe. "Don't worry it won't be the first time you dreamed of doing such a thing. More than surprising, I'd be shocked if you didn't think like that."

“Ah, you're right.”

She gave another little laugh, and touched the ground with her fingers and used her overdrawn Spiritual Senses to channel vitality. She started using the dual-medium of blood and life-essence to flesh out Runes. Things were getting serious; time was running out.

The soul had now found the exact pathway to this courtyard and under ten minutes would reach her.

Wei Zhiruo looked down at her Runes. She didn't think this preparation was going to help her control or shatter that soul —this was just the thing she needed for creating an illusion of equanimity. She couldn't appear too weak in front of her and couldn't look ignorant.

‘But it looks like that person... He isn't ready to interfere too much...or is he waiting for me to show all my abilities first? After all, apart from a few Runes, after Awakening the rest of the night was just spent…meditating. Hardly enough to deter him or make him interested in me."

Wei Zhiruo had experienced such covert manipulation before. She was almost hundred percent sure that the soul was hardly anything other than a pawn. Pawns were numerous, expendable parts of the game; they could be arranged however one wanted, used and thrown away. What she needed to keep in mind was that her enemy was never the pawn —that looming doom — but the one who arranged the board. Although she was still in the dark of how powerful that person was, and what he found in her to arrange such a meticulous...game, she was careful enough to save her energy for a chance for direct attacks from that person. What if he was cornered and thought of her as a threat? She couldn't just die then, could she?

She even remembered a very popular proverb among Cuiping humans, how an oriole stole behind a hunting mantis who — unaware and busy attacking a cicada knew not of his fate. Death. She wasn't foolish enough to think she was an Oriole in her present situation.

"What about teleporting?” Suddenly Marr interrupted her flying thoughts.

Teleportation? She had thought of that too, but she would never touch it if she could help it.

“Teleportation…is impossible. Both [Portal] and [Door] Runes need constant enforcement. A person being sent past it cannot maintain it —what do you think will happen to us once the portal breaks in the middle of our teleportation? Doesn’t sound pretty, does it?” She continued saying, "Burning vitality to end up lost in a space crack with no way out — that's hardly efficient.”

“Okay, okay…" Marr sighed, defeated, then added, “then you can use this rune to throw away that soul, can't you? If we cannot kill her, then just throw her away.”

“Hmm…why not? That sounds alright. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Then Marr saw her suddenly grabbing a handful of soil and rubbing it all over her face with her bloodied hands.

"A disguise, huh?"

"As a precaution for when we fail. With this she cannot track me down based on my appearance. One less thing to worry about."

She painted a word [Conceal] on her forehead. Immediately many squiggling black lines grew all over her face, her neck and even all the visible, hidden parts of her body. By the end she looked like she grew numerous squiggling flesh on herself, or a layer of her skin was burnt down with vile looking patterns.

Wei Zhiruo watched the soul coming closer still —just five minutes away.

She then looked at the nearby discarded rolled piece of clothing. She picked up the still a little wet cloak. It was dusty, with dirty leaves and twigs clinging to its wet surface. It looked in no position to be worn again, but it could be used elsewhere, she thought.

She chose a Rune Formation in the end, called [Puppet] and instantly began forging. It was made of three words, intended to be linked together to make a puppet. A circle held blood red [Threads], written underneath an elaborate work of complex looking lines where [Same race] and [Shape] merged into a triangular pattern, arranging them to form a [Puppet] with no soul at its center. The final word linked them together to forge a golden, sparkling Rune becoming a part of the clothes' very fabric.

When she was done, Wei Zhiruo rolled the cloth into a doll and hung it over one of the willow’s branches, while muttering under her breath, "This puppet…transformed into a girl...What should she look like? Gullible, small, unremarkable features and brown eyes – cannot forget the brown eyes. A test first before the trial. Done. At least it should mess up with her mind."

Suddenly in that sunlit courtyard, a small child emerged out of nowhere. She had no expression, showed no movement at all. Seeing the results, Wei Zhiruo turned away.

“Next illusion — I am going for a domain. [Illusion] and [Shadow], [Mist] combination...that sounds much better.” Wei Zhiruo mumbled softly in her mind, as she wrote each of them, then saw them enforced till the sun hid behind a dark rolling mist.

“You are using your life-essence like water. It’s slow poison — you know we will die if our vitality is drained away, but you're still so careless. Our lifespan is not like our ancestors, if you might recall.” Marr hissed at her. "Have some restraint!"

“I know.” Wei Zhiruo really cooled down her excited mind a little. “Tsk.”

“It's endless —previous life and this one too! You seem to invite endless trouble…and here I was hoping for an early retirement. Tch.” The white cat tutted and flew over the tree branch and hid into the air. "Okay, now. Wrap up your preparations. She is in the vicinity of this courtyard."

"In a minute."

She said and forced a bit of life-essence to forge another one, called the [Encampment] Rune —another Golden Rune, which, although not lethal on its own, could work magic at some places. She was mostly looking forward to its additional attributes that allowed her to be better synced with all the movements happening inside of this barrier. Neat, she thought.

Done. Three thousand Runes —three decades of life wasted. Was this worth all the trouble? Yes. If there really was a portal nearby, she will get endless opportunities to heal herself. Getting away from this mansion instantly was top priority, and more than a threat, this soul came out like a God-given opportunity for her.

“I will summon enough energy to cast three attacks – [Blood-Sword], [Blood-Arrows] and that can be used up twice. The last is going to be [Blood-Rain],” Marr let her know, “but I cannot be sure that it will have the same putrefying effect as it does on physical energy objects."

“Just do what you can.” Wei Zhiruo said. "If worse comes to worst, we can just run and keep running for life."

“That's hardly reassuring but…I know.”

Wei Zhiruo soon put down the last stroke of [Illusion]. The moment it turned silver she'd released it into the air. By now several thousands of Runes were floating around her, forming huge looping arcs and halo like rings, moving as she moved. It acted like a shield around her, giving her face silvery, golden and red flickering sheen — the hues of which intermingled so sublime that it contoured her young features and forced out a not so child-like spirit through her face.

Wei Zhiruo looked down at her dantian and the six strands of silver and golden misty energy rotating in a vortex. She was going to use precisely these as mediums today. Then she met the eternally azure sky, the vast space that acted like a charm freeing up her mind from recesses of constraints. She faced the sky of her inner world, eyes closed, feeling her aura melt into millions of shards, calling out to her to just do as she wished.

Freedom.

Wasn’t that all she had ever asked for? Surveillance, surveillance everywhere —she hated being watched the most. And being shoved with unfounded thoughts dressed as her own? She abhorred, hated it! Someone once again wanted to use her as a tool. But would she give in? She said, never.

'Found it.'

Wei Zhiruo firmly gripped down the seed-like growth in her palms, as it struggled to fly away. It looked like a big sunflower seed, only a little full of an...alien energy. She observed it carefully, till she was sure that she could handle it.

She chose a God's Rune to do the task. She held that seed and wrote down [Ablaze] and next moment, she watched it being swallowed inside the blazes of ruby like red glistening fire; the new energy force worked. It worked magnificently. It was just a pity that there were too few to design some more traps. Hopefully, the Rune she intended to use would do the work.

She watched the seed burn till there was nothing left of its traces, and saw that, the moment the ashes burnt away too, the haywire 'alien energy' within it became tame on its own. Its quantity wasn't a lot, so seeing them so tame, Wei Zhiruo let them scatter in her inner world.

Wei Zhiruo then busied herself forging the last Rune, using the remaining five strands of wisp. A single Rune, with five overlapping words.

What she chose this time was called Rune [Expel], the word that is said to have been uttered by the Gods when they drove away ‘sinner’. If she successfully incorporated its various facets in here — not much but just the bit about driving away the ‘sinner’ of her mind or of its 'judgement' element, she will have the last line of safety assured. Even if none of these attributes manifested, she could capture the soul with it, negotiate and then throw her away by the help of these chains. This- this here was her reassurance that she wouldn't be dragged to death at the upcoming confrontation and become a candlelight, easily put to end!

“It's me,” Marr rubbed against her feet. “Don’t panic. It's not like we have never faced such a situation before. Weren’t those telepathic mages just like this thing? They changed how you thought, influenced your thinking and peeked at your secrets —but did we let those snobs succeed? Each of them died strangled in the trench of your mind! Nothing can be omniscient — at least, I don’t think what we're facing now is such an omniscient being or how else would it stoop so low?”

“Of course, he’s just a coward. But take care of it when we go outside, and don't arouse too much suspicion. We will face-off against that soul as it wants us to. But the actual battlefield — how could it be outside as decided by him? Greed is such a great fall for mankind. She will herself walk inside this trap.” Wei Zhiruo said looking around the grand prison she had made in her inner world. “Right — once again, like always, I’m thinking too much. Maybe she is better than that…maybe she'll not be so easily deceived? Hopefully not.”

The waves raged and thundered. The Origin rune’s shimmered and flashed coldly.