Ming Yue dried her tears as she tried to clear her mind. "Come on think, Ming Yue! You went to school for nine years on modern day earth, you can solve this!"
Ming Yue looked around and it wasn't until now she realized there were no shadows. The dark cliff walls should obviously produce shadows unless the sun stood in zenith. But she had been walking around for hours and there was still no shadows and the sun didn't appear to have moved at all.
Strange. Why did this remind her about an introduction to the various types of formations she learned about in class? When she practiced martial arts with the youngest generation of the sect, they also had lessons afterwards where they were introduced to various subjects, and one of them was about formations.
If she was stuck in a formation it could explain why the sun didn't move and why there were no shadows.
Ming Yue frowned. How in the world did she manage to put herself in this sort of situation from sleepwalking? Did someone kidnap her and put her here?
A chill ran though her body as she cautiously looked around.
'No, calm down, Ming Yue. You don't have any enemies in the sect, and even if you did, would they dare to offend Jun Xi? No, thinking back it all started with those weird dreams. Think! Think!' Then she began to run through yesterday's events and then she remembered!
She raised her arm and looked at the bracelet with a crescent moon. "Is it you who's bothering me?" She asked. Did she accidentally pick up a treasure?
Only one way to figure out.
She bit her finger and after a few attempts she finally managed to draw blood. 'Why did this seem so easy in the movies or the novels?' She wondered.
She squeezed out a tiny drop of blood and let it land on the bracelet and then made the single-handed seal to refine it. And when she felt the familiar stream of hot energy shoot out of her finger and into the bracelet, a slight glow appeared and the drop of blood was absorbed by the bracelet.
She then closed her eyes and used her inner sense and now had four places she could direct her consciousness to, one was her dantian, the second was her spatial ring, the third was her sect badge, and finally the fourth was the crescent moon bracelet.
She let her consciousness move toward the bracelet and appeared in a dark place where a beautiful girl who looked like she was a fairy who had descended from the heavens sat in a lotus position on a mirror-like surface that resembled a calm lake at night, behind her a large crescent moon served as a backdrop.
Once the beautiful fairy girl seemed to notice Ming Yue's prescense her eyes opened. Her lips moved but didn't produce any sounds, but somehow Ming Yue perceived the words 'The Nine Crescent Moon Sword Arts', after which Ming Yue's mind was bombarded with various images of sword moves that seemed to imprint themselves into her mind.
This process continued for what felt like an eternity. The sword moves repeated themselves over and over until Ming Yue couldn't think about anything else.
Finally, at some point the sword moves stopped and the space along with the beautiful fairy girl faded away.
Ming Yue slowly woke up and felt unusually clear-headed and that all the previous fatigue was gone. She looked around and was surprised when she saw that she was back in the meadow.
She let out a sigh of relief. She then looked down at the crescent moon bracelet and noticed its golden hue had dulled. But then thought, why did the crescent moon bracelet bring her here? There must be something here that the beautiful fairy girl wants her to find.
Ming Yue stood up and looked around, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. But then her eyes landed on the small pool of crystal clear blue water. Was there something underneath the surface?
Ming Yue stuck her head beneath the water surface and looked around and noticed a silvery glimmer coming from the bottom. However, the pool was deep, at least 10 meters and she didn't know if she could swim that deep. While she had learned to swim in her previous life she had never dived deeper than 3 meters as her ears would start to hurt.
However, she was resolved, she had to get whatever that thing on the bottom whatever it was!
She walked into the pool and then swam to the center where she tried to calm herself as she prepared for a deep dive. Then she took a deep breath and dived.
Three meters below the surface, her ears began to ache, but she forced herself to swim deeper, focusing her sight on that silvery glimmer. When she reached about five meters the pain was almost unbearable and she felt her lungs begin to burn from the lack of oxygen, but she continued to swim downwards. At seven meters her sight began to darken and she felt like she was just a thin hair strand away from passing out. But she continued swimming deeper, forcing all the pain and all the alarm bells in her mind telling her to take a breath to the back of her mind.
When she finally reached nine meters she suddenly felt a warm string of energy move from her dantian up toward her head that pushed all the pain away and her mind clear as if she suddenly entered a completely new world. All of a sudden she no longer felt the pain from the water pressure, nor did she feel her lungs desperately craving for her to take a breath. Instead she felt like she had adapted to the new environment and that she could stay down here for as long as she wanted. She sighed with relief as she reached the bottom and saw a beautiful sword standing upright with its blade stuck into the sandy bottom. She grabbed the hilt and then began to swim upwards toward the surface.
Once she reached the surface she took a deep breath and then swam to shore where she rolled over on her back and breathed heavily.
A smile of pride grew on her face as she looked up at the clear blue sky. She had done it!