Far from the opulence of the nearby city, a girl stood in an ancient ruin. It was vast and desolate, stretching as far as the eye could see. Not only was it a forbidden land, it also was full of incredible danger. The place was hung so thickly with evil energy that phantoms and monsters would kill any trespassers—that was if, by some miracle, any managed to get past the watchtowers of the sects.
It was the age of the gods, and Song High was no god. However, her father was the pride of the High clan. He was the one with the greatest chance of ascending so, despite her lack of talent, she was treated quite well—that is, until her father died. Her uncle quickly secured the position as clan head.
Now a threat to her uncle's authority, she was banished to the wastelands to die. She had accepted her fate, after all, trash will be trash and there's no saving them, but her heart was full of unwillingness at the thought of her uncle living well.
She was certain he was the cause of her father's death.
And so, she headed towards the area of the wastelands where the evil energy felt the thickest. There were no safe paths, but her cultivation was low and she had about her the air of death, so the phantoms left her alone. She wasn't even worth possessing.
Eventually, the energy grew thick to the point of suffocating and it took all of her anger and determination to push through. Through the haze, she spotted a strange distortion of light and reached for it desperately. Somehow, her hand managed to touch it, and then she was in a different place.
She was surrounded by whiteness. The ground was flat and untextured, and so was the sky. It was impossible to tell where the horizon began and where it ended. There was another woman with her in that space—a woman with terrifying eyes.
"Welcome," said the woman, "I will be Asura."
Song wondered briefly what the woman's name had been, before deciding it didn't matter. Instead, she asked the woman where they were.
"We are inside your mind. I constructed this space there. I thought we should talk."
Song paused for a moment, and then started.
"I have no hope, but there is someone I want dead. I don't have much, but there are more resources back at my clan. I will give anything in my power if you can help."
The woman laughed.
"Beauty, it's a shame we didn't meet in a better place. If I could've, I'd have helped you in exchange for dinner. As it stands, I am nothing but a soul trapped in time. If you set me free, I will take your body and you will die. I will kill your enemy, though, that I promise."
Song's expression was serene. "Then keep your promise."
When her eyes opened again, there was a different person behind them: Maryam, a fallen warrior full of raging strength and power, trapped in time by the betrayal of her brother—nothing like the person who desperately came to the heart of the ruins.
But the young woman named Song had been the one she had chosen, and Song had chosen her as well. So now, she would become Song. For a while, at least.
The first thing Maryam noticed was the weakness of her body. Forget physical strengthening, her energy channels were merely ordinary nerves with a few traces of energy running along them. She took her hands and ran them down her sides, feeling her curves. They were quite generous, with none of the solid muscle she was accustomed to. Her skin felt strangely soft and smooth, unmarred by callouses or scars.
"I'd much rather f*ck a woman like this than be a woman like this. Ah, Song High, what where you doing with your life? So hot and still single at 17?"
Maryam, now Song High, sighed lightly. She had a long ways to go.
The evil energy around the time shard was thick, and Maryam needed power. Not only was her new body weak, her soul had barely more substance than that of a normal human. Most of its power had been torn away when she roughly pulled it from her body, and what remained was more like a pattern of personality and memory, combined with a powerful will.
She had replaced the original Song's mind with this pattern, although she leafed through the original's memory first so that she would understand any important information. She chose not to keep the memories, though. She had no interest in indirectly living another person's life.
Evil energy is heavy with the energy of death, the energy of the soul. She sensed it with her almost bare nerves, before purifying it drawing it in to coat them. Mind and soul are one and the same, so by drawing energy through her nervous system, she could strengthen her weakened soul.
Phantoms began to appear, drawn by the movement of energy and the fires of Song's life. They crowded together, observing from a distance, trying to decide if they should attack and steal her body.
She turned to look at them and smiled. "Come," she said.
The phantoms fled.
Maryam sat down and continued cultivating, adjusting her body's energy purity and circulation to something that suited her. She began tempering her nerves with yin, and letting her energy pick up its flavour. Under her expert control, her nerves began to transform into highly conductive channels, saturated in evil energy. Carefully, she kept the evil energy from leaking into the rest of her body. At this stage, that could be harmful.
Song, like most cultivators of her day, had chosen a more neutral type of energy to cultivate. Evil energy was the opposite of life energy—one's very blood would rebel against it—and trying to use it to reach immortality would be considered mad by most. But Maryam was the greatest genius history knew of. To her, such dangers did not exist.
Fortunately, it hadn't been too late for her to change her cultivation technique. As the cultivator chosen by the heavens, her cultivation had skyrocketed from a very young age. She barely remembered being in the Channel Creation stage, but she always had ideas of what she would do if she could cultivate again from the start. Her favoured of idea for how to proceed would rely heavily on pure yin energy.
But it would also require strengthening the body with pure yang—the energy of blood and life, which she could not find here, to create an equal balance with her soul. This in mind, she simply spent a few weeks strengthening her soul and raising her cultivation to peak of the Channel Creation stage. Song's memories had told her that was the highest level a cultivator could legally reach outside the sects. Then, she set off for the edge of the wasteland.
As it was not uncommon for evil beings to leave the ruins and wreak havoc on civilians, it was normal for sects to station lower-level disciples along the border between their territory and the wasteland. Maryam had crossed the entire wasteland, so the sect at the border would not be Song's, and she shouldn't be recognized. Still, she covered her face with some cloth scraps, in case she encountered trouble. She wasn't a coward, but she didn't want to endanger herself needlessly; she had things to do.
Unfortunately, as she went to cross the border, one of these disciples on guard saw her and came over. He was also at the peak of Channel Creation.
"Seems like it's my lucky night. You're a lot prettier than most things that come out of those lands."
The disciple looked up and down Song's body, and said this, smirking. Maryam glanced down at appreciatively at her own chest.
"I would hope so," she said, "After all, women this attractive are hard to come by, even when you're not in a desolate ruin."
"Normally, I'm supposed to kill anything that comes out of there. But I was thinking we could do something different, this time. Don't worry, you'll enjoy it."
"What if I don't want to?"
"You don't have a choice."
The disciple stepped towards her. She lifted an eyebrow.
"Oh? Why don't you repeat that?"
But he couldn't, because she had already crushed his throat.
It was unfortunate, however she neither wanted to be assaulted nor dragged in for questioning by a sect. Coming from the wastes, a more ethical disciple also wouldn't have been able to let her go; they would have been obliged to report her to their superiors. She briefly considered killing him but abandoned the thought. A dead disciple provokes a lot more trouble than a beaten one.
As if confirming something, Maryam looked for a moment into his fear-filled eyes. Then her hand tightened around his neck, and he fell unconscious to the ground.
Other disciples were probably not too far away, so she took a pouch from his body and left, heading for the city of mortals.