It was fairly late in the night when Maryam arrived at the city. It was mostly silent as she walked down the streetlamp-lined main road, looking for an inn. She had been living off the world's energy, but she still enjoyed eating. Having fasted for weeks made her *hungry*.
Unable to find anything open, she turned into a side street and began to wander. Her nose soon picked up the scent of blood coming from an alleyway, so she went to investigate. A group of men were exchanging what looked like chunks of meat.
"Excuse me," she said, "I am quite hungry. Would you share some of that with me?"
The men looked at her, startled.
"Are you a lunatic?" one asked.
"Go back to bed, little girl. This isn't the sort of thing you want to buy."
Maryam sniffed again, and realized the meat was very rich with energy.
"Ah, it's fierce beast meat, then. Don't worry, I have enough money."
At this statement, men slowly began circling around her, barring her path out of the alley.
"How did you know that?"
For some reason, what she said had made the group extremely suspicious. Maryam was unconcerned. Forget who she used to be, even to her current self, these men were like flies.
"You're going to have to come with us."
Alright. Maryam didn't particularly mind. She could leave at any point, and maybe their boss would know where she could find food at this time of night. Best case scenario, their boss would let her have some of the meat.
She let them tie her hands together. A blindfold was placed over her eyes, but she could still sense their presences. If they tried to attack her, she would kill them, but otherwise she was feeling peculiarly cooperative.
They walked down many low-quality streets, turning, and going up and down stairs. Eventually, they lead her to a warm room and removed her blindfold.
The first thing that she noticed was the woman seated at the wooden table. She had a slender frame, with long, black hair, piercing blue eyes, and skin so pale it looked like she it had never seen the sun. A metal bracelet was wrapped snugly around her wrist. And her face—
"Oh my, I didn't expect the big boss to be such a beauty," Maryam winked at her, "What's your name?"
Taken slightly aback, with a trace of discomfort in her eyes, the woman introduced herself as Autumn. She was interested in knowing why Maryam approached her men, and how she knew where they were and what they were doing. When given Maryam's hunger-based explanation, she remained unconvinced.
"You may not believe me, but still. I haven't eaten for several days, and really am quite famished. If you give me food, I will pay."
Autumn looked at her suspiciously.
"Please?"
Autumn left and, after a short while, returned, holding some delicious-smelling cooked meat.
"Alright, but I'm not untying you. You'll have to let my men feed you."
"No," said the-woman-who-would-be-Asura, "Don't make me go near them. They're too scary. They even tied me up, blindfolded me, and dragged me halfway across the city. You're the only one here who I'm not scared of." And she smiled.
"You do realize," said Autumn, "that I'm the one you should be worried about."
"But I like you. Please, I'm so hungry."
Song High's face was pretty and innocent. She looked like the young mistress of a family, forced into the world for the first time. Normally, Autumn would not indulge a prisoner like this, but something about Maryam struck her as pitiful and Autumn knew how it felt to starve.
She carefully sliced the food into bite-sized pieces and fed them to her prisoner one-by-one.
Maryam spent some time enjoying being fed her first food in weeks by a beauty. As she ate, she could feel currents of blood-energy leaving the meat and being taken into her body.
It seemed that it was indeed fierce beast meat. It appeared to be of a rather low grade, and the energy was far from strong enough, but it still was there. It would be good if she could secure a supply of it while she didn't have access to better resources.
Autumn sighed.
"I still don't trust you, but I can't really keep you here. I don't think you have bad intentions, anyway. Tomorrow, I'll have you blindfolded again, and my men will send you to the center of the city. You should be okay from there. It would be better for you if we never meet again."
Maryam thought for a second. Sects had the best resources and joining one would mean that she could continue to raise her cultivation boundary without becoming a wanted woman. They would probably require some form of assurance that she would remain loyal, but such things tended to operate on the will; she had many ways to deal with that.
It would be ideal if she could stay somewhere for a while and raise the cultivation of her yang body to match the level of her soul energy before entering the sect. That way, if she were attacked by anyone below the realm of Bodily Rebirth, even if she could not win, she could at least escape.
Autumn seemed to have some sort of business involving spirit beast meat, so it would be convenient to buy it from her. While it might be possible to find it elsewhere in the city, it was expensive, and buying large quantities would attract attention.
In her past life, she had barely been twenty when she had made her strategic retreat into the time sphere. She had experienced a lot for her age but she hadn't been close to that many people. For whatever reason, she felt drawn to Autumn. A young woman with rare and thoughtful eyes, confident and calm. Even if only for a few weeks, she wanted to get to know her a little.
"You can keep me here. You don't know if I somehow remembered this location, right? Why not keep an eye on me? I don't mind. Especially if you feed me like that every day~"
Autumn wouldn't object to the idea of keeping an eye on a person with potentially compromising information. No matter how she looked at it, Maryam's attitude seemed somewhat suspicious, however Autumn had always been quite good at reading people. She trusted her intuition. And while she could tell that the girl was hiding something from her, she sensed that Maryam didn't have any bad intentions.
Maryam might not even be a bad person to build a relationship with. At least, she didn't seem to be an ordinary person. If Maryam had something to hide, it could mean she had something worth hiding. Besides, the current place they were staying was far from Autumn's most important base. After coming to this conclusion, Autumn made her decision.
"Fine, stay here, then. I'll untie you and leave you in one of the rooms upstairs. There will be people watching you, though."
Of course, had she actually wanted to escape, the ropes binding Maryam would have broken as easily as wet tissue paper. On an instinctive level, Autumn might have been aware of this. However, Maryam obediently held out her arms and let Autumn untie her.
The next few weeks were spent in tranquility.
The place Maryam was brought to turned out to be an inn named The Drunk Deer. Autumn came around once or twice a week, seemingly to meet with a set group of her subordinates. She would often visit Maryam for a brief cup of tea before returning to her business. Through Autumn, Maryam was able to get much higher-quality fierce beast meat than she had the first night.
Autumn sold it to her for a fairly low price.
Maryam wondered why Autumn had so much fierce beast meat that she apparently didn't value too much, but she had the sense not to ask. Instead, she focused on letting the life energy build up in her muscles and flesh. When she ate, it would be drawn from the fierce beast meat into her blood. From her blood, it would be absorbed by the rest of her body. Maryam waited patiently for the energy to saturate her flesh so thoroughly that it would no longer absorb the energy from her blood.
The life energy thickened in her blood, creating a circuit that flowed around her body. Just as her nerves became conduits for soul energy, her blood vessels too began to become conduits for life energy.
Then, she began letting soul energy leak from its channels. Starting with impossibly small amounts, she let it mix with the blood-energy saturating her flesh—she kept it far away from her blood vessels. When this happened, the two opposing energy types would react and explode.
Having been already saturated with their respective energy types, her nerves and blood were already accustomed to having a certain amount of energy and would naturally draw soul and life energy in from the surrounding world to replace any they had lost.
The myriad tiny explosions happening inside her body converted yin and yang into pure energy. The explosions would eliminate weaknesses and the pure energy would heal the damage, strengthening her flesh. Her nerves and blood would automatically replenish the energy that was converted.
Like this, her body was tempered and rebuilt countless times, becoming full of energy and containing strength that could rival cultivators at the least at the mid-levels of the next stage—the Core Creation stage. The amount of finesse and control required to create a system like this was immeasurable. And the pain was indescribable.
It was only possible for a grandmaster of incredible skill. But aside from Maryam, what grandmaster would still be in the Channel Creation stage?
Maryam let a small amount blood and soul energy flow into her hand and watched as they mixed. Then, she tossed the energy into the air and allowed it to react.
The resulting explosion was fairly impressive. In fact, it was far too impressive to set off when you are a guest in someone else's inn, Maryam realized belatedly.