Autumn left the sect soon after her visit with Maryam.
Before she went—while she was still in Maryam's room—Maryam had taken her by the hand.
As she did so, Maryam could feel Autumn's mortal nerves thrumming with the energy of another cultivator. Some member of the sect had left their energy in her. The concept filled Maryam with an inexplicable anger.
Perhaps it was due to Autumn's bearing, but it had never struck Maryam before how fragile the woman was. It would only take a single thought on the part of the cultivator who had marked her to reduce Autumn to a mass of lifeless flesh.
"Who did this to you?" Maryam asked.
"Relax," said Autumn, "It was part of the conditions of entering the sect grounds. They want to keep an eye on me, nothing more."
"I thought you resented being controlled."
"I do. But this is only temporary, so it's tolerable."
"I doubt the sect will just remove it and let you go unmonitored after you've gone all over its grounds."
"The sect won't remove it. Nevertheless, it will not be an issue," Autumn said, absentmindedly running her fingers over her metal bracelet.
The cultivator whose energy was in Autumn was nothing to Maryam. Even now, she could wipe their irritating energy out as easily as blinking. But if she did that, the cultivator would surely be alerted by its sudden disappearance.
Autumn was probably well-aware of this. Still, Maryam found the present situation irksome.
"Then, at least let me protect you while it's there," she said.
Autumn nodded. If she were to entrust her life to someone—a prospect that she found unpleasant but necessary—Maryam was a far more attractive option than some nameless cultivator. She didn't know why she felt such an instinctive trust for the woman, but the day's developments had made her feel almost happy.
Autumn resolved to be more careful about letting her guard down so easily.
Maryam forced streams of her energy through Autumn's palm and into her body. Autumn hadn't even flinched—although such a sensation was surely uncomfortable—as if she had experienced this already, many times in the past. Instead, she acted as if she had not noticed.
Maryam's energy did nothing to alert the sect cultivator that something was wrong. It simply gently dislodged their energy and occupied key positions, ready to react and destroy the sect cultivator's energy should it turn violent and attempt to harm Autumn.
After this, Autumn gave Maryam a necklace, and then returned to her quarters.
The weeks after Autumn's departure passed with relative serenity. Maryam spent most of her time out of the sect, being one of the disciples to take on the job of patrolling the wastes.
It was a good opportunity for her to absorb evil energy. There wasn't much action, so the disciples were spread out widely. A vast formation detected movement at the border of the wasteland, and each disciple was responsible for responding to potential threats in their assigned segment.
With nobody there to stop her—after all, she was now the one who was supposed to stop others—Maryam walked out into the wastes. The energy was not particularly strong near the edges and the purest energy could only be found much deeper in, surrounding the shards of the time sphere.
But purity meant little to Maryam, who could easily purify anything she took into her body. What she needed was quantity. And large quantities of energy were abundant in the form of the evil spirits that haunted the wastes.
So Maryam went out alone and let her blood energy blaze a challenge out into the emptiness.
"Come," it called to the spirits, "I am here and alive and strong. Take me and become complete."
And they came. Maryam let them draw near, and when they approached, she absorbed them.
In this manner, it was not hard for her to bring her soul core to the middle of the Core Creation stage. Her blood core, however, was a different matter.
To keep a balance between the two, she decided to join the sect's yearly resource gathering festival when it came the time. For the event, the sect would open up a sacred area practically brimming with precious herbs and fierce beasts.
Disciples who entered to collect resources would then exchange the fruits of their labour for elixirs and pills forged by the sect alchemists. The sect would make a good profit off of this, and the disciples would gain access to cultivation resources that might normally be out of reach for them.
Maryam, however, simply could find some high-quality yang-natured herbs and eat them directly. High-level fierce beast corpses would also do quite nicely.
She arranged to leave her post at the border of the wastes and went to sign up for the event.
As she was registering, an extremely handsome young man came up behind her.
"I saw your fight earlier," he said, "I don't know how you beat Nevus with only an early-stage core, but I acknowledge your strength. However, you should know that the fierce beasts in there really are dangerous. Furthermore, even fellow disciples will often hurt or kill each other. A new disciple like you with nothing but pure soul energy wouldn't have faced anything like that before. Make sure you're not getting in over your head; there is no shame in backing out."
Maryam glanced at him dispassionately and thanked him for his advice in a tone that sat precisely on the border between dismissiveness and sincerity. Nobody who heard her would have been able to tell if she meant it or not. Obviously, she didn't.
Normally, she'd direct no hostility towards someone who attempted to warn her out of concern for her well-being, but something about this person bothered her. Perhaps it was the way he looked at her, or perhaps it was the contrast between the way he looked at her and the way he looked at others, but Maryam seriously doubted his warning came from the goodness of his heart.
After all, although Maryam had been training, she hadn't been focusing too much on putting on physical muscle. Song High still had an unscarred, relatively soft, curvaceous body, and the face of a beautiful young noble miss.
Maryam liked the look of scars and strength on a fighting woman, but her short life had been long enough for her to know that most of society did not feel the same way.
Still, even if he was being a bit disingenuous, it was no crime to have a crush, and even less of a crime to try to become acquainted with them.
In a way, he wasn't all that different from herself. So, while he continued to talk at her, she waited for a break in his speech.
Maryam smiled and said, "I think you should probably know that I'm gay."
It was like a bomb had gone off where she was standing. Everyone listening stared in shock.
Homosexuality was not a legally punishable crime; however, it was not socially acceptable either. There were rumours of some members of the sect's upper echelon being gay, but they hadn't acknowledged it.
Most of the people around had probably heard rumors of this sort, but none had heard anyone outright admit that they were anything but straight, and in a public place, too.
Fortunately, Maryam hadn't come to the sect to make friends.
The handsome young man politely ended the conversation but showed no signs of revulsion.
The next morning, the public square was packed with the thousands of disciples who had signed up for the event. Disciples had to check in with supervising elders before entering the square, as once the sacred area was opened, they would all be allowed to go in at once.
Maryam felt the presence of the handsome man from the previous day in the crowd, where he seemed to be surrounded by a large group of supporters. She memorized the feeling of their energy signatures.
The elders opened the formation that barred the entrance to the area, and, like a pack of piranhas that had smelled flesh in the water, all the disciples swarmed inside.
The resources were limited; everyone was eager to grab what they could.
Maryam shot deeper into the sacred land. The danger to her wasn't very high, and the competition was much less fierce. At the very least, the disciples there weren't in such density that their power of consumption rivaled a plague of locusts.
It wasn't as though Maryam couldn't gather anything in such an environment, but she'd rather avoid the mess if possible.
Not long after she broke away from the main group, Maryam noticed several people following her.
When she left initially, their presence could have been explained by coincidence, but she had deliberately changed her route several times. They continued to trail behind her.
They were members of the group that surrounded the handsome man in the square.
Maryam went a bit further until she reached a secluded clearing in the forest. Then, she stopped and began to pick raspberries.
Due to growing in an area with intense mystical energy, the raspberries were perfect and tasted much better than normal. They didn't have any valuable medicinal properties.
Maryam casually ate as she picked, enjoying their flavour.
As expected, several minutes after Maryam started gathering raspberries, the disciples following her showed up in the clearing.
"Hand over those herbs you just gathered," a woman who looked like the leader of the group demanded, "Our master sent us to look for them specifically."
Maryam turned to them, smiling.
"You mean these?"
She showed them her bag with raspberries in it.
"I don't know why your master is so passionate about such a common berry, but they are indeed delicious. I can sympathize. Fortunately, there is a whole patch of them right here. There's more than enough for us to share."
A look of confusion flitted across the woman's face, as if Maryam had gone off some pre-planned script. She appeared to be a fast thinker, however, and quickly found new footing.
"Of course we're not looking for some random raspberries! This clearing was supposed to contain Heathen Moonflower, and now it's gone! The sacred lands just opened and you're the only one here, so you must have taken it! Strip off your clothes now, so that we can search you!"
Maryam gestured around the clearing.
"And where was it supposed to be located? Surely, if I had taken it, I would have left broken stems or disturbed patches of dirt. Asking me to strip like this when there aren't even any traces of evidence is a little much, isn't it, sister? Are you always this stupid? It's a good thing you're pretty or nobody would go near you with a ten-foot pole."
At this point the woman lost her composure. Clearly, Maryam had struck a nerve.
"Whore!" she cried, "You seduced our young master like that and then dared turn him away! Why would you tease him if you didn't secretly want him? And to shamelessly declare your filthy fetish in public like that! It's just another way of saying you haven't found a real man yet. Get her!"
A man and a woman from her group stepped out and swung clubs at Maryam, as the leader continued to shout abuse.
Maryam caught the clubs easily, one in each hand.
"Let me tell you," the leader continued her tirade, "When your young master beds you, you'll be—"
She stopped cold, as the handsome man dropped from the sky into the center of the clearing.
"Now, now, there's no need to fight over herbs," he said, with a kind smile, "I'm sure we can work something out."
"And what makes you think we were fighting over herbs?" Maryam asked, with growing amusement.