Maryam looked at the man's corpse for a long moment, wondering if she hadn't been a bit rash. She quickly dismissed the thought.
Maladeel's subordinates had worked with each other in a smooth and practiced manner. It clearly wasn't their first time doing something like that. And Maladeel had made it clear he did not intend on letting her go without consequence.
Killing them all to silence them had been a temptingly effective solution. Unfortunately, now Maryam had a mess to deal with.
She briefly missed Autumn. She had the feeling Autumn would almost certainly know how to clean up a scene like this.
In her past life, by the time Maryam had grown strong enough to kill people from notable families, she had become the chosen cultivator of a very powerful sect. While her sect was strict about using power responsibly and not harming innocents, if a conflict like this had arisen, they would have protected her from retribution. She had rarely had to worry about hiding her deeds in the past.
It wasn't as though she was entirely ignorant of the processes used to track down cultivators, however. After all, Maryam had often been the one assigned to find and deal with those who committed serious crimes. She knew what not to leave lying around.
The problem was that she didn't have much experience on the other end of the stick. While she had successfully carried out many missions, if she was able to find the perpetrator, it usually meant that they hadn't hidden their tracks well enough.
Maryam had yet to meet a cultivator who could match her incredible powers of observation, but this didn't mean that the criminals she found wouldn't have otherwise been caught.
This scene was particularly incriminating. With Maladeel's known proclivities, an erected guest tent, and the blood-spatters and bodies approximately centered around the guest tent, it would not be difficult for an investigator to guess what had happened.
Furthermore, Maladeel had been right in that people had seen him talking to Maryam the day before. If it came to light that he had a guest the night he died, Maryam would become a prime suspect.
Maladeel had been strong compared to ordinary cultivators for his age, but he wasn't even the strongest in his group. A person like him would not be considered a future heir to his clan; unless his clan was very weak, (which it clearly wasn't) that position would go to a much more capable members of the younger generation.
As such, it was likely that Maladeel's Selor clan would come looking for her themselves and do their own private investigations. The sect would give them assistance, but they would probably not mobilize considerably more sect forces than for normal murder cases.
Maryam paid attention to sensing the status of the formation around the festival area. If the sect decided to open it early to investigate, it would mean that she had misjudged the importance of the youth.
For the moment, it was staying closed. If they did decide to open it, it would probably take a few hours for such a decision to get through the sect bureaucracy—even when the group pushing it belonged to the sect's central family.
That gave Maryam some time to clean up the scene in preparation for the foreseeable worst-case scenario.
Maladeel's high-grade space-compression bag was certainly useful. Maryam fit the guest tent in it, along with all the corpses of Maladeel and his subordinates, with lots of room to spare.
She wouldn't keep such an incriminating item, but it was fine to borrow it for a bit. It'd be a waste to just leave it lying around.
All that was left was to destroy the campsite in a way that made it difficult to determine that it had been set up with a guest tent. That meant destroying both chunks of the ground that had been marked by pegs and poles, and the configuration of the other tents.
Ideally, it would've been better to hide the scene entirely, but Maryam was well aware that Maladeel had been carrying items that tracked his location.
So Maryam went to the spot she had detected when she decided to stop in the clearing.
There was a small river about half a mile away from the camp. It was beautiful and serene, filled with the sounds of birds and insects.
By its side, there was a large cave. It was deep, and its opening showed nothing but pitch blackness.
"I can sense your babies in there," Maryam said to the cave entrance, "Strong cultivators will be coming here soon. They'll be looking for a creature with water-natured energy. You're the nearest one. They won't care whether or not a beast is innocent; they'll simply kill you and investigate your corpse. But the energy I left was a little weak for a full-grown beast like you. Perhaps they will suspect your children?"
From deep within the cave, there came angry hissing in response.
"Of course, you could try to run. But where would you go? The trail of energy you leave wherever you go hangs so thickly in the air, even those blind monkeys from the sect would be able to find you."
The angry hissing this time was accompanied by the sound of stone being smashed.
"But I could help you get away. This isn't some sort of trap. You can choose wherever you want to go; I'll simply hide your energy on the way there. I just need a certain favour in return."
Silently, the beast emerged from the cave. She was an enormous water snake, about a meter in girth and fifteen meters long. Her eyes, amber irises around circular black pupils, fixed themselves on Maryam. They were full of hostility.
"You can go ahead and try to eat me. That is, if you don't mind your children dying with you."
The snake's hostility did not diminish, but she flicked her head in a sort of gesture that indicated a necessity-born willingness to cooperate.
Maryam lead her to the campsite. There, they fought. Or, rather, the snake attacked Maryam, and Maryam continually evaded, occasionally throwing an attack. Jets of water shot from the snake's nasal cavities, blasting the ground.
Throughout the combat, Maryam's energy signature changed rapidly. First, it became Maladeel's signature as she shot an ineffective blast. Other attacks came with the energy of various subordinates of his.
For those curious, Maryam had collected samples of their energy from their corpses and was releasing them now.
The snake was left practically uninjured by all this; at worst it was slightly bruised.
But now, the camp looked very much like it had been destroyed in a fight with a fierce beast. The ground was covered in craters, and it was very difficult to tell what the original setup had been.
"This is enough. We can stop now." Maryam said.
The snake shot jets of water at her one last time. It seemed somewhat disappointed when Maryam successfully evaded.
At this point, Maryam had decided that the state of the camp should be sufficient to throw off the investigators for a while.
There were still factors that would raise suspicion. The most prominent issue was that Maryam was going to help the snake escape. While this area was clearly the habitat of a water snake, the fact that it apparently vanished after attacking the camp would not go unnoticed.
However, Maryam was a woman of her word.
She spread her energy around the bodies of the snake and her children, trapping their own fluctuations inside. It was a large snake, so even for Maryam this was rather tiring.
Together, they headed quickly up the river, farther into the sacred area.
Eventually, they reached a network of deep, underwater caves. There, Maryam and the snake parted ways. Before Maryam left, the snake sent its children on ahead and tried to bite Maryam.
Maryam simply laughed, avoiding the blow entirely, and jumped onto shore. Now all she had left to dispose of was a space-compression bag full of corpses.
It was unfortunate that there wasn't an active volcano she could throw it into.
Fortunately, space-compression bags did not emit strong energy. After all, it is often not wise for one to turn the space where they keep their valuables into a beacon.
In the heart of the sacred land, there was a lake that was hundreds of meters deep. It wasn't very wide, but the energy inside it was rich, and the network of underwater caves that branched off it was extensive.
The underwater cave the snake entered had been at the periphery of this system.
Maryam came to the edge of the lake and rested a while. The formation showed no signs of being opened. With her energy suppressed, no beasts came to find her.
After she felt recovered, she set out for the middle of the lake. Maladeel's bag happened to contain a sword-shaped flying apparatus, but Maryam didn't particularly want to use the showy and inefficient thing.
Instead, she swam. It was a pleasant experience. The water was cool and refreshing, full of a pure sort of energy.
Maryam saw many fish and other aquatic creatures. Most of them left her alone.
A few attacked her, seeking to make her their meal. She killed them with ease.
At one point, the blood of her slaughtered opponent attracted a swarm of tiny, carnivorous fish. They stripped the animal of its flesh in a manner of seconds.
Maryam held them off by heating the water around her to near-boiling temperatures. After following her for a while, the swarm gave up and left.
Several hours of swimming brought her near the center of the lake. There, she dropped the space-compression bag and watched it disappear into the depths. It would most likely remain hidden for a very long time.
The water energy was compatible with Maryam's soul energy, but she hadn't come to the sacred area to cultivate her soul. A bit regretfully, Maryam left the lake.
The heart of the land was rich with blood-natured herbs, and Maryam ate her fill. When intelligent beasts caught her on their territory and attempted to warn her off, she would often just leave.
In the end, she was the one trespassing. It was one thing to take some food. Murdering the creature living there was a different thing entirely.
However, if they pursued her and attempted to kill her, she had an extra-rich dinner for the night—she quite liked the taste of higher-level fierce beasts. When that happened, she also went and took the valuable herbs such beasts often privately guarded.
After her blood energy had been built up sufficiently, Maryam returned to the lake to gather soul energy from the aquatic plants.
In this manner, Maryam had reached the peak of the Core Creation stage for both blood and soul systems by the time the sect opened the area up.
As Maryam exited the sacred area, she was forced into a line of cultivators. At the front, elders were questioning all the disciples who came out.
A repulsive-looking older man pulled her aside.
"Come with me. You've been randomly selected for an extended physical search."