For Di Xueyan who doesn't know, she was saved by her laziness.
A rare event of being saved by laziness from a tragedy.
Di Xueyan walks past throught the arrows and arrived at a crude altar that looks like it was made in a rush.
It is actually not that crude, just a simple stone altar carved from the the cave floor with the cave's stalactites and stalagmites as its graceful decoration. The altar gave off a graceful and noble feeling, as if it wants whoever who see it to prostate before it.
But in the eyes of Di Xueyan.....
Nevermind.
She slowly approaches the altar and cautiously steps at the smooth stone stairs towards the center.
When she arrives, her face can't help but blackens when she saw a gray egg with a little, barely visible cracks in its shell.
The thing is, the gray color does not lool like the usual gray, but a grayish violet that is the usual color of a very rotten egg or a corpse...
'If this is not rotten then what is it?', Di Xueyan's blood pressuee suddenly rushes up, making her face extremely red due to disbelief and a little anger.
"The owner even has the guts to put some mechanism when in fact, its egg is clearly rotten. What is this, for mystery purposes?", she rumbles in her quietly but at the back of her mind, she knows that no one will prank anyone like this in the cultivation world, unless this is a decoy.
It can only be like this because maybe, the moment the owner keep this egg here, it is already dying or it died after many years without proper incubation.
Thinking of incubation, a sudden thought emerges in her mind.
'Were we also little eggs before we became little humans?', the thought makes her feel awkward. Like dude, she just found out that she is half human, half chicke-- ahem phoenix, and she thought that she is human all along. Now she can feel a birth crisis.
' Considering that my father is a certified human being, was I birthed naturally or I was laid as an egg?', the thought made her nauseous. Thinking of how she might have cracked from an egg with sticky liquid while....tweeting, makes her mind swirl. She got rid of the disturbing thought and her gaze of disdain at the rotten egg before vanished as she looks at it with pity, as if saying 'I feel you?'.
Even so, to satisfy her curiosity, she walks towards the egg and knock the shell of the egg thrice without any thought while checking the surrounding of the egg. It is not as if it smells bad anyway.
A sudden movement from the back alerted Di Xueyan and without any thoughts, she instantly grabbed the egg as if a mother hen.
Surveying the place, she found out that the arrows already stopped firing, leaving only rubles of badly destroyed stalactites and stalagmites.
She intends to put the egg back to the nest when a sudden click resounded around the already quiet place and she felt a slight pain in her index finger. Before she can even check what happened, a sudden rush of heat entered her system as ancient runes spreads out all over the place. A different set of runes encircles her whole being as a sudden rise of spirit qi almost made her suffocated.
She calmly sits in a half lotus position while the egg is in her lap and enters the state of nothingness. Without noticing, the egg shell cracked and a blinding light came out which immediately encircled her. The rotten like shell fell off pieces by pieces until a fancy silvery shell came into view.
Di Xueyan was unaware of the changes of the egg as she busily stabilized her spirit qi. Within a minute, her face is drenched in sweat as blue veins portruded in her jade white skin. The intensity of the qi makes her shiver a little.
She patiently guided the qi in her vast qi ocean, flooding it as if a storm ravages the area. Di Xueyan's physical body is already near exhaustion as she absorbs the spirit qi like an endless sponge. A little amount of blood spurted from her insides and travels to her lops as the little crown in her forehead glows blindingly in a red light.
A swirl of white mist surrounds her sitting being. The mist carreses her hair as it is being flown to wherever the mist's direction will go. If one will look closely, a mixture of red, green and white aura envelops her body.
Di Xueyan struggled very hard while absorbing the qi, making her think that she should just stop if she can't do it anymore. But her greedy heart just won't let her to waste such abundant relief good.
What she failed to notice is that if it was the old her, she would not think of the abundance or what, but will definitely think that since the female protagonists in the cultivation novels can grit their teeth just to succeed, why wouldn't she?
As she only think of gaining more and more power now, she lost her frivolous self.
She is aware that she is not as good in mental fortitude as those female protagonists, nor as calm, as mentally stabilized, as experienced and as amazing as them, but the death of her friends made her realize that she exactly has to be like them if she wants to succeed. Though she hate the thought of walking through the same path with others, even if it is just a novel, she is well aware that those qualities are needed to reach her goals. They just have to be her role model, but of course, she still has to deviate a little.
It took 3 days and 3 nights until Di Xueyan managed to stabilize the qi within her body. She opens her tired eyes as she felt a certain dryness in her chin, only to find blood. Her eyes are unfocused as she stares blankly ahead. She felt very sleepy at the moment. Though she broke through different levels this past few days, the exhaustion it brought to her body is very immense. She can feel the ache of her flesh and bones but the happiness she felt overwhelms all those physical pains at this moment.
'At least, I am already a demi god', she smirks tiredly as she lets exhaustion win her over and just let herself collapse without forgetting to hug the little egg to reduce the impact and at least save the little rotten egg in her mind some dignity.
Subconsciously, she caresses the egg with a silly little smile on her face as sleepiness overtook her system.
'Damn, eversince I was thrown here, if I am not attacked, I am unconscious!', she grumbles in her mind as she swear to whoever god there is in heavens that she will really give her master a piece of her mind when they will see each other again.
Her eyes closes again but before that, a deep voice echoed in her mind, in which, she just shrugged off.
"The contract has been completed"