'You are getting near to first door enlightenment in the spirit cultivation,' the system notified, 'as long as you get a good spirit cultivation method, you can enter the 1st door. Until now you only thought your goal was inner peace.
It was just a piece of information, you never practically tried that because your previous life's society was a materialistic society. They fed humans with high amounts of information, which was unnecessary from what they wanted to do.
As the information was excess, their brain got confused on which information they should use to practice but once they see a setback, they will jump to another thing as they also have little information about that.
This is the reason for the inefficiency of the humans on earth. Once humans fell into this inefficiency category, they always give up for today and tried to start from tomorrow.
That society makes people think even if one suffers today they can be happy tomorrow. Just think about it, did you ever encounter a tomorrow?'
'Tomorrow! Today. Tomorrow will become today but...never had I encountered a tomorrow,' that made Yuki realize how stupid the idea of tomorrow was.
'Yes, the day that never comes not because it's out of reach but because it doesn't exist, the idea of tomorrow robbed people of their life,' the system explained.
'So it is that? It's good that I know it now. Now I am one step towards inner peace,' said Yuki in her peaceful state, 'I already extracted essence, so I should take the next step.'
'Those are ordinary things with very less almost negligible spiritual energy, so it's easy but things with high spiritual energy like herbs need to be handled carefully so that the energy won't dissipate.'
'Ok,' Yuki replied and put herbs in order, until then she only used normal grass and leaves to practice essence extraction.
She extracted the essence of herbs but some of it was burnt. Yuki didn't give up and tried to condense pills to see how far she could go.
She tried to condense them but before she could do, the essence burnt away. She wondered why the essence got burnt in the gap of thinking.
'As soon as you extract essence,' the system explained, 'you need to lower the heat with maintaining the same temperature so that the essence won't burn away but still be there without getting dissipated.'
There was no base to support the essence inside the furnace. Essence was needed to be put above the flames on air in the furnace. Temperature helps to do it.
Then she needed spiritual energy to make sure that the essence wouldn't diffuse.
The heat was used to heat the herbs so that they get divided in cellular level but once the essence was extracted the heat should be reduced as soon as possible because the essence was sensitive to heat. It could get burnt easily.
'So temperature contains essence and heat burn it. Ok, let me try another time.' She tried another time but she took too long to reduce heat; the essence dissipated. She didn't give up and thought, 'Another try.'
This time she failed to hold essence as she was concentrating on reducing heat and thought, 'again.' she tried many times but she couldn't divide attention on to heat, essence and temperature at a time.
After 10 hours of continuous tries, she didn't succeed and got exhausted, she fell on the grass on her backside with great relief. Even though she failed many times, she took it as a happy event of learning new things.
She saw the sky and excitingly said, "Only now I understand why mom always asks me whom I love more, her or my future wife. One can only prioritize one thing at a time no matter how great he is."
Then suddenly a confused voice of a girl came, "what are you talking about sister Yuki?"
Yuki saw her. She was a normal beauty whose smile was a grace. System notified, 'Her name is Minami Murata, age 15, your childhood friend, you are very close to her but due to family disputes, you didn't contact her recently.'
Yuki immediately felt disdain with wary because Aya informed Yuki that she saw Minami near the kitchen on her wedding day.
With a smile outward, Yuki said, "sister Minami, why are you here?"
"I came to congratulate you. As you directly went to the wedding chamber after your wedding, I didn't get time to congratulate you," said Minami very gracefully, no one could believe she would even think such a thing as poisoning others.
Yuki wanted to mess with her, so she sarcastically said, "you are beautiful sister Minami," in a love-struck way.
Minami felt weird, "what got into you? Why are you complimenting me?"
"Nothing, if I was a boy, I would have proposed to you but sadly I am a girl now."
Minami got confused, "are you in periods? You are talking weirdly."
The system reported, 'Your body still didn't go through menarche.'
Yuki with a straight face said, "No, I am fine."
Minami felt too awkward to talk to her, to divert the topic she asked, "I heard you opened 1st petal, is it because of marriage?"
"No, I don't know what fruit I ate a day before of my marriage but on the marriage day when I drank soup, I suddenly felt spi... (suddenly changed) cosmos energy, then when I started cultivation it is so smooth that I opened 1st petal so soon but when I gave those to others it didn't work, so I can only guess God helped me."
Minami got shocked and eagerly asked, "what is that fruit?"
Yuki grinned inside as Minami fell for her trick, "it's pomegranate."
Minami got dumb folded because pomegranate was a normal fruit, "sister Yuki, you are not messing with me, right? How can that be possible?"
"I also don't know, didn't I said I tried that on servant but it failed. Maybe the medicine that fell from the sky is the reason."
Minami understood she was messing with her but she smilingly said, "But I heard you got a master, is it a lie?" She was trying to extract information from her.
"How do you know that? I wanted to keep it a secret, now it was spread?" Yuki said while acting shocked. The system notified her to be cautious even in words with Minami.
Minami felt in dilemma and thought, 'is she that stupid, no, the Yuki I know speak with a reason. What is she trying to say?'
Minami couldn't understand what Yuki was saying, so she cut the useless talk and said, "I came to invite you to the tea party in 2 days, sister Yuki, you have to come."
System explained, 'tea party is a gathering of young people to show their talents and exchange experience.'
Yuki was uninterested in things like parties because that was the place where the most plastic smiles would be shown but said, "ok, I will come, if you don't have anything to say, I am busy, you can leave," by waving her hand.
That made Minami get mad inside but smiled outside and said, "then please come," she went away.
Yuki got dissatisfied with Minami, 'how could people murder others so easily? Don't they have a guilty conscience? That too to their own childhood friend.'
'This world is only for powerful and wicked, a soft egg like you is not suitable,' the system replied.
It triggered her anger, 'who are you calling soft egg, I am man,' then she realized and said to herself, 'calm down, inner peace is important, I shouldn't let others control me.'
In Murata family
"That bitch might know that I was involved in poisoning her," said Minami in dissatisfaction, "father, we must kill her." Minami was a social girl who likes to be a kind-hearted person in others' eyes, so she was thinking Yuki might ruin her image in others.
"That's impossible," an elder claimed, "after she opened 1st petal, Akihiko put an elder to secretly guard her and even if we kill her, our family will get implicated."
"No need to dirty our hands," said Daishi-the family head of Murata family, "now Nakamura family got a huge problem with her, they will definitely try to ruin her. We will just push them from the back."
"Should I poison her drink at the tea party?" asked Minami.
"No," Daishi suggested, "poison her cup with the sponsorship of Nakamura family."
"No, the Nakamura family was scared of Yuki's master, they are not even daring to think about harming Yuki," Minami reported, as she had a very big friends circle, she could get any kind of information in any family in the town.
"Then should we involve them?" asked Daishi in putting his guard up so that he wouldn't speak of their name.
Minami got a brilliant idea, "yes, I will bring the young master. He has a crush on me, I can use that to my advantage to invite him to the tea party then divert his attention to Yuki. After all, she was the cutest girl in our town, I am sure she can arouse him."
"Be careful Minami, he is dangerous," Daishi warned.
"I know father," Minami replied.
***
Yuki was sleeping on her bed. She woke up due to noise from outside and heard a girl with anger saying, "She got invited by miss. Minami to the tea party, how can she be so rude to sleep like that."
Aya was worried to talk back but she needs to look after Yuki, so she replied, "young miss is exhausted due to her practice, she can't be disturbed now."
Yuki was tired. She opened the door and asked, "What's with the noise?"
"Young miss, you are awake?" said Aya.
The girl's name was Mira Hoshi-Akira's little sister. Her hair color was light blue unlike Akira's navy blue and her eyes were too. She was a cute girl a few inches taller than Yuki but only 12 years old, she was wearing a beautiful colorful hanfu dress.
She was arrogant and easily controlled by others' praise girl, she worship strong or people who show kindness to her and despise trash except for her brother.