* Flap, flap, flap ** thud, rustle, rustle*
Rustling sounds of parchments and scrolls was the only thing echoed in the whole floor of the grand library that day. The grand library builded in the core area of the sect during the time the sect founded now slowly developed to the point accumulated books over the thousand years it now had eight huge floors.
The building despite being so old fashioned and simple it's size comparable to central hall. It could be seen that the millennium old building showed the constant care and careful renovation to build it up to this high. It's rumored that this building is protected by top masters and powerful arrays.
A red haired girl in an inner sect uniform looking over an ancient scroll with deep concentration scrolls and books scattered around her carelessly in the dingy and dusty carpet of the sixth floor of the library.
From racks to faded carpet everything here is covered in slight dust as if they weren't cleaned for the last few months, unlike the lower floors which were cleaned every two weeks by library servants.
Though Megha wasn't bothered by the dusts in the least bit though, her face was scrunched up in serious concentration, her deep-sea green eyes glued to the contents in the scroll she frowned now and then after few more minutes as she closed that thing with a sigh turned her attention to another scroll.
She had been living in this dusty library for about a week and half using special means, abusing her status without care of any repercussions she had been cooped up in the library.
As a regressed person she know it was better not to give any reason for elders to dissatisfied with her or alienate them especially when she had some plans for winning over good chunk of them with her detailed plans but when she find an unexpected opportunity She still decisively abandon her ideas
Megha had no choice but to put on her rebellious mask for one last time and play it, covering up her true reasons. It has been more than a month since Megha had first ever fight with her dad and during this time something unbelievable happened causing her to change some of her plans and cooped up in the library.
Even for her visiting higher floors weren't permitted even core disciples or elders are allowed to go up to higher floors however they want much less treat it as their own study but Megha used her status and special means by boldly doing this no different than flaunting it to sect elders.
Already aware of this last week there was some disgruntled inner court elder from what her aunt said this very morning from their gossip, who nonchalantly brought tasty breakfast for Megha for the last two days.
Despite knowing something like this would happen Megha had no intention of doing anything about it, she will deal with these elders In one way or another when she comes back from the upcoming Mission. From what she understands some of these complaints make it to her father's ear unfortunately for them it wasn't him who gave permission, things wouldn't go as they planned.
Although she could have gone to Main Hall when she received a missive for her summon she didn't go as she already made arrangements she wasn't disturbed by them anymore.
Even her father might have been surprised by my arrangements; they wouldn't dare to disturb me during this time, only to hold it in. It's true that it would be better if she responded to their summon and gave them reason for her actions to show them her maturity and wisdom this would have worked at least wouldn't have agonize them but she was too lazy to come up with convincing enough reason for bunch of meddlesome, egoistic old men.
Was it worth it, at the moment Megha didn't care if she really grasped this opportunity . It was more than worth agonizing over these petty and old bunch of people but at the moment her face doesn't look good she felt like time was very short at the moment.
Megha could have done this after she returned from the mission but her paranoia kicked in made it seem like she was a ant in the frying pan Megha couldn't calm her mind or resolutely believe the opportunity would be still waiting for her 'what if someone took that thing before that' she thought.
Megha would openly admit she doesn't have that fearlessness or trust in her skills. She doesn't want to miss out on an opportunity which will give her a huge boost of power and self confidence. But it was very often noted that she would curse someone about being unreasonable or heartless under her breath everyday but she believes that she will get that damn opportunity before the end of her special pass.
As for what special means she pitted against dissatisfied elderly, she predicted such a situation occur so rather than doing this in her father's name like usual she made some arrangement with her dear old great- grandfather and granduncle she believe they wouldn't dare to go around and annoy her great-grandfather or granduncle for their partiality.
She got permission for one whole month for a special pass which allowed her to enter any floor she wanted in the grand library. She never pulled such a move in her two lives beside two supreme elders, sect master and three Library guardians no one allowed to go past the fifth floor but here she was making a mess out of the higher floors.
It's not that her granduncle and Great-grandfather were irresponsible people; rather , she was never known to abuse her status till this date considering how dotting they were. More importantly she never gave them reason and they never asked about it either; they had great trust in her.
There is a possibility her dotting great grandfather might scold her if he knew about what she was doing and might not give her another such a chance she wasn't willing to bet on some slim chances.
Megha felt like she was tight on time, she even considered whether to go for the mission or not, she had planned to go on a mission in one month as she promised to Maya, she has been in the library for about more than week and half so she had to speed up her search.
*****
Peach Blossom Estate, Fourteen something days earlier,
Megha sitting on her bed with a dark face while fuming at his father's audacity, about a week and a few days ago she had a confrontation with her father and directly refused his offer for a trip to divine pearl island.
Now she long since got past her fear and trauma about the ghost experience, but she felt her father getting stricter with her liberty, she even felt people following her everyday and monitoring her.
'Was he really thinking I became some evil witch or something?' she wondered and this wasn't even her first time.
Though she wasn't an outgoing person she still go out of her estate for her daily classes medicine classes and lectures and etc, and there are some discreet things she has been sneakily doing for her plan not to mention in her free time she like to walk around sect once a week, if not tour her estate every few days at least but everything was ruined by this annoying people tailing her on daily basis.
This made her very annoyed and uncomfortable and found it troublesome and surprisingly she started to see her father at least one time per day.
He acted like he was here for Vaani or some other Matter and carefully observed what Megha was up to it seems. This put her in a very bad mood. She didn't naively believe he had this much free time in his hands and knew he wasn't here to talk to her, convince her or apologize about all the negligence on his part. It's just some baseless suspicions.
Even he was merely checking on how she was doing she couldn't tell with his behavior and in a way she was glad he didn't bring up the topic of divine pearl island ' Well at least that's a relief ' she sighed to herself 'I don't think I can kept my calm if he kept insisting that '
She was sure that Megha would have hurt him, if the talk went on the tension wasn't that oblivious as she first thought Madhu and Vaani aware of something must have happened between the two of them.
Vaani had a heated argument with her that very afternoon which caused Megha to storm up to her room locking herself in, after hearing what happened the other day Vaani advised Megha to apologize to her father how could Vaani understand at one point they end up yelling at one another.
Megha stormed up to her room locking herself in, Megha knew she shouldn't have yelled at Vaani knowing her concern but it's still annoying she doesn't take her side when something like this happens.
Of course most of this had to related to the fact Vaani doesn't know about the problem why her father acting like that she was sure she would take her side as soon as she know about the real cause but that doesn't mean Megha would talk her father's incredulous behavior even if its Vaani she couldn't openly talk about them so as of now Vanni thinks Megha was being unreasonable or going through rebellious pace in her teen life.
It has been about a couple of hours since she locked herself in and felt this wasn't worth wasting her time in brooding. She forced herself once again, focusing on polishing her plans; this was a habit she had developed in her late years and was planning to follow even now as well.
She developed this habit out of necessity. The fear of death or worse capture by a bunch of unknown people put her on the tip of her toes constantly, though it may look useful but it robbed her peace and made her paranoid and unsettled.
Even when she had a chance to get rid of her tails and disguise as someone for a short period of time she found herself unable to put her mind to rest, always expecting some kind of ambush.
She felt that she was constantly in fear, always expecting the worst and lost proper sleep but she was alive because of that, this habit made her survive countless fights and ambushes.
Megha didn't dare to be complacent yet just because she traveled back in time. She meticulously planned how she was going to face them and she would never settle for one or two plans. She felt this absurd urge to make innumerable counter plans for every other situation she could think of and constantly tested the liability of each and everyone in her list.
After knowing the probability of a different future she didn't believe things would happen as she remembered so she tries her best to take control of how she is going to play. For example, that day she has been thinking about whether she should use her innate strange qi like last life.
A part of her felt compelled to take every advantage she can get her hands on and made them powerful weapons in her hands while other naive part of her felt abhorrent about this method and repercussions as she thought about this.
This was the reason why she can face a group of grandmasters without losing an arm or leg, in fact this could be the sole thing that could help her in countless situations capable of surviving alone through this.
When she was lacking in skill and techniques she couldn't always use some taboo and secret techniques to escape. Those techniques weren't named as secret techniques without reason; some of them may cripple the user or cast their life.
It was the where the advantage of her physique become huge boon to her survival, the strangeness of her innate qi not only help her during cultivating poison body or it's eruption but she accidentally find out she can use this as a means to overpower her opponent and rise her strength tandemly.
During one of her desperate early days, when she have to face against two grand masters she accidentally learn how to control her innate strange qi and find that it was far more powerful than her vital qi in general she believe it was as powerful as true qi of great grandmaster if she compared it with something.
Her Only star technique the Dark Nether Frost Palm's power Increased vastly while integrating this qi in fights. Not only that later she found another pervasive nature of her innate qi for some reason she felt she was absorbing negative and malicious emotions from the people she killed in miniscule amounts and could collect them for use temporarily.
Here is something she can either use it to strengthen her attacks or body during the fight she can use this accumulated energy to assist her in break through and speed up her practice. It has versatile uses to her and she still felt her knowledge might be still superficial.
The only downside is that a higher realm expert or people with higher level perception than her can detect the negative energy in her body and even use this to track her down so far she couldn't find any solution for this till her death.
It might be possible if she discard this negative energy she can fly under the radar but she was extremely unwilling to release this negative energy so far it was her sharpest weapon and ace in crisis before she got skilled in fighting but she still doesn't discarded this energy continue to accumulate this try to use this to Break through to higher realm though this practice did bring her some trouble.
Even people whom she certainly knew had no ties with her enemies choose to attack her because of this she could tell they were unsettled about her. It's always in anger or fear claiming she was a ruthless evil practitioner and heartless person.
For those she has nothing to say even knowing this might cemented the image and blames she had been framed on her in those years ago doesn't matter she has long give up the thought of clearing her name she became the very thing they accused her and wasn't going to explaining her life story to this meddling fools and nor did she believe they are compassionate people who fight her out of righteousness.
'At least I never killed an innocent because there was a gain ' she thought to herself. It is possible that killing hundreds of people gives her power and even a chance to break through but she vowed to at least never cross that line ever in her life. 'I would never lower myself like that '