12 Bones and Snakes (1/2)

Apart from her own perception, nothing had really changed. The chasm was still plunged in its mysterious darkness.

It showed on the plants that no sunlight had ever come this far inside the ravine.

Shin Sumi somehow knew that but she had no way of testing it and so discarded the thought for the moment.

She quickly summoned the little nut using the seeds she had gathered before leaving the sect.

She didn't have a lot of time. When Shin Sumi had left the sect she had only brought enough food to sustain herself for a few days.

It was her first time outside the sect and she previously had no idea she would go this far.

While she was waiting for the nut to refine the seeds, she explored the area for a bit.

Now that she could see everything, the bottom of the chasm didn't seem so terrifying.

She picked up a few plants specimen she didn't know about and even found a few stalks of White Cloud Lotus!

”Great, a few more and my first quest will be completed!”

She was happy. She had thought the quests would be much harder. Maybe she was simply lucky. After all she had even found a treasure in the form of a copper bell.

She toyed with it for a short time but apart from a crystalline sound that was actually very pleasing to the ear, nothing seemed to happen.

Settling down at the entrance of the cave where she found the bell, behind the waterfall, she worked on her cultivation using one of her remaining high grade spirit stones.

The nut didn't go back inside her wrist but remained nested between her breasts. It wasn't bothering her that much after all.

She had completely forgotten how angry she had previously been, now that the nut had found her a treasure.

The clouds above the ravine were starting to darken when the nut started moving, disturbing Shin Sumi's cultivation.

Twelve hours had passed and the seeds had been refined.

Finding the perfect place next to the pool so that the plants would have enough water, she planted them. In total, she had almost a hundred seeds of Worm Roots Flowers.

Shin Sumi was about to resume her cultivation but decided otherwise.

Fumbling around in her bag of holding she pulled out a bamboo scroll. It was the massage technique she had obtained from Xiao Yue.

Shin Sumi looked at the scroll before unravelling it.

”It seems like a normal scroll, nothing magical or strange. But since it is about a massage related to cultivation, I wonder if the nut will upgrade it too.”

The way the Shinsoo Gathering Manual had appeared on the book when the nut turned into the book had left a deep impression within her. She had wanted to test a few things for two weeks but she had literally nothing with her that resembled writings.

Now that she could finally read something, she was excited.

The whole reason she had accepted to get into the Dark Sky Starry Sect in the first place was to read Immortal books after all.

There were only a few dozen lines on the bamboo scroll. They had been handwritten a long time ago and the end part was almost impossible to read.

Shin Sumi's fingers traced the words as she quickly went over the whole text.

”Oh, that's it ? These are just Shinsoo passageways that should be rubbed in the correct order. Too bad you need to use Shinsoo to maximize its effects...”

Shin Sumi had committed the words to memory. She closed the scroll and put it to the side.

Fetching the nut from her clothes, she called out loud ”Little nut, it's time to do your thing. Can you please turn into a book ? Or do I have to throw you ?”

The nut seemed to understand and immediately spun into a grey vortex. Less than a second later the ancient tree like book materialized in her hands.

A new page had been added right after the Shinsoo Gathering Manual.

”Yin Aperture Shinsoo Awakening !”

Immediately, Shin Sumi opened up the scroll again. All its content had been erased.

Shin Sumi's eyes ran along the leaf-like page as she discovered the real technique.

”Most of the good parts were not even in the scroll ! What Xiao Yue did to me was a simple 'Yin Massage Technique'. It was rumored to only work on women at night ” she recalled the words that were on the old scroll. ”The Yin Aperture Shinsoo Awakening works in any kind of Yin environment, not just at night.”

She was intrigued to discover that the technique also worked on men, although not as much. For one part it only stimulated one half of the Shinsoo passageways, the ones attributed to Yin energy.

It was common knowledge that men had a dominant Yang. It was also the reason why disciples at the end of the Shinsoo Gathering stage only tended to open a few passageways corresponding to their energy affinity.

”If this technique is used in correlation with the Shinsoo Gathering Manual, I bet it can help me during the fourth step of Shinsoo Gathering ! Maybe I can even open up at least half of the sixty four passageways in one go !”

Shin Sumi was really excited. She would have tried the massage method on herself immediately if she could.

But something that hadn't changed with the upgrade of the information was the fact that one needed Shinsoo to use the technique.

Once Shin Sumi finally reached the stage of feeling the flow of Shinsoo around her, she could practice the technique on herself. She didn't even need Xiao Yue to do it for her.

Only the lesser version required a second person.

Shin Sumi thought about how she would also give back the favor to her sworn sister when she mastered the technique. Xiao Yue would be very pleased.

***

The sun had disappeared from behind the clouds and the ravine was plunged into darkness.

Only Shin Sumi could see perfectly well, although it was somewhat different from daytime.

At night the darkness was natural whereas during the day even without any Shinsoo affinity she could feel that something strange was going on.

Shin Sumi bathed in the waters that now felt warm on her skin before cultivating again.

Since her own blood had made a connection with the copper bell, she felt protected from the cold and was less tired.

”The bell seems to feed on the Yin energy from this place and convert it in Yang energy.”

Her senses were working perfectly fine, unlike the previous day where she was cut off from everything.

At some point during the night, Shin Sumi opened her eyes with a frown. She had been thrown out of her peaceful meditation by a putrid smell.

It only lasted for a few minutes before a hissing sound rang into her ears and the smell disappeared soon after.

Curious, Shin Sumi stood up from her cross legged position. She put away the high grade spirit stone of which the power was already declining and went to explore the other side of the chasm.

She previously only adventured on one side because the pool made walking along the bottom of the ravine difficult.

By using the natural cave behind the waterfall she reached the other side while keeping her clothes dry this time.

She remembered smelling the same putrid odor of decomposition right when the bell had shone under her blood for the first time. At that moment she didn't pay it any attention, mesmerized as she was by the situation.

She didn't have to walk for long before finding the source of the stench.

Less than a hundred meters from the other side of the waterfall was a pile of bones.

Shin Sumi's eyes opened in an exaggerated manner as she froze on the spot.

”Bo-bones... BONES !”

Shin Sumi screamed as she realized that she had been peacefully practicing cultivation next to a pile of bones this whole time.

Without even thinking about it she started to run away. Forgetting all about her precious flowers planted earlier, even forgetting to pick up White Cloud Lotus Flowers when she ran past them, she made way to the exit of the chasm.

She had acted on instinct and her body moved on its own.

With reckless abandonment she started to climb the steep slope.

All of her resolutions to be brave had crumbled in an instant, mortified as she was at the sight of thousands of bones.

Her body was full of adrenalin and she didn't notice that the rock she gripped onto was loose.