When she woke up, it was way past midnight, somewhere in between three or two in the morning.

By the time the tides of pleasure brought by her short sleep waned, Wei Zhiruo felt she had sobered up a little. The sleep had washed away the remaining of her restlessness. Now, sobriety dawned over her in waves like an epiphany. It stole away the shivers, the pleasures and in its place left a cold, hard touch of reality. Thoughts filled her: her own, others, permeable thoughts echoed each other, resounded and ricocheted.

Sobering up, Wei Zhiruo hid her tiny figure further inside the canoe, stiffening her body into an inconspicuous blob as she collected the events of the day, finally ready to analyze her current circumstances.

She woke up. Was cared for by a maid in her courtyard. Those shards of broken jar had vanished by the time she was dressed and dolled up for any proper company and left to her own devices for the rest of the day.

She recalled the face of that maid, and the only exchange that they had had in the day –

"Ninth miss, you must stay in your room, okay? Please don't go out on your own, it won't be good if Second Mistress finds out about it. It is the eldest master's crowning ceremony and many families from around the county have come to pay a visit. Everyone's been quite busy, you see. It is crowded and you usually don't like these kinds of occasions, do you? You're such a quiet child, may god bless you for that. You never give Tou'er any worries. Be obedient, miss, our second Missus said she will ask you out when it's time for dinner. Then you can gift the young master with those embroidered kerchief you have made for so long! I must say, how happy he would be with you after that! It's your Eldest brother's most important moment in life! You wouldn't want to ruin it, right? Is miss happy? If not, I could go ask mistress for permission…"

A strange kind of schadenfreude had dripped from the maids seemingly well-intentioned words. Her eyes had almost narrowed down into a slit, especially showcasing her amiable cheerfulness, though. But a pretense was pretense. How dare it feel real?

'Snitch,' Wei Zhiruo had summed up the role of that woman in an instant.

She was this family’s ninth miss and today she was ignored, remained confined in her chambers on the occasion of the coming-of-age ceremony of the house's heir. It was a lot of information to take in at once.

'Unfavored or orphan? Perhaps, an illegitimate child?' Wei Zhiruo had thought of many reasons for such disguised ostracization at that moment and even asked tentatively–

"Will others be there? My sister…" 

"Eldest miss? She? Yes…of course she has to go. No other way about it. A while ago the royal edict came– all of us were so afraid, you mightn't have an idea how much?! Aunt Jiang was so close to fainting – for a long time she refused to get back to the kitchen at her post, but I think she was pretending for the most part. We had no inkling of what was to come, and everyone just thought about which kind of trouble the Master had put us into this time, but fortunately! Guess what? It was an edict of engagement! Your eldest sister's going to marry a prince! Miss has been promised to the second prince, who would have thought of that! Although the royal family is so far away in the capital, far away from Jinghai, I heard that he had heard of our eldest miss’s reputation. They had met by chance –how lovely is that–and then the engagement was settled. The prince might come to meet our Young master and meet the family this time. A prince, must you know! Such an honor has been earned by Eldest miss for the family, how could she not be present there on such an occasion?! Of course she will be there tonight!"

"Oh well…then, will my other sisters go too? Will you go there?"

"…oh, they…"

After that, there came no reply. Her maid had just continued twisting her long hair, twice her body size into an unfamiliar coiffure, adorning it with strands of jeweled ruby pieces, its end dangling down her earlobes, touching down her small narrow neck. Few carved pieces were stuck in between the rolled buns. The rubies in some of them, intricate though, were fixed on one end of a single silver piece shaped like a long needle, which was inserted to hold the bun in place.

A small memory from the Original owner had reminded her that the ‘needle’ shaped ornament was called a 'hair-pin'. It served the same purpose as the decorated comb had done in her own world – which was to hold hair in place. But she could clearly tell that it was uncompromisingly huge for her own head. Not her own for sure.

After that exchange, there was just silence; no pretense of obedience was heard for a long time. With a stiffened and annoyed smile on her lips and dull light in her eyes the maid had slipped away quickly, reminding—

“Ninth miss – don't forget, alright? You cannot come out to the banquet tonight.”

If only this event had happened, it wouldn't have mattered much to Wei Zhiruo.

An abandoned child, uncared for by everyone is great news for her personally. She could spend time at her leisure and find clues about her surroundings without any worry of being discovered or treated as an alien, much worse like a pariah – a straight-out coldblooded, body snatcher! Particularly, now, when what she knew was so little about this world, that every step she took was filled with a probable chance of being discovered as something not right, like an alien with no common sense or knowledge of norms.

Although her age could act as a shield for such ignorance, putting it against such an affluent family as this where children are so precocious since birth – the chances weren’t slim at all! She didn’t want to take her chances at being discovered by underestimating people of this world.

Finally, she couldn't be sure that her wayward emotions or streams of thought that phased like the moon, would remain unnoticed if she was under the gaze of others all day long. The Less the crowd around her, the better. Or she risked being declared insane. Being a closed off bastard was a great chance, an invisible role with little to no consequences.

What had troubled her mostly was…an unfamiliar, unkind gaze that had been chasing after her since the moment that maid had left her courtyard! From that moment forward, a pair of cold, covetous eyes had been following her. Thoughts, unfamiliar, rootless and especially malevolent — so chaotic, that if they manifested in reality, they would look like an unscrupulous, unresolvable piece of jumbled up wool yarn, smothered in mud — had started filling up her room. This was deeply concerning, especially for her, who was so easily influenced by thoughts of any kind. Even a stone could raise a storm in her mind, if she chanced upon such a ‘thoughtful’ stone, not to mention that such malevolent thought had no root or meaning!

It was all chaos, with no good thing in them for her to accept. If she let those thoughts enter inside her mind and influence her own thoughts, she would be plagued with chaotic, no-end-in-sight problematic thoughts all day long and that too with no solution to eradicate them.  

It was pure suffering and she just wanted to root it out from existence before it became a more serious problem for her. And, she wasn’t just blindly chasing behind it. Wei Zhiruo had experienced a similar negative existence in her own world – these ‘negative thoughts’ as she liked to call them, were a major source of trouble in her past life. She had learned by trial and error that simply erasing them the first time she encountered one of these was the safest method.  

There was no redeeming quality in such an existence. To her, it was even worse than a piece of stone. At least, a stone’s ‘thought’ could give her an insight into what it felt, and what it thought of the surrounding world.  Sometimes, some of these could even turn into peculiarly great insights. But all a negative thought could do was malform other thoughts with chaos and infect them with similar chaos. In no time, all her thoughts will end up having no ‘meaning’ or ‘sense’ to them.

Even setting aside her own personal preferences, she abhorred these ‘negative thoughts’ also because most of the time they originated in the human heart and with their chaotic nature knew no way of fitting with the rest of the natural order. In the ancient past, they’d even caused a serious plague in the Middle World, causing endless nightmares in their surroundings, killing millions and injuring more!

All day, today, she had just kept looking for its source, yet the strange thing was that it seemed to be especially alert of her combing spiritual consciousness. This situation of standing in the light, while her predator was looking up from somewhere, crouching in the shadows out of sight, was really unsettling – more than being uninvited to a special family gathering or banquet.

The last time she felt its traces was around this very area. Since it disappeared somewhere in here, she had just started exploring and then found this abandoned place and this pond.

Wei Zhiruo breathed in the fresh cold air, her back straightening a little, losing their tension. A strand of her hair flew up in her inattention, blowing up with the wind. She didn’t know when the hairpins and other adornments on her had come off by themselves, but now her hair flowed down like silken threads. That stray strand of hair flew and then suddenly touched the surface of the black water, creating a few ripples in it. She chased it blankly then looked up.

She unabashedly stared at the sky filled with countless stars, flickering, dancing merrily. She eased her mind, letting her Spiritual Senses travel as it pleased.

Waves after waves emerged from the depth of her soul. It rolled in small ripples, encompassing all that came in its way, like a misty cloud swallowing down hilltops and trees, herds of sheep and cattle asleep, inconspicuous housetops and rolling meadows and valleys. It submerged everything, intangible and tangible in its midst and rolled. Mightier and mightier waves emerged and followed. In a space, impervious to all, her spiritual consciousness was combing through the town once again. 

From the small inconspicuous corner of that manor, it trebled past its majestic walls and shadows, past its grooves, orchards and bamboo yards rustling in the mellow wind and past the small stream that ran along its boundary walls, creating invisible ripples and waves in its cold, dark water. 

It flowed like churning waves, rustling past Jinghai city fort, even past the mirror-like water filled fields of suburb, past all the way towards the cracks and crevices, snowy tops of the snow-covered Mysterious mountains!

Her Spiritual Consciousness rose up like smoke and fume, and dark rolling tides of oceans– it brimmed over and bubbled, frothed and shattered its own loosening edges, finally merging into the wind. Once again –she was snatched back by an aching soul at the most exhilarating moment.

"Over-exerted, have I?" She questioned an unknown bystander. "But where are you hiding –? How can you be so traceless? Not in this plane, are you?" To her, not finding its traces anywhere in the real world was tantamount to that thing having hidden itself away in another dimension or a place that was shielded from any prying Spiritual Consciousness. 

Spiritual Senses themselves were actually just a force-field, coming directly out of the soul.  When this force spanned out over an area, emerging from the soul, it could directly paint where other souls and objects coming under its path were situated at. It was just the simplest of the things it could do. It was this combing that allowed her to paint a clear picture of the world around her, filling in the blank gaps of her oversight, and helping her get the idea of what was happening all around her. If she concentrated hard, she could even spy a few words and conversations using it. Hence, how she came to know the name of this place – Jinghai.

This searching method was the most cost-effective investigation technique. All one needed was a strong enough soul to carry it out in detail —there was no doubt in her soul being strong enough to attempt that —and a proper method. As a Rune-maker by profession, her job didn't require a high-level affinity with surrounding elements, like those of Mages did, but it was heavily dependent on high comprehension ability and in turn, a very stable soul state and its flexibility. There might be some conspicuous wounds over her soul right now, but there was no doubt in her soul being able to carry out such basic functions like soul investigation.

Wei Zhiruo kept searching for some while, but still had no clue about where that sight had disappeared so cleanly. But no, not everything was futile. When she was close to giving up entirely and going back to her chambers, she finally found some strange traces.

There was a strange stone with Runes etched over it, embedded into the floor of one of the abandoned courtyards inner chambers. Although, she couldn’t tell whether it was related to that thing that she was chasing, but any peculiarity was a step forward. Thinking like that, she tugged back her Spiritual Senses from elsewhere and concentrated hard over the specific area just above the pond. If she had found one, maybe she could find some other things here too?

“Good. It really is a Rune chain!” Wei Zhiruo exclaimed. 

She really found some more suspicious looking stones. They felt full of a strange and brimming energy, and when she touched one of them with her Spiritual Senses, she felt her Spiritual Sense tingling and a desire to ‘suck’ up the power of those stones grew wildly in her mind. However, she didn't let her impulsive Spiritual Senses unconsciously absorb any piece of that energy, and instead became more alert. The situation had grown overly mysterious. Now, she didn’t even have an idea about what these stones themselves were formed of!