Bai li yue found herself standing in a rundown courtyard. The stench of rotten wood assailed her nose from every direction. She turned away from the overgrown garden to the house. It was a cottage style house with most of the roof falling apart. The door hung open like a gaping hole in the earth.

'How did i end up here?'

She struggled to recall how she'd gone from the forest to this place. She'd dragged herself to a grove and fallen asleep from exhaustion. That much she remembered.

Is this perhaps a dream?

There was nothing much to see in the garden apart from the dead plants and dried soil. She took a step inside and blinked a few times to adjust her eyesight to the dark interior. It was bare except for a low stone table and a prominent round dais both covered in a layer of thick dust. The dais caught her eye despite the dirt. wiping the dust away caused her to gasp in surprise.

The dais looked innocuous under the dirt but was she seeing right? Were those runes? She peered at the faded runes running around the edge of the round dais. 

'This looks very much like a cultivation dais. The owner of the cottage should be a cultivator.'

She wiped away the dirt and took a closer look at the runes. A few hours later, she stepped away with a sigh, having only identified a few of them. There were more that she was unable to decipher. 

Despite her curiosity regarding the runes, this was not the time to answer that question. She been here for half a day, but she'd not succeeded in shedding light on anything.

'I need to know how i entered this place.'

She paced the few feet between the table and the dais looking for anything she might have missed. The stone table was an ordinary stone table. 

The only thing of interest in this place was dais. who was the owner? Why was the cottage abandoned?

She sat on the dais and rotated the energy in her dantian. She manifested some of her spirit energy and pressed her palm into the centre of the dais. It came to life with a whir: the runes lit up one after the other and the light emanating light glowed in the room and spread outside. 

Bai li yue felt a wave of calmness wash over her. Her anxiety disappeared and she felt at peace. The questions racing through her mind disappeared. She felt a sudden desire to cultivate, take over her entire being. The moment, her presence, everything felt right. 

Is this the fabled fortuitous dream? Some people encountered a teacher or found a legendary skill or treasure at the bottom of a cliff. Since i have been anxious about cultivating, is this an answer to my desire?

Bai li yue didn't put up a fight and focused on gaining as much from the moment as she could. Her inner eye sank into her dantian as she sped up the suction of the energy coursing through her body. The dais was providing abundant spirit energy, continuously replacing what she absorbed. Her whole focus was on her expanding dantian. If her eyes were open the two things that occurred would have given her pause or food for thought. As it stood what happened went unnoticed. 

A golden energy appeared and seeped into her body. At the same time, Bai li yue underwent a progress in her level. She broke through to the ninth level without breaking a sweat. She was carried forward like driftwood on a tidal wave. The wave roared onward with no intention of stopping. She was approaching the threshold of master realm. 

A bit more... just a little bit more.

The barrier trembled under her first assault.The wave reared back and gathered momentum for another attack. The barrier shook violently and gave an audible crack.

Again!

Bang!

The barrier could no longer withstand the pressure. The first crack heralded the appearance of more cracks. They spread like a web. There was no obstacle in front of her. 

The door was open.

Relieved, Bai li yue finally stepped into the master realm.

One… two… 

The abundant energy slowed down at last. Her progress stopped at the threshold to the third level. 

Aah..

She let out the breath that she had been holding throughout the ride. She couldn't believe it. 

In the room, a woman's form appeared. She watched Bai li yue with joy, but it lasted a short moment. Sadness replaced the joy in her eyes but it was fleeting. The woman clutched her head and pulled at her hair as madness overtook her. She briefly glared at Bai li yue like one who'd met her enemy, before turning away to press a hidden mechanism in the floor. With a click, it revealed the outline of a door set in the wall. Her form coalesced into a ball of red light and shot into Bai li yue's forehead. In that moment, Bai li yue's aura changed. Previously, her aura read like that of a new initiate- a result of the seal placed on her by teacher chu. It had even fooled grand elder mu. Now however, her aura wavered now and then. It rose and fell and jumped all over the continuum of realms. She sometimes exerted pressure on the area around her and at other times seemed like a normal girl. The fluctuations lessened with time and her aura settled into what could be described as a nebulous cloud. One would be hard pressed to pin down her realm with just a glance. 

When Bai li yue opened her eyes, her dark pupils looked like deep wells containing mysteries that only she had the right to know. This one night of cultivation was equivalent to about three years of steadfast cultivation, but she didn't let it go to her head. What she had reaped was proportionate to the amount of effort she had put into her cultivation. Honestly, it was more than she had expected. 

'I'm now a master. So this is the feeling…'

Entering a new realm is a reward and also a confirmation of a cultivator's effort. That's why so many people strive to breakthrough.  

Her thoughts came to a screeching stop when her wandering eyes landed on the door outline. She landed softly in front of the wall and ran her fingers over the lines. 

A cold voice rang in her mind when her hand touched the central panel: 

Successor,

I bequeath unto you

Ownership of all

That is mine

On this earth

And beyond.

My word is law

And my will: eternal.

She felt herself thrust forward through the wall into the room beyond. From where she now stood, she had a perfect view of the dais where she'd been recently. She looked around the new room. The walls and ceiling emanated light and cast a bright glow over the room without the need for a light source. On the ceiling, hundreds of what looked to be jade tablets floated in the air. And on a table in the middle of the room, someone had placed an elegant red great bow accompanied by a quiver of ten red arrows. Beside the bow was another jade tablet. Beyond the table on the opposite wall from the door hang a faded painting of a breathtakingly beautiful woman reclining against a tree. She looked like a fairy clad in a flowing scarlet robe that contrasted with her knee length black hair. The red bow on the table was resting on her knee.

'This is some really out of this world fortuitous encounter. I became the successor of an empress. Just like that! How am i this lucky?'

She didn't know how she knew the woman in the painting was a cultivator of the emperor realm. She just knew it. There was no mention of the empress' name anywhere on the painting and the voice she heard hadn't asked for anything in return. She gave a formal bow of acceptance in the direction of the portrait and thanked her good fortune.

'My luck has truly changed for the better! It is true after all that the sun shines after the rain.' 

She picked up the jade tablet and turned it over in her hands. It had to be special since it was the only jade tablet set apart from the others. It had no name, but she understood what she was looking at after some reading. It was a cultivation manual that used a different system from the one she was using in the blue sky cultivation manual. The blue sky manual allowed a cultivator to unlock meridians in order to advance. The nameless cultivation tablet used star points. It showed about 108 of these star points in the body. There was no need to ask the more powerful of the two. The nameless cultivation skill could be used to the emperor realm while the blue sky cultivation manual stopped at venerable realm. 

She held on to the nameless tablet and reached for the bow.The shaft of the bow heated up under her touch. The runes running along its limbs burned bright red before dying out one after the other. The last rune burned brightly and shot a light in between her eyes before she could avoid it. A skill associated with the bow appeared in her mind. 

The sun killing bow manual. There were ten skills, each for one of the arrows contained in the quiver.

She blinked and studied the bow. It was comfortable to the touch, weighty but not heavy but it required all of her strength to pull back the string.

This is a good bow. Those skills are also spectacular, but i prefer the sword. Although, using a bow too will make me more efficient in a fight. It would be useful in situations when the sword was out of range.

She kept the bow also after some consideration and reached for one of the floating tablets. 

Jade dragon water world. It was a martial skill that summoned water to engulf an enemy inside a watery prison.

She pulled down another tablet.

Burning inferno. Another martial skill. Manifest a raging inferno with the summoner in the centre.

Starlight flight: a movement skill that allows one to move like the blinking star. She read through the whole introduction comparing it to the move like the wind movement skill she had learned. It was a powerful skill but wasn't particularly useful in combat, because it's main focus was to allow movement across long distances.

Frost finger apocalypse. This was a very interesting one, but Bai li yue quickly put it back after reading the whole skill. If one became proficient in the martial skill, it would be possible to summon a frost finger and turn any enemy into an ice statue with a single poke. But cultivating the frost finger apocalypse required a person to cultivate inside the heart of a glacier and become an ice statue. The ice could then manifest at will. Bai li yue was still a person from earth. All the skills seemed like overpowered fantasy abilities used by heroes. She didn't consider herself a heroine, just a random person who was trying to survive in a magical world.

 

She looked at a few more of the tablets and got a general idea of what the jade tablets held. They were all high ranked martial, weapon and movement skills. While looking through the floating tablet, she found a tablet that caught her interest. It was a sword skill. Teacher chu had given her the myriad swords manual: a basic sword manual that trained the user in the fundamentals of sword fighting. This dancing light sword tactics was a single skill that paired well with the myriad swords skill. It stressed simplicity in motion but it wasn't a weak skill by any means. She read through it a few times and liked it more and more. The skill focused mostly on the movement of light orbs that blended strength and fragility. It could hide a powerful move behind a harmless float light mote. With the dancing lights sword tactics, even a gentle falling leaf could cut stone.

She really liked the skill mostly for its simplicity and straightforward instructions on manifesting the light orbs. 

'The dancing lights sword tactics will be my priority for now. I won't be able to use the bow since i am not strong enough at the moment. I'd be better off finding a basic skill manual and getting a manageable bow to use before i upgrade to the sun killing bow. As for the nameless tablet, i need to think about it some more. It was placed in a position of prominence beside the bow so it shouldn't have any problems. My guess is that the legendary figure in the painting reached such a high position by using it. I'll start using that and drop the blue sky cultivation once i understand what star points mean and how to find them.'

She picked up one final skill to compliment her movement skill. It turned out to be the starlight flight she's looked at earlier on. It wasn't a terrible skill to add to her portfolio now that she thought of it. It could be useful for escaping or travelling long distances. She didn't know how to leave the cottage so she continued memorising the skills she'd chosen. 

She passed through the glowing doorway into the room with the dais where she sat to study the nameless tablet, starlight flight movement skill and the dancing light sword skill.