Sheng Xin Cheng walked around the city with the grace of a noble lady. She held her head high and both hands rested on top of her stomach.
She acted like she was better than everyone because she was, and the people around her parted to make way because of that fact.
She had been traveling around the area for over half an hour, and since the start of her outing, she had learned a lot about Moonlight City.
The most important piece of information by far was her knowledge of the three main sects surrounding and protecting it.
The first of them, and the sect her suitor Zhen Yu was a disciple of, was the Heaven Scorcher Sect. Due to their specialization, the main sect was housed in an area rich with fire Qi—the Scorching Fire Canyon—but just like their rivals and competitors, they had a branch in Moonlight City.
It was where Zhen Yu lived. She knew where it was and did plan to visit, but not yet. She still had things to do: poisons and pills to buy, and a city to explore.
Going back to Zhen Yu, he wasn’t just an inner disciple; he was also the son of an Elder, which would make killing him go from possible to difficult. But she’d find a way. She always did.
Sheng Xin smiled lightly at the thought. She’d swallow him whole soon enough.
Other than the Heaven Scorcher Sect, there was also the Green Lotus Sect, which was filled with women—or Fairies, as the people here liked to call them—and the Azure Wolf Sect, which specialized in beast taming.
She planned on talking to or making a connection with the latter. Having easy access to spirit beasts always helped her and was a great boon in all her lives.
But enough about the future. She needed to find a bottle of poison to break down her body, and she wouldn’t be able to do that by dilly-dallying like a wallflower.
Her next stop was the Jade District, where the largest collection of shops in all of Moonlight City could be found.
The person who bashfully told her about the place wasn’t lying about its density.
If the streets she had passed before were clean and the houses built in an orderly fashion, fitting for a city named after the moon itself, the Jade District was barely coherent and densely packed with stalls pressed against each other. Merchants shouted over one another, and countless wares were displayed, which Sheng Xin could tell were useless even without her Qi sense.
Merchants called out to her as she passed, but she ignored all of them. Their trinkets barely had Qi, let alone deserved to be called low-grade spirit treasures. And the jade slips?
Even a book from a low-ranked sect could provide her with better techniques.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Useless. All of it.
Sheng Xin stopped in front of a stall selling bottled pills. For once, something piqued her interest. She grabbed a few bottles and lifted them to eye level for inspection.
Healing, cultivation, minor boosts—most of the pills were of lower quality and minor grade. They weren’t the poison she was looking for, but just in case she needed a physical boost during her tour, she bought two pills that increased the consumer’s speed.
“Miss, not to be rude, but you’re not a cultivator, right? Drinking something like that—”
“It’s for my fiancé,” she said with a fake smile, stopping the stall owner from ranting further as he backed away, red-faced.
Now, would the people stalking her stop or continue? Low-level pills meant that her now "confirmed" fiancé was a lower-ranked cultivator.
The hunger within her soul rumbled, shaking her very being.
Cultivators. No matter what realm they were in, they were always tempted to follow after a beautiful woman who walked into seedy places.
To Sheng Xin’s surprise, none of her stalkers continued following her, and she was free to buy a bottle of earth and fire Qi from another stall.
They were of lower quality, but she didn’t need anything special to break her body and prepare it for tempering—just a violent reaction within her channels.
With her poison purchased, all she needed now was her spirit beast. But unlike the pills or poison, she wasn’t going to settle for the least. If she was going to consume something, it needed to be a proper spirit beast, one that would risk eating away at her very soul should she lose the fight.
Which was why she bought a change of clothes and a mask for a disguise—because the only place where she could find something like that was in a part of the city seedier than the Jade District.
Sheng Xin shook off her robe and replaced it with a shirt, vest, and a pair of pants. She also tied her chest so it would look smaller.
Swallowing one of her pills, she felt the Qi suffuse her mortal body. Her chest began to feel hot, like a furnace had bloomed within her solar plexus.
Sheng Xin further deteriorated her physical body by running out of the loose tent flap and into the open market. Given her sudden burst of speed, people naturally thought of her as a thief, and they ran after her.
The group tailing her ironically removed the tail hired by her new family, though she didn’t know that.
She ran with a ferocious grin on her face. The thrill of being chased caused her soul to come alive, and she took daring risks to see if the people following her would do the same.
She jumped up walls and scaled rooftops. Once in the air, she continued, hopping from one roof to the next like a rabbit gone haywire.
Sheng Xin emerged out of the darkness and hopped down into an alleyway. She walked around with careful strides, making sure to breathe in the surrounding Qi to make hasty repairs to her ruined body.
After a bit of searching and inspection, she confirmed that the only door in the alleyway led deeper underground.
Since she didn’t have a cultivation base yet, Sheng Xin bit her finger and drew a palm-sized formation that stored Qi on her palm. She used it to open the basic spiritual lock on the door knob.
Sheng Xin pushed the door open and stepped into a familiar set of stairs leading underground and into darkness.
Underbellies were present in all cities across the countless mortal worlds. They were common locations for cultivators—righteous or not—to congregate and plan, buy or sell stolen goods, or find something that couldn’t otherwise be located in cleaner places.
It was the perfect spot to buy a low-grade spirit beast.
She walked across the dimly lit tunnel full of shining stalls with confident strides. She no longer acted demure—her hands swung freely at her sides, and her eyes held the coldness and certainty of steel.
The people around her actually gave her a modicum of respect. It wasn’t much, but for cultivators who were strangers to her, it was a lot.
Sheng Xin kept up the act as she stopped in front of a small store—closer to a wooden box, really—full of cages containing low-grade spirit beasts.
“How much for the Spur-tail Branch Rat?” She looked the seller in the eyes.
“Spirit stones or Olives?” the man asked.
“Olives,” she said, adding, “I’m in body refinement. I need a tame one.”
“Right, body refinement,” the man chuckled. “It’s 300 Gold Olives.”
“I can go to the Azure Wolf and get one of these for 100 silvers. Sell it to me for 80,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“Eighty, huh?” The man shook his head. Sheng Xin thought he was saying no, but it was a gesture of curiosity. “Why a rat, exactly?”
“I like them,” she lied. She wanted a rat because they were hardy, and consuming that trait would be useful for tempering her body.
“I see,” the man nodded. “Take it for 40.”
Sheng Xin grabbed her bag, counted the appropriate coins, and completed the transaction. She held the rat cage by its handle and left the underbelly of Moonlight City with the same serious demeanor she had arrived with.
Once on the surface, she reduced the size of the cage, trapping the rat and making it go still. She then punctured the creature’s flesh with its own tail and used its blood to draw a formation that would reduce her presence once activated, making her almost invisible.
She activated the formation and walked out of the alleyway, knowing that anyone below Foundation Establishment wouldn’t be able to sense her.