Sheng Xin woke up with a clear head and a fresh feeling permeating her very being.

Over the course of the entire night, she had managed to repair her channels into something resembling what an actual cultivator would use.

Her Qi channels had gone from being dry, useless tubes to a densely packed series of pathways for ambient Qi to flow through efficiently. And they would only improve the more she cultivated.

It was refreshing to know that every time she breathed, she was naturally tempering her body. She was still cultivating even while living her day-to-day life, but Sheng Xin didn't intend to rely on that alone.

She had already taken the first steps toward returning to her previous realm, and she didn't plan on slowing down now.

She would return to the immortal plane sooner or later, maybe in a thousand years or so. That seemed possible with how well her progress was going.

Sheng Xin smiled at the thought of seeing her enemies' shocked faces when they saw her return in as short a time as a thousand years. Now that sounded like a good goal to achieve, didn't it?

Shaking her head, Sheng Xin rose from her cross-legged position and cleaned herself.

Today was a new day, and although she was in the first stage of body refinement, tempering her channels only meant she could utilize better formations and consume pills more efficiently. She still had no combat capability.

That would be the case for a while, as she planned to temper her organs next, followed by her blood vessels, her bones, and finally her entire body.

It was only in the last two stages that she would be able to fight back against her fellow cultivators. Before then, she would need to be cunning, using her wits to win with pills and formations rather than physical ability.

Spirit tools were also an option, good ones at that, but she would need to temper her bones first before she could use those. The risk of Qi deviation or ruining her body from wielding a spirit tool in the body refinement realm was too high.

Pills and formations—that was how she would fight. Assuming, of course, she even got into a fight. If she could run, she would. Any demon worth their weight would.

Sheng Xin donned another set of blue robes. Strangely, the original Sheng Xin had a fascination with blue, as it was the most common color found in her wardrobe.

When she walked out of her room, she found no traces of the woman she had spoken to yesterday. Hmm, it seemed she was alone for the day. What better time to explore the rest of the house?

The house was large, she knew that just from seeing it from the outside yesterday. Despite the luxurious size, however, the furnishings and other household items were rather sparse, with little to no taste beyond practicality.

Was her new family frugal, or were their finances dwindling? Was that the reason the original Sheng Xin had been married off to an inner disciple of all people?

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Now Sheng Xin felt offended on the original's behalf.

Clicking her tongue in annoyance, she made her way back to her room, deeming every other part of the house a pointless area not worth her time.

Aside from furniture and cabinets full of items, there wasn't much else—not even a box full of cultivation pills. It was honestly a little disheartening to think about.

Sheng Xin needed to buy her own cauldron. She could stick with a low-quality one for now, something the size of her head could work for making pills, but what about the ingredients? Hunting down spirit beasts was an option, but not preferable. If possible, she would just buy more.

She thought back to the pouch of coins she had and frowned. That wasn’t an option she could use as a long-term solution.

It could work short-term, and if she pinched her finances, she might just be able to break past body refinement using her meager coins. Anything beyond that was a shot in the dark.

So should she join a sect?

Also no. The ones in Moonlight City were aligned with good.

Which meant she only had one option left: find a way to capture spirit beasts on her own merit and cultivate that way.

But where would she find low-grade spirit beasts? The forest wasn’t an option, not for now.

Below the city, maybe?

Would spirit beasts even form in such a densely populated area? Definitely not.

Sheng Xin thought through her options again. First, she checked her current assets: her money, her knowledge, and her natural talent.

Those were good enough to get by, definitely, but raising suspicion so early wasn't a good idea. People would catch on that she had taken over this body with how fast she would progress.

Sheng Xin grabbed her pouch of coins and dropped several of them onto her bed. Guess it was time for her to get a second identity, one that could rise through the ranks freely and without raising suspicion.

After finding a hidden spot to change out of her robes, Sheng Xin traversed the city as just another bystander among many. Her trip this time would be quick, as she was planning on getting a few things before heading back home.

She bought another mask, this one of higher quality than her previous one. The item had personally been infused with her own Qi, making it a basic spirit treasure.

Sheng Xin placed the mask on her bed. It had taken her precisely two hours to infuse the object with her Qi, and her channels grew more efficient during that time, so she considered it time well spent.

But even with her Qi channels, she couldn't do much to the mask due to the low ambient Qi in her surroundings.

She wondered if she should modify the mask further and add a formation on top of the spirit treasure. The flat surface of the mask would be a perfect place for that, but she didn’t have anything to draw the formation with.

She remembered a method taught to her by some puppet master in the past, one she had further improved once she became a corpse puppeteer.

It was a method that allowed her to use parts of the puppet to form a pseudo-dantian, which could activate a single technique—or multiple if the puppeteer was skilled—and act like a formation.

It was a method she could use—no, would use. She needed every advantage she could get right now, and putting a formation on her mask to further improve it would be great.

Sheng Xin grabbed tiny pieces of jewelry, buttons, and other trinkets and shoved them into a box. She then cultivated while holding the container, beginning the process of imbuing the box and its contents with Qi.

Sheng Xin stopped after an hour. She had finished sooner than she expected.

Interesting.

Instead of continuing with designing her mask, she used the extra time she gained to grab two cups and a single paintbrush. Sheng Xin bit her finger and drew blood. She then positioned her dripping finger over the cups to fill them with her very essence.

It wasn’t uncommon for demons to use blood and other living materials in their cultivation, but finding high-quality bodies was difficult.

Prioritizing tempering her channels first proved effective in that regard, as compared to the rest of her body, her blood was now bursting with Qi. Every single drop of her crimson liquid was dense with ambient energy.

Once the two cups were filled, Sheng Xin went ahead and turned them into spiritual materials.

Her blood was turned into paint, which coated the surface of the mask. First, she drew a formation that would turn the mask into a container for Qi. When the blood dried, Sheng Xin painted over it to hide the formation.

As her paint ran dry and her brush no longer produced lines, Sheng Xin dropped them and began placing her trinkets. All of them became teeth of various sizes and colors.

Some were sharp; others were dull. Few of them were made of gold or other precious materials. A few were made of gems, and the rest were made of wood or other non-valuable materials.

When all of them came together to create three circular rows of teeth on the surface of the mask, they created three distinct techniques: one for gathering Qi, which the mask would then store; another for lowering the wearer’s presence; and the last, which could be activated to release a paralyzing screech.

There was no rhyme or reason to the pattern, and all three techniques utilized all three rows to form—not just one or two.

It was only Sheng Xin's experience in making formations, her knowledge of states of Qi, and her expertise in crafting puppets that allowed the mask to be the way it was. Any other cultivator would have thought the mask an impossibility.

Sheng Xin thought that it would serve for now, but she could definitely make better. She needed to make a replacement for it as soon as possible.

She put down the circular-maw mask and grabbed her robe. Now, for her other accessories.