Emerging out into a blurred, shifting room, Jun Li narrowed her eyes at the unpleasant assault on her senses. When the shifting light subsided and the walls of the pagoda melted away, a beautiful scene was unveiled.

  White stone, pure and immaculate in its construction, stretched out around Jun Li, and buildings of wood and gold cast gentle shadows over the vast plaza she had found herself in. It only took a few seconds for inherited memories to surface in her mind in response 'This is… Buddhist architecture? I've never seen any reference to Buddhism outside of my memories…'

  Above, an incredibly blue sky stretched out into the distance, compelling Jun Li to breathe deeply and enjoy some fresh air. '...It's colder, but the taste is the same as everywhere else in the pagoda…'

  Releasing a stale sigh, Jun Li's expression was unmoved, and continued to be so even as a shadow loomed over her from behind. "I won't be breathing easy until I'm out of this place, huh?" As she finished muttering to herself, an enormous palm came crashing down from above, eclipsing her body as the stone beneath violently shattered.

  So immaculate was the stone of the plaza that no dust was kicked up even by the heavy impact that sent cracks through the ground. Beneath that massive pal, Jun Li held one arm above her head, crooked at a right angle and supported by solidified Divine Beast Mercury and her own Hardblood.

  The same reinforcement trailed down her body to her feet, which had been embedded into the stone below by the impact. Looking back, Jun Li saw that the palm that had emerged from behind and attempted to crush her was made of wood. 'Another puppet? I suppose this pagoda mustn't keep any actual, living creatures inside…'

  As the weight of the palm drew back, Jun Li took the opportunity to quickly release the internal hardening of her body and face whatever challenge was confronting her on this floor.

  The visage of a peacefully smiling monk stared back at Jun Li, carved into the wooden head of the enormous puppet that towered over her nearly three times her height. Its right arm was oversized and held palm-out, threatening to strike again, and its left arm seemed atrophied, grossly undersized for its physique.

  Draped over the complex grain of its artificial body, a wine-colored robe and a string of one-hundred and eight golden beads garishly accentuated the designated aesthetic of the floor.

  "For a monk…" Jun Li stretched her neck, shaking off the rigidity and numbness that came after hardening the Divine Beast Mercury. "...you're pretty gaudy."

  … … …

  Outside, night had fallen, and Little Yun was alone, the bull-like man having left the snake to its own devices after attempting to teach the young beast how to avert itself from the path of the 'Demonic Beast' and towards the path of the 'Enlightened Beast.'

  Naturally, little of what he said held any lasting sway over Little Yun. Although the young snake was especially clever for a Magical Beast, it was indeed still a beast.

  In the end, all that was left of his lessons was a vague memory and an impromptu carving made in the wooden support beam of a nearby abandoned house. Whatever Little Yun was capable of understanding was enough to hold its interest, even as the anxiety of the beast's indefinite separation from Jun Li plagued it.

  At the edge of the square, Little Yun coiled near the wooden beam that bore the bull-like man's carved instructions. But its attention was elsewhere, gazing up towards the lights visible in the windows of the pagoda's third floor.

  As long as that light was on, Jun Li was still alive. And the higher it rose, the closer she would be to returning.

  Perhaps if Little Yun possessed a more advanced level of intelligence, it would have felt more uncertainty over Jun Li's circumstance, and by extension, its own. But as things stood, Little Yun fundamentally lacked the capacity to doubt Jun Li's return.

  Shifting, Little Yun gazed towards the carving in the wood nearby, deciphering the pictograms that had been left there with an instinctual fascination.

  As if by command, Little Yun stilled itself and attempted to rest, uncomfortably, with its forearms draped over its coils, and its eyes slowly closing.

  Only having gained eyelids a week ago after consuming the blood of an Earth Dragon and mutating closer to it, Little Yun lacked great familiarity with its own body and was forced to rely on the faint instincts it had inherited from bathing in the Earth Dragon's lingering intent.

  In that somewhat uncomfortable way, Little Yun attempted to settle into a resting position; all the while, the fresh memory of the pictographic instructions invoked a desire for the young beast to take a more active role in its physiological processes while resting.

  What those engraved instructions depicted was, in a way, cultivation. But it was a form far divorced from anything a human could practice. Now, with little else to compel it, Little Yun willingly allowed the doldrums of active cultivation to take over its free time, bearing only a vague awareness of where cultivation might take it.

  … … … … … …

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  Jun Li flew through a small window, into the dark interior of a temple building, landing lightly on her feet and hopping to distance herself further from her entrance point.

  A half-second later, the massive puppet monk slammed through the window palm-first, tearing a massive chunk out of the wall as it forced its way through in a hail of rubble. "Damn, you're tough!"

  Though Jun Li's words cursed her enemy, her tone and expression were that of delight. In this gloomy pagoda, Jun Li was thrilled to get a chance to stretch her limbs and challenge herself physically, especially after refining her hardblood technique from Junzi's advice.

  The immense puppet shot forward with a speed of acceleration that suddenly left Jun Li without the option of evading, as an enormous wooden palm once again obscured her vision. 'Can I brace myself? No, the floor indoors is too weak, I'd break through it if I tried to meet this thing's strength!'

  As fast as she could, Jun Li thrust her arm forward, forcing blood out through the back of her forearm as a spike, embedding itself into the puppet's arm in the same instant it crashed into her, momentarily severing her consciousness and repulsing her body with such force that she was blown through the other wall of the building.

  Her eyes flickering open and closed, Jun Li found herself facing the open sky of the pagoda's artificial world once again, momentarily forgetting where she was or what she had just done.

  Raising her arms to assist in righting her orientation, Jun Li noticed that her left arm had a broken spur of hardblood jutting out from it. She would have exclaimed when she remembered what she had attempted, but the entire front half of her body, face included, was too numb to move properly.

  Landing on the white stone of a temple plaza opposite the one she had initially emerged onto, Jun Li bounced and rolled for many meters before she began to slow.

  Using the opened aperture she had created her last hardblood spur from, Jun Li pulled a long rod of hardblood out of her arm, before slamming it down into the stone below, stopping her momentum and allowing her to look up and witness the puppet monk clumsily leap down from a window, crashing into the plaza itself.

  'Is it there…?' Jun Li narrowed her eyes, gazing towards the puppet's right hand, quickly catching sight of a red glint embedded in the wooden palm. 'Perfect…!' Jun Li stood up straight, pulling her hardblood stave from the stone below and wiping the blood that had begun to seep from her nose from the puppet's palm strike.

  "You'll come at me the exact same way each time, right…?" Jun Li twirled the hardblood stave in her hand. "In that case…" Roughly, she jammed the stave into the stone below at an angle, like an anti-cavalry spike. From afar, the puppet monk locked onto Jun Li and began to move her way, not charging per se, but striding into range at speed.

  Loosening the soil beneath the stone with her hardblood stave, Jun Li did not brace herself. Instead, she stretched her limbs and readied the Glass Cloud Art to evade. 'Not yet…' Gently, Jun Li liquified the bottom of the hardblood stave, allowing it to seep deeply into the hard, packed soil beneath, before hardening it once more.

  Before the puppet monk could reach her, Jun Li infused the embedded stave as deeply as she could with her own blood, reinforcing it to a level far beyond any ordinary materials.

  Shifting down to stand with her shoulder beneath the uplifted angle of the stave, Jun Li waited until the very last moment. Just before the puppet got in range to accelerate once more, Jun Li saw with certainty that the hardblood spur she had left in its palm had melted, soaking deeply into the grain of the wood after having remained disconnected from Jun Li herself.

  "Good!" The palm came slamming down once again, the puppet's body suddenly growing in Jun Li's perspective like a falling boulder.

  Without regard for the spike Jun Li had made, that palm descended mercilessly towards Jun Li, intent on crushing her and anything around her.

  As Jun Li leaned back, allowing the palm to strike down upon the spike she had made, that stave impaled the wood of the puppet's hand, not slowing its descending momentum in any way.

  With a cloud of dust erupting from the shattered stone and displaced soil below, the puppet looked through the smoke, hoping to see Jun Li broken beneath the weight of its palm and the fortitude of solid earth.

  But nothing at all remained beneath the puppet's palm, save for unnaturally glistening blood, impaled up and through the back of its hand.

  Withdrawing, the puppet attempted to stand taller and seek Jun Li. But that movement only caused its legs to buckle, and the puppet's body to follow, falling to its knees.

  Unable to understand its predicament, the puppet strained to move, finding its attacking palm had been somehow fused to the ground, rendering it incapable of being lifted again, despite how heavily the puppet struggled.

  From behind the puppet, Jun Li looked over, seeing that the blood in the soil, the stave, and the wood of the puppet's palm had mixed and solidified into one piece. "It worked… I was able to solidify the blood in its hand by impaling it with a solid piece…"

  "That is called… 'nucleation?'" Jun Li would not have been able to accurately identify the phenomenon without her inherited memories. "I'll have to look into it more…"

  As Jun Li idly muttered to herself, the puppet strained its body, pulling against the ground with all its strength, causing stone to crack as the earth below bulged out, only to sink back down again. "That's pretty scary…" Jun Li leapt gently onto the puppet's back, striding over its broad back and over its bowed neck.

  In a grim display of its unrelenting programming, the puppet's head reached back as far as it would go, the wooden neck straining until the engraved face of a gently smiling monk looked up towards Jun Li, the grain delaminating as its expression distorted, as if the puppet was furious.

  "It was fast and strong, but too simple to actually be a threat." Jun Li spoke out loud as she glanced out toward the empty space around the temple plaza, assuming correctly that the simulacrum was watching and judging her as she fought.

  Raising her arm, Jun Li took her time hardening her fist beyond the strength of mundane weapons before turning it down, accelerating to crash into the puppet's brow like a meteor, causing its head to burst into a rain of thick, jagged splinters.

  The puppet's body tipped forward, and Jun Li leapt off its back before it collided roughly with the ground.

  Landing gently a short distance away, Jun Li looked at the back of her hand and saw how the upper layers of the skin on her fist had been bloodlessly flayed away by the strength of her strike and the grit of the wood.

  "I can't harden layers of skin that don't have blood…" Jun Li winced at the pain that felt like fire coating the back of her hand. "Maybe I should buy some durable gloves…"