Waxing Crescent

'Where did she come from? I didn't see her fighting, but I made sure that all the people that were hiding got out of here since some of them were getting hurt by the collateral damage. So where did she come from? She doesn't look like she just got out of a fight either...' The librarian thought to himself, squinting his eyes dangerously.

Shifting his gaze over to the barrier, he looked at it nervously.

'Did she find a way to bypass the barrier? She didn't find it, right? Oh lord... please tell me she didn't find it... ahh, I'm just a normal person ah?!'

Quickly rushing towards the barrier, he didn't even notice that he had knocked over a few stacks of books. Seeing the books sprawl across the floor, some of the people that were organizing the books felt like crying out in despair. Walking over to pick up the books again albeit begrudgingly, the people expressed their resignedness with their exasperated gazes.

Raising her eyebrows at the young man rushing through stacks of books like a frightened rabbit, Aquila couldn't help but feel pity for the people that stacked the books.

Walking out of the Book Hall, she had no idea that a certain young librarian was rummaging around on the second floor, freaking out. He couldn't sense any foreign energy traces anywhere, but his mind was spinning rapidly, coming up with numerous illogical conclusions of his own.

Meanwhile, Aquila was walking towards the gates of Blue Moon City. She had already put the strange librarian to the back of her mind and was thinking about how she could unlock her Waxing Crescent. Since she needed to collect energy from the ground and focus it into a solid crescent shape, she was going to do it at night where she could focus best.

Seeing her pushing the gates open and walking out, the two guards didn't dare say anything and slunk back.

Smiling to herself, Aquila broke into a run towards the north again. The two guards looked at her figure dashing away and looked at each other intently, simultaneously saying, "She definitely ran away from home."

***

It was nightfall, and Aquila was walking around calmly. She had managed to sneakily rob a few more people during her journey and now had a grand total of fifty-seven silvers.

Looking up at the dark night sky, she smiled to herself as she enjoyed the cool breeze caressing her face and hair.

'Even though you're not as dazzling as you were back home, you're still as tranquil as ever.'

Walking to the side of the road, she sat down in a comfortable position with her legs crossed. Taking a deep breath, she slowly closed her eyes while putting her hands on the ground, palms facing the sky. Emptying her mind, she opened her piercing eyes, looking down at her hands. Floating above her palms was a formless wisp of pale blue light. It twisted and turned in her palms as its shape changed from a round ball to a mass of coils to a thread and continued shifting.

Focusing her gaze on the wisp of pale light, Aquila easily managed to mold it into a crescent shape. However, the moment she blinked even for a second, the crescent would fall back into a blob of formless light.

By the time she finally managed to focus her mind to the point where it could keep the crescent in its shape even without looking at it, it was already daytime.

Aquila was rather annoyed at the moment, and anyone who walked by only wanted to stay as far away from her as possible.

'It took me hours to get my Waxing Crescent... How disappointing. My mind is so tired, I need compensation, you hear me?'

If anyone were to hear what she was complaining about, they would be shocked to the core. Unlocking the first phase of the Moonlight Cycle, the Waxing Crescent, was one of the hardest phases to unlock besides the Full Moon, Waning Moon, and Second Moon. These phases were all bottlenecks for cultivators, and most spend days to weeks to months contemplating and trying before managing to unlock this first phase. The other bottlenecks could easily take years. For this girl to unlock Waxing Crescent in a mere night was simply incomprehensible. But of course, Aquila didn't know that, nor would she care.

In fact, she knew that it took a long time to break past each bottleneck. It was just that she had not reached any new bottlenecks on her star long ago, so long that she had forgotten how hard it was.

'And there's still another seven phases to go... looks like I'll be staying on this moon for years...'

Suddenly feeling extremely dizzy, Aquila pressed down on her temples, but it wasn't helping. Her eyesight was getting hazier by the second, and soon after, she fainted on the floor, unconscious.

In her subconscious mind, she found herself back on her homeland. She was looking at a young and beautiful woman's face who was currently looking more like the devil's incarnate. The woman was laughing maniacally as she pierced a sword through her body slowly and painfully, but Aquila felt nothing. There wasn't even the slightest flinch on her face even as she watched the sword slicing through her flesh and skin ruthlessly, watching as each bone in her body was crushed, and every muscle ripped apart. As her physical body was destroyed slowly but surely, Aquila only felt her soul slipping away.

The pain was so unbearable that physical pain was completely incomparable to it. She opened her mouth, but no sounds came out. She wanted to breathe, but her body was immobilized from the inside. The last thing she saw was the woman's sadistic smile overflowing with bloodthirstiness.

Then it went pitch black.