The following m, Tang Xi rested on the silk bed, her eyeshes fluttering like petals touched by a gentle breeze. Shortly after, her eyes opened, revealing the familiar fusion of someone waking from a deep and unusual slumber. She blinked, letting her gaze wander across the room. The familiarity of her surroundings trasted with the strangeness she felt within herself.

  'When did I fall asleep?' — she thought, rising slowly. Her mind seemed shrouded in mist, the events of the previous night fragmented like shards of gss.

  'Wait... what happened yesterday?'— Tang Xi rubbed her temples, trying to piece together her scattered memories. The searing pain she had felt after ing the Amber Natal Milk resurfaced as a vivid recolle, but everything that followed was a blur. She vaguely remembered ahereal dream, where she seemed to dance among floating lights, free of any worry, enveloped in indescribable fort and lightness.

  But something else was different. Tang Xi realized this as soon as her feet touched the cold floor. Her body felt notably light, as if she had shed an invisible weight she had always carried. She took a deep breath and experienced something unpreted: she could sehe spiritual energy in the air.

  'Wait... if I sense spiritual energy, that means...'

  Wasting no time, she returo the bed, crossed her legs, and assumed a lotus position. Closing her eyes, she begaating. Her mind dove deeply into herself, carefully expl her body. Her focus tered on her dantian, the core of all spiritual energy. When she did, a wave of astonishment hit her.

  Her dantian, previously closed ay, was now open and pulsing with vitality. Tang Xi could feel the spiritual energy flowing toward it, like rivers rushing into a newly discovered o.

  Guided by an instinctive feeling, she began to draw the spiritual energy into her body, direg it toward her dantian. As soon as she initiated the process, the spiritual energy reacted in an ued way. The five elements — fire, earth, metal, water, and wood — entered her body simultaneously, a chaotic whirlwind defyitempt to trol it.

  She tried to separate the energies, brag herself for the arduous task of refining eato its essence, but the frantic pad mixture were overwhelming. "So it's true... having an affinity for all five elements is sidered a 'waste' because of this," she thought, aowledging the challenge. After all, each cultivator with this trait needed five times more energy and effort to achieve the same results as others.

  Tang Xi took a deep breath, fog anizing the chaos. But before she could act, something unusual occurred. A strange, shimmering, and mysterious energy emanated from her body. This unknown energy seemed to have a will of its own; it enveloped the five elements, uniting them in harmonious bance.

  Astoang Xi observed as the mixed energy began cyg through her body. She felt the elemental currents flow through her muscles, bones, and ans like a crystalline river before returning to her dantian. When the energy returned, it had been transformed — purer, more potent, with a shimmering hue and a solemn aura.

  The transition was swift and surprising. Before she could prehend what was happening, Tang Xi felt a definitive ge in her body and spirit. She had broken through the first level of the Body Tempering Realm.

  Her heart raced, but it was also filled with questions. How was this possible? What was that shimmering energy that seemed to be the key to harmonizing the five elements? Tang Xi took a deep breath, trying to calm her mind. She khat, while she had advanced, her discoveries were only beginning.

  Lost in a whirlwind of emotions and questions, something peculiar caught her attention: her refle in the silver ors of the bed. Her hair, once bck as night, now dispyed a luminous ptinum sheen, almost as if it had been bathed in the light of a full moon.

  With her heart rag, she practically leaped out of bed, heading straight to the full-length mirror he intricately crafted silk s she used to ge clothes. Upon seeing her refle in the mirror, another shock hit her.

  It wasn't just her hair that had ged. Her eyes now glowed with a rare, dazzling shade of violet that seemed to shimmer and sparkle. Her entire appearance appeared transformed. Her face, whice bore the refined elegance of a noble dy, now radiated something beyond human prehension. She dispyed ahereal and transdey, like that of a noble fairy whose presence could attract admiration and greed, but at the same time disce such feelings due to the purity she exuded.

  Tang Xi stood frozen, staring at her refle as if it beloo someone else.—"Why do I look like this?"— she whispered, fusioched into every line of her face.

  In that instant, something in her mind seemed to respond—a soft, familiar vibration that stirred fotten memories. In the blink of an eye, something appeared in her hands: an ornate umbrel that seemed more like a celestial masterpiece than ahly object.

  She reized it, though she had thought it was a distant dream, something she would ouch again. The delicate handle bore a carved crest moon, and its surface, which should have been made of cloth or bamboo paper, was a mystery. The material seemed like a blend of reality and fantasy, adorned with cloud-like patterns against a dark background. Amid the clouds, tiny moons and stars appeared and disappeared, like a living night sky hidis in its shadows.

  Wheouched the umbrel, a name surfaced in her mind: Lunar Umbrel. Immediately, fragments of knowledge began flooding her sciousness, as though the object was veying the ao your question.

  Before she could fully grasp what was happening, hurried knocks interrupted her thoughts."Knock, knock, knock."

  — "Miss, are you awake? May I e in to help you get ready? Miss, you won't believe what happened yesterday while you were practig! I made sure no one disturbed you!" — Ah Tao's curious and eager voice sounded from outside.

  Tang Xi blirying to calm the storm in her mind. Her refle in the mirror reminded her that her transformation was far too evident to go unnoticed. 'I 't let anyone see me like this until I uand what happened, she thought quickly'.

  — "Ah Tao, please call my father for me and tell him it's an emergency. Inform the guards that no one is to enter except him,"— she responded with a firm and solemn tone.

  Oher side of the door, Ah Tao sehe seriousness in her dy's void, without asking further questions, instructed the guards before hurrying off to find Patriarch Tang Wei.

  Tang Xi sat down again, carefully holding the Lunar Umbrel as if it taihe key to the mystery of her transformation. Her gaze returo the mirror, but this time, it no longer held only fusion. A subtle determination began to glimmer in her eyes as she absorbed the information being transmitted by the artifa her hands.

  She khat somethiraordinary had occurred, and the step would be to uhe meaning of her neearand the e to the object that now felt like aension of her very essence.