Late at night.
On Cold Moon Peak.
All was silent, save for the occasional chirping of insects echoing through the bamboo grove.
Inside Feng Xian'er's bamboo hut, Feng Xian'er lay languidly on a wicker chair.
Half asleep, she gazed at the palm-sized Nine-Phoenix Heart-Exterminating Mirror before her.
Ever since the mirror had come into her hands, it had been like this, like a little child sleeping quietly.
It was so strange that she could do nothing with it.
At most, she could use its functions as a Spirit Artifact, but she had never been able to activate the Grand Patriarch's Innate Divine Ability.
Yet the ancestral cultivation manual clearly stated that it would react in a special way on every full-moon night.
"Grand Patriarch, am I really one of your descendants? There's absolutely no blood relationship between us. Surely you weren't illegitimate?"
Feng Xian'er fiddled with the Heart-Exterminating Mirror, muttering to herself.
She turned it this way and that without discovering anything, then simply threw it onto the floor with a clang.
She even stamped on it twice, hard.
It was as though this were not the Danyang Sect's sect-guarding Spirit Artifact at all, but merely a child's toy bought from a roadside stall.
If she was dissatisfied, she stamped on it a couple of times.
"I reckon I was picked up somewhere. My bloodline doesn't continue yours."
With that, Feng Xian'er lay back on her wicker chair and let her mind wander into the great void.
Throwing it around and stamping on it a few times was already polite treatment now. In the past, she would have been letting Tianjizi down if she had not burned it and smashed it with a hammer.
"Humm..."
Suddenly, a clear, resonant hum came from the Heart-Exterminating Mirror.
The sound was faint, yet