Chapter 2: Practice

Were anyone around to have seen Yun walk back into the temple, they might notice the clean soles of her bare and pale feet even as she trod on the imperfect stone ground. At a glance it was inexplicable, but if wise, the non-existent observer might have noted that whenever her feet fell they left a smoothed surface behind. The subtle grain and gritty texture on the stone floor was washed away under her feet. She absorbed pieces of the ground as she touched it, along with dust and dirt atop it. Perfectly smooth indents in the shape of her feminine feet where left wherever her peds fell.

Yun realized that everything was hers, or was her, rather. She would reabsorb it all. If she had pleased, she could have stayed in her meditation pose and slowly but surely reabsorbed the mountain from where she sat. That was boring, though. For a variety of reasons, it felt best to absorb people. There were layers and complexities to people. For some reason, absorbing her former master felt far better to Yun than absorbing the air particles funneled into her form, or the bits of dirt and stone under her feet.

In a less physical sense, she also couldn’t deny that satisfaction she got from his look of confusion, and from the doubts and other negative emotions running through his readable-mind as it floundered into her form ever so briefly before she melted it down.

As the richest person in the world, Yun knew part of the fun of wealth was showing it off. So, too, it was with power.

She entered the temple, her black hair having shrunk down to its normal style hanging just at her neck. The temple’s interior floors were stone as well, albeit with smoother tiles. She made those bits of stone ever smoother still as she walked along the hallways absorbing the minute ‘imperfections’ of their surface. The thwaps of her bare footed steps echoed through the window and candle-lit halls.

The monastery was a tad old, but the people that built it had the foresight to make its walls and design as soundproof as possible. Yun knew none could have heard Hui’s screams as she absorbed everything he was.

Simple and barren hallways lead towards the communal meditation chamber. If Yun’s timing was right, they should have a few more minutes before finishing up. If absorbing one man felt so good, she wondered how assimilating dozens of people at once would. There were over one hundred monks at the monastery, with the majority of them beginners. The chamber would be filled with at least 50 of them. 50 human ‘selves’, ripe for devouring.

The chamber was big, and the monks were arranged on the stone floor with their eyes shut in meditation posture. Each was evenly spaced 2 feet from one another on all four sides--when applicable, as some were at corners or borders or the far left, right, back or front.

The way Yun entered put her right next to a raised stage of sorts at one end of the room. Atop the slightly elevated area was a big brass gong and one older monk sitting by it. His eyes were nearly closed in an aware and observant state, and the gong’s mallet rested across his knees as he sat lotus posed. Yun walked up to him, and he turned to face her.

He was another one of the ‘master’ monks at the monastery. He was a bit younger and slightly less affable than Master Hui. In particular, he was far less a fan of Yun’s “arrangement” with the monastery than Hui. He turned to her with a hint of frustration.

“Yun, the group meditations are not over yet. There’s still a few minutes till I ring the gong and I won’t have you disturbing-”

The 20-year old woman placed the palm of her hand atop his bald head. The appendage and its flesh cascaded down his body like a waterfall. He was consumed quickly, and his screams were muffled by the fair-skinned flesh draping over him.

The outline he made against Yun’s curtain of skin and meat grew thinner and thinner till only a skeleton pressed against the outside of the entrapping flesh. The woman smiled, a bit bittersweet that none of the other monks had opened their eyes to see it. They were trained only to get out of their trances at the sound of the gong; what little noises escaped her body’s ‘insulation’ of the prey didn’t stir them.

Yun finished absorbing the man. She dissolved his conscious mind and once again managed to hold back a moan of pleasure. Her hand turned from its amorphous, all-encompassing flesh-form back to the dainty feminine appendage it used to be. She reached down to grab the gong mallet, which she didn’t consume unlike the rest of that monk, and hoisted it over her shoulder.

Brown eyes wide and open, she focused and her hair stretched out again. It grew down her back and to the stage floor before creeping over its edge. Much as Yun’s feet left smoothness in their tread, the hair strands carved their own smooth indents on the chamber ground as they slithered along the floor of the communal meditation room. In that sense, they made windy streams like a river’s. Her strands each flowed towards the meditation monks. The tips of the hair filaments grew pointed like needles and gently, as subtly and painlessly as Yun could manage, she pierced the meditators.

The black tendrils slipped in at the skin of the monks’ necks, and the back of their bald heads. That was enough. She didn’t need to fully creep into their bodies. Just a touch was enough to take all they had. The needle-tips were just to get a better hold, and to amuse the woman. Yun watched a few of the more novice monks twitch at the sensations. She figured they were dismissing it as their body’s restlessness from having sat still so long. A soft, quiet chuckle slipped past her lips.

Yun wanted them to be aware at the moment of their absorption. So, with everything in place, she took up the mallet and slammed it to the gong.

The monks stirred, gently at first, but once one of the monks opened his eyes he let out a scream and the others followed suit.

The room was something out of a horror film or, similarly horrific, a poorly wired server room. Her black hair had grown out from her body and fanned over much of the free space of the meditation chamber. The hair was bundled thick at some parts then thin down to just a few strands once the numerous branches of black started splitting out towards the monks.

Despite a glance, not a single strand was tangled. Yun had complete awareness *and* control over her body thanks to her own special technique developed during meditation. Hair strands neatly glided against one another if needed on their way towards the monk flesh they punctured.

It looked like the room was under a sort of dark infestation, but the only thing Yun sought to infest was the monk’s bodies. Her hair stuck out of them like cables. She gave them a few moments to stew in their confusion and fear. She felt it: upon connecting with them as she did, she could feel their thoughts flow into her awareness.

“Well.”, she said. “Seems a lot of you still needed way more training. I’m picking up lots of desires running through your mind: desires to be free of my hair, to be back home, in a time before you decided to study here. There’s also a few more perverse thoughts lingering there. I dare say that a good chunk of you would have never experienced the ‘enlightenment’ the masters have obtained. You’re simply too weak-willed. Fear not, though, as I will grant you the *true* higher purpose: ‘joining’ me to make me more whole.”

Confusion spiked, much to Yun’s amusement. She could feel their blood running against the tips of her sprawling strands of hair. She could feel their minds panic at the slightest implication of being dissolved.

Yun focused for nary a second. Her hair twitched and the monks let out a quick, unified scream of pain. She had drained the very fluid from their bodies. The blood was sucked right out of their forms. The once young men now had skin wrinkled and dry like the oldest of elders. It wasn’t enough for the woman. She was hungry for absolute wholeness with the universe, so another twitch of her hair sucked the last bits of moisture from their bodies.

The once youthful monks now looked like desiccated corpses. Every last drop they had to offer went through the pulsing strands of Yun’s black hair. It traveled like a current to her body: the strands widened at parts, twitching in delight to accommodate the bounty of the monks’ beings. She took more than their water from their blood and cells; she took their very minds.

Yun felt their feeble consciousnesses squirming within her. It was delightful. She dissolved one, then another and almost fell over.

‘I shouldn’t...’ she thought. ‘It’d be too much…’

‘Well, I’m gonna dissolve them all anyway... A bit of a treat can’t hurt.’

Yun digested all the remaining consciousnesses at once. For them, it was an intense experience. They felt their minds crushed and torn apart by something far, far greater than themselves, something they ‘swam’ in. Their fledgling little minds never stood a chance. Even though it lasted just fractions of a second, it was the most intense psychic agony they felt.

Yun buckled over, palms on the ground, thighs twitching and crotch quivering. Euphoria wracked her body far, far more intense than the pleasant humming bliss she had ever since that meditation of hers. It was the best orgasm of her life dozens of times over, and she was aware of every single little firing of her neurons to make it happen. She gushed out some nectar and stained the undergarments hidden beneath her robe, but she didn’t care.

She was a superior being. It was her right to enjoy herself. No one could hear it outside this chamber anyways, though the echo her moan made pleased her ears. She simply reabsorbed the fluid and cleaned the garbs right up.

Her body stretched out. Yun’s toes curled into the stone of the stage, fingers too. She absorbed what those digits squeezed against. From all directions, Yun’s body expanded. She knew from her omnipresent hyper-body-awareness that she had almost doubled in height to 10 feet tall. Thankfully, she could expand that robe of hers with her body.

Yun had saw it coming, but knew it was inevitable. She couldn’t have contained this much power in her smaller, former height for much longer. In time, she would be bigger than anything there ever was. Bigger than the universe she both was and would absorb into her form. The idea excited her, and got her back on track.

The woman slowly stood up to her new and imposing height. Her hair was still grown out and poking into the monks in the room. They looked like mummies: dried skeletons in their contemplative poses. A few of the bony dry-skinned jaws hung open in horror still. She smirked.

“If only they really understood what they were becoming a part of. They’d be smiling with joy.”, mused Yun.

She wasn’t gonna leave behind any of their bodies, even if they were only dry, dead bones and cells by now. Her hair swarmed them like black silky clouds and dissolved each of their remains.

That done, Yun withdrew her hair and had her normal style back. Back down by her neck her hair rested.

Now 10 feet tall, Yun left the room towards another hallway.