Gradually, Qingyue herself realized that getting rid of her inheritance quickly wasn't going to happen, but she also realized that, eventually, it was possible. I had no intention of backing down, especially since I was getting quite a lot out of it myself.
Life became measured and monotonous again. Each time, my body adapted a little better to the goddess's energy, though the process was slow. On the other hand, I regenerated faster and faster. But the sixth stage of the Great Way of the Buddha was still a long way off.
On the first day of our third year at the Dragon God's trial grounds, I finally decided to start on the task of exterminating the beasts.
Interesting fact: if you google something like "how to make dynamite," the search engine will give you a very vague answer, while your country's intelligence services will become very good friends with your browser history for a long time. But if you were a well-read boy as a child and read Jules Verne, then you probably have precise information in your memory about how to make at least nitroglycerin. The guy really didn't watch what he wrote or who he was writing it for, so I knew this pleasant recipe for a "big boom."
The fairies were very surprised when I demanded all the necessary materials from them, but they got them for me anyway. I couldn't exactly advertise an order like that at the merchant guild.
Qingyue was surprised too, but obediently followed me while I arranged a pile of barrels filled with some liquid, trying to be as careful as humanly possible. I set the trap a couple of kilometers from our home. All that remained was to bring out bait that would make every beast on the trial grounds rush here. And I had exactly such bait.
The moment I opened the jade bottle, a faint fiery aura spread through the air, enticing every beast above the Nascent Profound Realm. Yes, Phoenix blood wasn't as powerful as dragon blood, but I still had to obtain the latter, while a pure drop of Phoenix blood was right here in my hand. There was no reason to doubt the result.
Every beast within a radius of hundreds of kilometers rushed toward me. At first, I tested my new abilities after advancing my body-tempering stage, but gradually there were simply too many beasts. I wasn't exactly tired, just worn out. I closed the bottle, hid it in my spatial ring, and used my movement skill to get as far away from the place as quickly as possible, not forgetting to throw an ice lotus toward the barrels on my way out.
The explosion was spectacular, no denying that. I was a kilometer away, but even I got caught by the shock wave and slammed into a tree. Fortunately, my body was tougher than the tree, though that somehow made it even more insulting.
Qingyue watched all of this from our platform, and saying she was impressed would be an understatement.
"Now do you understand why knowing the world is just as important as, if not more important than, all this profound energy?"
"What was that?"
"That was nitroglycerin, little Yue. I told you about it during our chemistry lessons, didn't I?"
"Horrible. It looked horrible even from far away."
"I thought it was beautiful, but there's no arguing about taste."
"I thought you'd stayed there."
"It probably wouldn't have killed me, though it wouldn't have been pleasant. But I'm glad you were worried about me."
The girl said nothing. She simply blushed and went back to what she'd been doing. She was still honing her control over ice profound energy.
I hadn't completed my quest, but I'd definitely done eighty percent of the work. I hadn't even tried to kill every last beast—that would've been a waste of time. The most valuable thing to me about the Dragon God's trial grounds was the temporal anomaly. While years passed in here, only a few months would pass outside. Perfect, if you asked me. I'd build up my strength before the canonical events.
There weren't that many beasts left, and I'd finish them off fairly quickly. But why would I want early release when everything here suited me just fine? Qingyue completely agreed. Over those couple of years, the girl had grown tremendously, both physically and mentally. She'd gone from a charming girl to a beautiful young woman who understood this world far better than most cultivators much older than her.
Still, I hadn't expected this move from her.
"Lun, could you come into my tent for a minute?"
I'm not the kind of man who, for the sake of his lust and depraved nature, refuses to give a young woman any personal space, so I had a couple of enormous tents in my spatial ring. In two years, I'd been inside Qingyue's tent maybe six times, and only when she'd invited me herself. There was an enormous king-sized bed in the center, a writing desk in the corner, a couple of shelves, and chests for clothes. Unfortunately, this wasn't the world of Potterverse, so it was an ordinary tent without a three-room apartment in expanded space complete with shower and toilet, but there was still an enormous bathtub inside, along with a formation for heating water. In short, I'd taken care of all our comforts in advance.
When I stepped through the flap, a completely naked Xia Qingyue was standing in front of me. I'll admit it honestly: I froze.
"Today is my birthday," the girl came to my rescue when she realized I didn't understand what was happening, "and I've made a decision about your proposal. Actually, I made it a long time ago, but I knew that for some reason it was important to you that I turn eighteen."
"Are you sure about this, Qingyue? You know you don't actually owe me anything."
"I know. That's exactly why I want to be with you."
"You're idealizing me. I'm not some selfless knight. I need you to be one hundred percent certain, because there's no going back."
"You should've thought of that before corrupting my soul and defiling my thoughts. Now I won't be able to be with some mindless idiot."
Propriety had been observed, so I quickly walked over, embraced the girl, and pressed my lips to hers. And after that... after that there was magic. Magic and tenderness.
I'm not such a blockhead that I don't know a girl's first time is very important, so I was as gentle and careful with her as possible. That way, despite the pain at first, she too was able to experience the joy of yin-yang harmony. Naturally, I enjoyed every second myself, which wasn't surprising. Qingyue drew me in not only with her delicate beauty, but also with her lively mind and kindness. Not falling in love with her was simply impossible.
After the act itself, I didn't just roll over and start snoring. I'm not that much of a blockhead. First, I kissed her tenderly, putting all my love and gratitude into it.
"Did you get the Little World?"
"No idea. Do you really think that's my top priority at this moment? Understand this, Yue'er: that wasn't just physical intimacy. You're my wife now. From this second on, our souls are bound together for good. If something happens to you, the world will burn after you. Even becoming a god will mean nothing without you, because you're part of my soul."
"Lun..." The girl was moved and hid her face against my chest.
"It's all right, little one. Let's freshen up now and get back to work. The world won't wait for us to have our fill of personal happiness."
"I don't think I can walk."
"That's all right, darling. Your husband will wash you."
"Husband?" she squeaked, still not fully comprehending her new reality, but she simply nodded with a happy, if shy, smile. It was an amazingly tender and personal moment, though it didn't turn into anything hotter because after her first time the girl was still sore down there.
"Lun... Husband, I have something to confess."
"I'm listening, darling."
"Don't misunderstand me. I'd already decided everything for myself, and I really did want to be yours, but..."
"But there was another reason too, and you combined business with pleasure. I praise you for that. Go on."
"The Little World. The energy inside it was simply disappearing."
"Even though you weren't spending it. Right?"
"Yes. And I thought maybe..."
"It feeds your Glass Heart? Acts as a battery for it?"
"Yes."
"So you decided to weaken your Little World by sharing its energy with me."
"In short. But you..."
"Yes, yes, your husband knows he's so irresistible that everything else is secondary. I don't have any complexes, darling."
"I just didn't manage to tell you first back there."
"Yeah, you were probably getting cold standing around naked. And deep down you wanted it to be an act of love after all, not pure calculation."
"Yes."
"Come here." I pulled the girl closer and hugged her again, looking straight into her beautiful eyes. "Never be ashamed of your feelings when you're with family. Or of your mind. No one will judge you for either one. You have no reason to hide your soul from me, because it belongs to me just as mine belongs to you. Understand?"
"Yes, husband. I'm happy I chose you."
"All right, enough tenderness. Time to work. The faster you reach the sixth stage, the faster your cultivation will become."
"Don't you want to show me the project you've been working on all this time? You said you'd tell me about it when I turned eighteen."
"Ah, that project? You're right. Now is exactly the time to show you."
We went into my tent, and I pulled all my blueprints and notes out of the ring and dumped them onto the table. They were for a new cultivation manual I'd created based on dozens of dual-cultivation manuals.
"What else could anyone expect from you?" the little bitch rolled her eyes when she understood what I'd been working on. "But where did you get so many manuals from other clans and sects?"
"Qianhui gave them to me. It's her assignment for me."
"Don't tell me you're planning to sleep with the entire Palace."
"Don't say stupid things. That's fundamentally impossible."
"So only with the Mistresses and the fairies?"
"Maybe. I have no idea yet. Whatever orders come down from above."
"So you're completely innocent in all this."
"What can I do? It's the wicked Mistress playing games with my virtue. Otherwise, I'm faithful only to my wife."
"I believe you." She gave me such an impassive look that I actually felt ashamed.
"Still, I was being completely serious this time. I have no idea what Qianhui's plans are. So far, she's the only one I've seriously courted."
"The Great Mistress of the Palace?"
"Yep. I liked her a lot. Smart and fairly virtuous, though not without some cunning."
"So intelligent women attract you."
"No. Only my wife attracts me. But my wife happens to be very smart, let's put it that way."
"I see. What about the twins?"
"Let's leave the guessing aside. The only thing I know for certain is that after receiving the dragon inheritance, I have to give my virgin seed to your teacher's sister. I don't know about anything else yet."
"Why?"
"That seed is incredibly beneficial to a woman. She'll immediately break through to the late stages of the Emperor Profound Realm, maybe even become a Tyrant right away. The Palace needs strong practitioners against the coming disasters."
"Why not me? Don't misunderstand, I'm not whining. I'm just curious."
"That seed is guaranteed to make a woman pregnant. You won't be able to protect the fetus from cold energy. Your control is still too weak. Yuechan, on the other hand, is genuinely good at it after my cleansing. Or did you want to become a mother?"
"Well, I'd really like to, but..."
"Don't make excuses. I understand. You need to sort things out with your own mother first, then think about children. Am I right?"
"Yes, husband. You're absolutely right. But I'd gladly bear your child. Someday..."
"Someday..."
"Now explain how your manual works."
"It's rather shameful, to be honest."
"It's a dual-cultivation manual. It's supposed to be shameful."
"Shameful for me. Basically, I become the 'cauldron,' not the other way around."
"How?"
"There are two important factors in dual cultivation. You know what an antenna is, right?"
"You explained it."
"Well, cultivators are like antennas. Each one catches their own frequency of profound energy. Dual cultivation makes it so that together they start catching many more frequencies because their souls are almost joined."
"Their souls?"
"Why do you think people can't just hold hands during dual cultivation? Why is that level of intimacy required?"
"I don't know. I never thought about it."
"Nature made it that way. A child isn't just the union of a sperm cell and an egg cell. A child also receives a piece of each parent's soul. For that to happen, the souls have to be connected. It's a natural mechanism dual cultivators exploit. The second mechanism is longer pathways. They circulate profound energy not only through themselves, but through their partner too, purifying it in the process. And because their souls are fairly synchronized at that moment, the result is very pure energy that provides greater benefits. Evil cultivators, when they use a 'cauldron,' purify all the energy inside their partner's body, using the maximum possible number of profound veins. It's unpleasant and time-consuming for the partner, and gives them almost no benefit."
"So why did you decide to become the 'cauldron'?"
"Not exactly a 'cauldron,' but the point is that all the energy, both mine and my partner's, has to pass through my veins. I have both fire and ice, and on top of that my fire is the Phoenix's purifying flame. Afterward, the profound energy will be so neutral that both I and my partner can digest it without any problem. Basically, this technique was made specifically for me."
"No matter how much you deny it, I'm sure you've decided to turn the entire Frozen Cloud Palace into your harem."
"Well, I'm not exactly confirming that information, but theoretically speaking, tell me, darling: if you happened to be the principal wife and had several thousand sisters..."
"Enough babbling. Why do you need this specifically?"
"Why do we need it? Not just me. US, dear wife. The technique lets us cultivate almost five times faster. That's divine level. I've outdone myself."
"That's monstrous."
"Agreed. Only one problem: I need to obtain this inheritance, otherwise even my body won't withstand that much energy at that rate."
"So what's my benefit? You said it helps us."
"It primarily benefits the person at the lower level. Imagine this: I do it with Qianhui and shoot up to the Earth Profound Realm. Then I come back to you, and you get pulled up after me. Very simple."
"So the more strong women I find for you, the stronger I'll become myself?"
"You won't have to find anyone. Even without that, the two of us can cultivate several times faster. I don't plan on bringing home every piece of trash that's strong enough."
"Right, only the smart ones. I bet you've even made a list."