Besides Mylene and Camila, the only one who was able watch what happened at the orbit of the planet a moment ago, is Vivian as she is a soul cultivator whose realm is higher than Aster after all.

Vivian who was standing next to Aster had a slightly weird expression on her pretty face.

“Aster, is that truly your mother?”, she asked.

Aster raised an eyebrow, Vivian has met Lilia before so he didn’t understand whys he asked that, but he still answered.

“Yeah, why?”.

“I have never seen such a radical change in one’s heart, she is like a completely different person… though the “core” is the same”, she mumbled with a contemplative expression.

Aster bitterly smiled, he could feel Lilia’s intense gaze on him, and she was clearly excited to reunite with him, in fact he could already imagine how this was going to end, with she and Alice hogging him for themselves later.

But now there were still some things to do, the core elder who was blown away towards the planet fell into the sea of black flames, and though he previously fainted, as soon as he entered in contact with the black flames, his eyes immediately opened as he screamed from the bottom of his lungs.

“Aghhhhh!”, but after a few seconds his voice was suffocated in the sea of black flames.

From above Julian saw what happened and he was in awe, he and the core elder weren’t giving their all previously, he is a half-step Heavenly Transformation cultivator, and the core elder is… or was a recently ascended Heavenly Transformation cultivator, and yet this woman who he recognized as Aster’s mother, a woman he used to believe was just a Void Manipulation cultivator.

‘Wait now that I think about it, why didn’t I ever noticed how… “eye catching” was her though I have seen and met her before and why does she look different now?’, wondered Julian.

𝒪𝓥𝐿xt.𝗇𝓔t

To be honest it isn’t his fault, Lilia hasn’t seen all the supreme elders, but she is sure no one in the sect is her match, besides her sisters who had probably progressed since they parted ways about forty years ago.

So, unless she wanted to, others couldn’t “see” her, maybe she hasn’t returned to the Heavenly Realms in cultivation terms, but her battle prowess thanks to the great advances she made in the body path, put her on par with them, so she just did a little trick to avoid other people looking at her true self, because she only wanted her beloved son to do so.

Other people whose cultivation isn’t strong enough, might see her but their memories of Lilia would be blur or they unconsciously would treat her as part of the scenery, like how mortal’s eyes can’t register a goddess, but in her case it was something she developed thanks to her lineage back when she was younger, because she hated being looked with lecherous eyes.

In his miserable life Isaac never managed to look at the real charm of Lilia, in comparison the first time Aster opened his eyes in this world, he saw the real Lilia, that combined with all the love and care she poured in him were the main reasons of him falling for her, regardless of the relationship they had.

She normally keeps her charm exclusively for Aster’s eyes, but apparently, she was too happy that some of it leaked previously, still besides Aster the other male expectants didn’t dare to look at her directly, due to the chilling murderous aura she was exuding.

But now that her Transcending Gate has returned to her body, Julian didn’t feel a dreading sensation just by being in her presence anymore, but at the same time Lilia has returned to her still beautiful but controlled self.

Ultimately Julia shook his head and put the matter at the back of his mind, he had more important things to worry about for now.

He as the ruler of Galatia of course knows the true rulers of everything within the Dragon Legacy Heavenly Quadrant, in other words the Drage family, and though he suspected of it previously when he met Lilia and Alice, he discarded it because Aster who was her son didn’t give off the dragon aura of the Drage, despite his black hair.

Also why would someone from the main lineage of the most prestigious family in a piece of the universe, come to a middle ranked Stellar System to join an emerging sect, which although had some decent backing as still far from the biggest sects.

But then a realization hit him like a truck.

“T-The ancestors from the peaks are direct descendants from the four ruler families, there are only two women from the Drage family in that generation, so that means you…”.

Lilia dangerously smiled as she placed her index finger on her lips, to interrupt Julian.

“Be careful with your next words, I’m pretty sure you didn’t report the existence of this secret realm to the respective executor, though it ended up benefiting my darling~”.

Julian was at a loss of words, he passed all those years keeping the existence of this secret realm away from the “greedy” Drage family branches, who although were ordered to not steal from the subordinated families, sometimes found ways to get a share of the cake.

Just to be exposed twice in the same day, by his own son to the Demon Tomb sect and if his supposition was right, to the… princess of the Drage family.

“Ahem, I’m sorry miss Lilia, I must be getting a bit lightheaded due to the previous fight, it seems my memory has failed and I suddenly forgot everything that happened here, besides little nephew Aster successfully fulfilling his mission of helping Vivi, of course Oscar will be notified too”, said Julian as he humbly bowed his head, whole making a soul oath.

Lilia nodded, she was sure there was a huge bounty for anyone that gave information to the main branches of the Drage family about her whereabouts, specially by the branch of her uncle, so it would be problematic if someone were to spill the beans as her darling didn’t want to deal with the Drage yet, and she respected his wishes.

She didn’t care to show her real prowess to the people at the ground, because they were all girls and she was sure they all were in… “good” terms with Aster, judging by how he shielded them all with the paragon body, so the only variant here were Julian and his bodyguard Oscar who was still fighting his opponent a few hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from the orbit of the planet.

The people of the Demon Tomb sect ran away before she publicly appeared, because she made a crack on one of the walls of their coffin, precisely with that purpose.

“Very well, if you excuse me, I have some matters to tend to”, said Lilia as she disappeared from where she was.

Julian saw Lilia casually moving through space and he was speechless.

“She can move through space even here without suffering any wound, she is a monstrous as the rumors said, no it’s even more than that, a Heavenly Transformation who is also a Gate Transcending realm in the body path, the first of its kind, damn what has the world come to… perhaps “she” was right and a storm which has been brewing since a long time ago was bound to hit this era”, mumbled Julian as he gazed at the limitless space with a lost expression on his face.

Julian had no way to know Lilia has only recovered to the Void Manipulation realm in the energy path, but in any case it wouldn’t make a difference as Lilia is sure her battle prowess has more or less surpassed her old self, not only because of her body cultivation but because her lineage which was already the purest ever seen was improved after being nourished by her beloved son’s love.

…

Back at the planet everyone stayed inside the golden armor, Lilia’s flames would have not actually harmed Mylene, since she didn’t want to, but judging by how his mother destroyed both Egil and the core elder earlier, Aster didn’t know how strong was the excitement episode she was going through.

As if a goddess descended from the skies Lilia, who now had a gentler and more composed expression landed in front of Aster, then all the black flames were absorbed back into her body, revealing that the planet now had a valley that occupied a third of its surface.

Also, and to everyone’s surprise both Egil and the core elder were alive, but were completely bald and had some burns and blood coming from their mouths.

“These two will fetch a good reward, and the publicity will be good for our store darling~”, said Lilia as she snapped her fingers and black chains restricted the already fainted and miserable Egil and Demonclaw.

Vivian was again surprised to see Lilia’s “heart” change to what she saw back when she met her, still the core was the same, but such a drastic change made her doubt of her own ability, specially since Egil was able to find a flaw in it, but that actually has helped her as she is now motivated to train her soul even more, all in all this little adventure has changed her life.

She who was sure will live a short, alone and isolated life, got to know good people, learned to somewhat control her body and found someone with who she is comfortable with, a real friend, two if she counts that extremely amicable little girl.

‘I guess I need to polish my ability, I’m probably just seeing things’, she concluded without knowing that this subject will be really important in the future.

But let’s leave that for later, right now Lilia jumped into the armor, and unlike others to whom Aster had to open a space for them to enter, she literally passed through it, just like how the armor let all the necessary things like oxygen and spirit energy to enter, while keeping out any negative thing that might be floating in the atmosphere, Lilia has always been deemed as “inoffensive”, by the paragon body.

The only other who can do that is Alice, but that is because she is the star maiden of Pollux originally, it’s a curious thing which Aster still hasn’t deciphered as he is 100% sure the girls would never harm him, so his theory is that maybe is something caused by Orionis, because no one knows what’s that star deal, including Rya, the thing just does as it pleases, always with the purpose of helping Aster though.

Lilia “swam” inside the armor until she took her rightful place in Aster’s arms, without pushing Kana away, so it just looked like a mother missed her son maybe a bit too much, but nothing out of normal.

At least that was the case for Iris, her maids and Vivian, because Mylene and Camila at this point knew that let alone a day, just being separated from Aster for some hours was enough for Lilia to cling to Aster for quite some time, and that is without taking into account their night activities.

‘Ahhh… damn, I’m going to need to shut down my senses tonight’, thought both Mylene and Camila as they tried not to think about such shameless things.

Aster was reaching his limit of using the paragon body at this scale, so he released the armor and they all were brough to the ground safely, soon Julian also descended with the spaceship being piloted by Oscar.

Needless to say, but he was still hurt and sad about the betrayal of his son and his uncle, but he was also happy to see Vivian was now looking way more like a normal girl her age, she who has been suffering since her birth was actually smiling, which made him genuinely happy.

‘I guess one must always see the glass half full, with the reward of capturing that Law Integration from the Demon Tomb sect, I should be able to finally cross the barrier of the Transcending realms’, thought Julian, he went and helped Oscar suppress and capture his opponent, because the idea of “stealing” the prey of the Drage family’s princess never crossed his mind.

“Let’s go home”, said Aster, everyone nodded, this mission was more than what they expected, and a lot of things happened but in the end the result wasn’t bad at all, they even removed a “time bomb” in the form of Egil, and there were new additions to the team in the form of Vivian and Esmeralda who remained suspiciously silent since Lilia appeared.