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nSeeing Felicia’s slightly aggrieved expression, Aster inwardly chuckled as he shrugged. “What can I say, aura is meant to cover up one’s weaknesses and since I am not a body cultivator, mine is especially protective of my inner body”, he said, only for Felicia to

nsoftly snort in response.

n“Aura is also meant to be a thing used mostly by body cultivators, you freaky dragon”, she mumbled.

n‘She really hates to lose, how cute, thought Aster, amused by her sulking rambling to then say.

n“Now that you mention it, both you and Tia’s mainly cultivate in the body path, if it was other people from low and middle rank Stellar System, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t know about aura, or perhaps knew but were unable to awaken it due to the short history of their manuals, however even if the previous would be the case, you two are talented enough and had a relatively free schedule to delve into it?”.

nAster based his question on two facts, first, that the aura awakened by Alice is not the one that is depicted in the manual of the Drage family, though he helped, she would have obtained it by herself given enough time, in Lilia’s case, she didn’t focus on the advanced techniques of the body path until not too long before she was forced to leave the Drage family to have offspring, she was mainly an energy cultivator who reached the Heavenly realms after all.

nBut Felicia had both the talent and the time, not to mention that as far as he has heard from Tiana, the manual used by the pair of mother and daughter is a body

/soul oriented one, not to mention that they are now tempering their bodies using his blood, cultivating in the body path should be easier for them than ever.

n‘Now that I think about it, I couldn’t feel any development in what aura regards from Tia either, thought Aster, he didn’t put much into it with Tiana, because she was focusing on learning to integrate her innate ability into a technique and had room for improvement, but Felicia wasn’t like that, until not too long ago she had reached the limit of what she could exploit out of her innate ability at her current realm.

nA troubled light flashed through Felicia’s eyes, making Aster smile at her.

n“What, if you need my help just say it, but I would like to see the process this time if you don’t mind”, he playfully said.

n“For Tia, it’s normal, she hadn’t met the requirements to awaken aura, as she just barely learned how to control her impulses from you, as for me… I’m only missing the “desire” needed for it”, she said to then add.

n“Also, it’s harder for Body

/Soul cultivators to awaken aura, since it is meant to cover up one’s weaknesses and for body cultivators, the soul is usually their major weakness and it is even harder for me and Tia, since we have some dominion over spirit energy thanks to our constitutions, despite not being energy path cultivators, I’ll be happy to take on the offer when the time comes though”.

n‘Mm, then why I don’t see nor sense anything related to aura from you, thought Aster, but he decided to leave it at this for now, because Felicia was clearly not comfortable talking about it.

n“Anyway, what’s important is that… I won”, mumbled Felicia, only to see Aster’s mocking smile.

n“Really, I remember a certain someone being flown away at our last interaction earlier”, he said.

nFelicia puffed her cheeks, she managed to tackle Aster once, so if she didn’t suffer that setback due to, she trying to brag about her new technique, it would have been an irrefutable clear victory for her.

n“One last round, the winner takes all”, she exclaimed, her eyes burning with competitivity, Aster was amused at she getting all fired up all of a sudden, she even forgot that her energy reserves were quite low.

n“Okay”, with a single word from Aster, Felicia sank into the ground, making Aster’s pupils contract a bit, carlier when she emerged from the wall, he didn’t really have the time to see the process behind her technique, but now he could.

n“There is no vortex involved, so she isn’t going into that place and yet I can’t detect her with spirit sense nor see her with my eyes, so it’s not like she is concealing her presence but more as if she didn’t exist in the same plane as me, thought Aster.

nAs if she felt Aster’s doubt and probably as payback for all the teasing, Felicia’s voice could be heard coming from the ground in a whole kilometer radius, making it impossible to discern her actual location.

n“As you already know, my innate ability is the counterpart of Tia’s one, it allows me to drag spirit energy or things that contain it, towards my soul energy or anything that has been marked by it”.

n“Tia’s “Dragon Slaying” technique uses her mind and body to externalize the origin of her innate ability, the result is what you have seen, she can now not only repel spirt energy but also expel it out of physical things”.

n“Mine on the other hand uses the same principle but the result is the contrary, I can now not only drag things with spirit energy into the origin of my innate ability, but also drag myself into things with spirit energy”.

n“…”, Aster was speechless for a second, even the order of their development was inversed, it kind of reminded him of his and Alice’s paragon bodies, but then he frowned as a doubt surged in his mind.

n“That would explain how you bypassed my armor since it wasn’t an attack and even how you went through my flesh without harming me, however it doesn’t explain why I couldn’t detect you, also with origin of your innate ability, does it mean that the things that are dragged into your vortexes go to your inner universe?”, he said.

nFelicia giggled in response.

n“Instead of telling you, I’ll show you, if you win that is~”, and with that statement, silence returned to the battlefield, no matter how Aster tried he couldn’t see any hint of Felicia. “Booom!”, Aster suddenly stomped his right foot on the ground, making everything crack in a hundred meters radio, but there was no response.

n“So, attacking the thing in which she has entered doesn’t affect her, she isn’t physically inside of them then, damn this would be easier if I could have seen the process of her advancement, but that’s also probably why she didn’t let me see it, thought Aster.

nHis inner debate was interrupted by a black claw that emerged from below, Aster reacted on time to avoid it by jumping backwards, but at the same time a pretty hand which came out of the ground”

n“Got you!”, this time Felicia’s hand didn’t go into his leg, she had learned her lesson and knew that if she “invaded” his body, the dragon aura would retaliate, so instead of that, her soul energy covered Aster’s legs and before he could react, she dragged his lower

nbody had sunk into the ground.

nAster watched with curiosity how everything below his waist had integrated into the ground, he didn’t resist as he wanted to learn more about Felicia’s technique, the moment he felt her hand and this her soul energy touching him, the previous “floating” sensation around his lower body disappeared and was replaced by pressure in all

ndirections.

n“Crack!”, cracks spread in the nearby grounds.

n“Hey, luckily every part of my body is absurdly strong, or you would have had a line of dangerous girls complaining at you”, jokingly said Aster.

nSince his lower body stopped being intangible while being inside the ground and two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time, his body had to push the rock and soil aside when Felicia let go of him.

nIt might not look too fancy or flashy, but if you think that it’s not a good application of her ability you are wrong, the density and strength of a planet’s ground greatly varies depending on the spirit energy that it absorbs from its atmosphere, otherwise high ranked cultivators would end up homeless if the planets where they lived couldn’t

nwithstand their battles.

nThis planetoid has an incomplete atmosphere where there is no spirit energy, and yet the ground was solid enough to endure a battle at Transcending realm level, so the pressure caused by becoming solid inside of it was on a though toned down, still similar in level and this is near the surface, imagine being dragged down into the core of a planet to then become solid again, you’d become the ham in a sandwich of rocks, well that is if your body isn’t strong enough to push the rock aside of course. Jokes aside, any other non-body cultivator below the Transcending realms who didn’t actively protect himself with spirit energy, would have had his “bland parts” crushed by

nthe rocks.

n“Mm, perhaps I should have buried that teasing smiling face of yours instead”, said Felicia

nfrom within the ground.

nAster sighed, even now that he was in direct contact with the place where she

nsupposedly was, he couldn’t sense her.

n“Oh well, it was worth the try”, he said as he slightly tensed his muscles and without. much effort broke through the solid rocky ground to then say.

n“You know that if I wasn’t in danger thanks to my armor, so the fact that I was dragged in such a shallow way, means that this technique consumes a lot of energy when it comes

nto others, right?”.

nAfter a second of silence, Felicia’s unhappy voice came from the ground.

n“Humph, you are no fun, she said, as she realized that Aster didn’t resist not because she beat him in parallel thinking but because he was gathering information regarding her technique.

nAster chuckled, he has tried with spirit sense, sight, hearing and even tact and nothing worked, he simply couldn’t detect Felicia while she was in this state, of course that could be because he hasn’t reached the infant stage properly, perhaps his eyes would reach her then, but for now he had to use a little trick,

nWhat is he planning, he shouldn’t be able to see me right…, Felicia who was observing Aster from below the ground, couldn’t help but have a bad premonition, her mind gears rotated at full speed as a lot of scenarios presented themselves into her head.

nJust like Aster, Felicia has quite a good mastery of parallel thinking, so her reaction time and information processing is rather monstruous, if there was a difference between them, that would be the fact that she turned out to be way more competitive and assertive, despite her usual playful and carefree self,

nAfter a couple of seconds and more than a hundred possible outcomes, she reached a conclusion and her yellow amber pupils contracted on the spot, she immediately rushed upwards just in time to see Aster throwing his arm backwards in order to punch the

nground.

nShe accelerated and reached just a few centimeters below the surface, but was too late, Aster’s fist collided against the ground but instead of creating an explosion, his arm sank into the ground as if it was a hot knife going through butter.

n‘He anticipated my movement!”, was the only thought that spawned in Felicia’s mind, but then contrary to her expectations not only the punch didn’t land on her, everything became golden toned and then a warm and soothing sensation spread through her body,

nstarting from her waist.

n“Mm-“, a comfortable sound was the last thing Felicia could make, before she was encased by solid rock from all sides, of course as a main path body cultivator this wouldn’t have harmed her, but it would have hurt a bit not to mention that her clothes

nwould have ended up covered in dust, if not for the thin membrane of golden light that was enveloping her.

n“Up you go”, with those words Aster whose hand was placed on Felicia’s waist, pulled her

nout of the ground, of course since her ability was cancelled, she didn’t simply pass

nthrough the solid rock but broke her way out of it.

n‘I’m not intangible but I didn’t feel any obstruction at all either, how is this not cheating,

nshe thought as she pouted, she was really close but at the end she lost because she was a fraction of a second late on her prediction of Aster’s course of action. Still the golden light protection completely isolated her from the ground, so in a sense saʀᴄh th ovlꜰir.nt website on Ggl to access chapters of nvels early and in the highest quality.

nshe passed through it.

n“I should have thought about it first, but I focused on thinking on how would your aura block my technique the moment I touched you, still to think you would use simple contact to make it so that thing would count it as an extension of your body, you even disguised that punch which had no intention to hit me”, she said to then add. “Speaking of which, you can let go whenever you feel like it”.

nAster saw his hand which was placed on her waist and cleared his throat, just like back

nthen at the dimensional tunnels of Prasil, when he used the golden light protection to

nprevent the girls being separated from him, anything covered with the golden light protection became a sole stationary object.

n“Ahem, sorry I’m not used to externalize my dragon aura since it normally operates

nwithin my body, so I had to make contact to prevent you from using your innate ability to escape into your secret hideout with a vortex”, said Aster as he retrieved his hand. “Mm sounds reasonable, that being said, a bit lower and I would have had to have a serious talk with Lilia-“, she said as she stuck out her tongue at him.

nAster bitterly smiled, she used the same phrase with which he teased Tia, against him, everything for the sake of getting one over him, in that she was similar to her. “Thanks to the heavens that she has better control over her lineage impulses, since she is

na soul cultivator, otherwise I bet she would have been on pair with mom’, thought Aster

nas he raised his hands in defeat.

n“Fine you get the win’, he said. Felicia giggled limited to giggle in response.

n“That sounds better”, she mumbled, it was incredible how happy she became after being declared the winner, but Aster had to admit that it made her look cute.

n“Now how about I give you a little peek to my secret hideout, but keep it a secret from

nTia”, she said to Aster who nodded at her, at this point he couldn’t be too demanding. Slowly but surely, Felicia extended her hand towards Aster.

n“Here… you have to be in contact with me to enter”, she said as she looked away, Aster accepted her offer and held her hand.

nFelicia’s hair which had less than a quarter part of it painted black as a sign of how low

nher energy reserves were as of current, gestured with her free hand and a black vortex appeared in front of them.

nThey crossed it just in time for Alexandra who was arriving at their current location, to see them disappear in front of her.

n“Did they just leave me here”, she mumbled but then she shook her head at herself.

n‘No, he wouldn’t, besides he said he was going to give me a gift… but what were those

nnoises from earlier, wait why do I care about that!’, while fighting her inner conflicts, Alexandra sat down to wait for those two to return.

nThe moment he crossed through the black vortex, for a second everything went dark for

nAster, it wasn’t just his sight, all his senses were somehow interrupted, everything but the soft sensation of Felicia’s hand which he was holding while being surrounded by

ncomplete darkness.

nJust as he was about to use his dragon eyes, everything returned to normal, well as normal as Felicia’s inner universe was, inverted colors, a white universe with black stars, something that drew his attention is that they were coming out of one of said black

nstars.

n“I still don’t understand how come you have a myriad of minor Star Cores which are supposed to exist in the inner universe of an energy path cultivator, but you don’t have the main one which should exist in everyone’s dantian, so the reason as to why

neverything looks dark in the vortexes you create is because they are connected to those cores?”, said Aster.

nFelicia stole a gaze at her hand which was still being held by Aster, but didn’t say anything about, instead she pointed at the multiple black stars floating all over the place to then say.

n“They might look like this now, but unlike others their centers aren’t formed by condensed spirit energy but soul one instead, the attraction that my soul energy can create inside this place is amplified by around fifty times, in exchange any soul energy I

nrelease here can never get out”.

nAster curiously gazed at those black stars, they mimicked minor Star Cores but they

nwere created with soul energy, all the spirit energy that she dragged into the black vortexes was probably devoured by those things.

nIt’s strange that all that spirit energy is kept here, she can’t use it since she isn’t an energy cultivator, but on the other hand all this spirit energy surely nurtured her body through her meridians, since normal non-energy path cultivators don’t have even a tenth part of what she has here.

n‘Perhaps this is what helped her achieve such a high strength output, even if it isn’t

nintegrated, she has aspects of the three paths, also I have never heard of a cultivator who keeps soul energy in their inner universe, thought Aster.

nSoul is weak against energy, such is the rule, so for Felicia to make her soul energy coexist with spirit energy, it was probably only doable thanks to her energy constitution. “I wonder, what would happen if I release my soul energy here”, casually said Aster,

nFelicia has absorbed a few blasts of his spirit energy, so among those star cores some contain it for sure, but the only soul energy present in this pace belongs to Felicia. “I… don’t know, Tia wasn’t a soul cultivator when I brought her here, also the pressure in

nthis place will target you if you do anything that involves any kind of energy even if we are in contact”, said Felicia.

n“Oh?”, the previous only made Aster more eager to give it a try, Felicia tried to advise him against it, but before she could speak, a golden hand sized sphere of soul energy

nappeared above his hand. Aster suddenly felt as if a mountain had descended upon him, the pressure ignored Felicia but tried to force Aster downwards, it’s worth mentioning that they were floating,

nand since they were still holding hands, if the pressure overwhelmed Aster, he would

ndrag Felicia along.

nFor a change, a pressure was hard to ignore for Aster, it was understandable since it was created by all the nearby star cores radiating spirit energy at the same time and pulling

nfrom all directions, it was as if a chain was attached to each part of his body and savage beasts were trying to dismember him.

n“Tsk”, Aster gritted his teeth, his back was straight as a sword, refusing to back down, but the pressure kept increasing, the golden armor manifested itself to reduce the load, the brief moment of relief brought by the golden armor, allowed Aster to throw the sphere

nof soul energy he created, upwards.

nSurprisingly enough, the star cores ignored his soul energy and just kept focusing on him, the thing just slowly floated upwards towards the other star cores, the more it

nelevated the stronger the pressure on Aster became.

nHeh, so I am being judged to see if my soul energy is worth keeping?’, thought Aster, his

nmuscles tensed and with a punch, he actually repelled the pressure coming at him through sheer force.

nThe pressure was so strong that it was discernible with the naked eye, it looked like a

nthick veil of wind coming back for Aster after he pushed it aside, but at the last second it stopped just like that. Well, it wasn’t for any reason, Felicia was now hugging him from behind, at the same time the sphere of soul energy from before reached the same area as the star cores and

nthey started supplying it with some of the spirit energy they contained. The result was something that Felicia never expected to see in her inner universe, a

nbright golden star illuminated a section of the white vastness.

n“You are crazy you know… thanks, it looks pretty’, mumbled Felicia as she saw the

ndazzling unique golden star, she didn’t let go of him until a whole minute later when she pushed him away with her usual playful smile.

n“You should be fine now, right”, she said as she broke contact with Aster, who was now

nfloating freely.

n“Yeah, I don’t feel like an outsider anymore”, he said, he didn’t feel any connection with

nthe golden star core that was created using his soul energy, instead he felt welcomed by

nFelicia’s inner universe unlike before, it was a strange sensation. “Okay time out, let’s leave before your other date gets angry”, said Felicia, a black vortex appeared on one of the many black star cores, dragging them into it, the next thing Aster knew is that they landed on the ground in front of Alexandra.

n“Hi you are finally back… WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!”, she exclaimed, as she saw

nFelicia sitting on Aster’s stomach.

n“Ouch, sorry my soul energy hit rock bottom with that last vortex”, said Felicia as she

ncasually got up from Aster to then add. “Now, isn’t it time for the gifts~”.

n“What were they doing inside that place, while Felicia was eager to see the gauntlets

nwhich Aster made for her, Alexandra’s mind was dying of curiosity.

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