As the time passed the sun settled and when night came the little girl which was comfortably snuggling in Aster’s embrace finally woke up.
“Yawwnn~”, Aster which was chatting about random funny things with Sarina, listened to the cute sound coming from his left side and he turned to see Kana which was rubbing her eyes with her hands.
Noticing it was already night and that her mother and Aster didn’t seem to be tired she thought they were waiting for her to wake up, which made her feel a bit ashamed.
“I’m sorry big brother… I simply felt too comfortable that I feel asleep”.
Aster chuckled, he patted her head and pointed at the lake.
“It’s okay we were going to stay here till it was night anyway, because I wanted you two see that”.
“Mm?”, without leaving Aster’s embrace Kana looked at the lake and she was marveled by the current scene.
Normally this deep inside a forest the only source of light would be the moon and the stars, but here there was another one, the whole lake had floating silver particles which had a dim glow creating a beautiful scenery.
“Woaah, it’s so pretty”, she exclaimed, even Sarina who has seen lots of places when she was younger, agreed with her daughter.
Aster smiled happy with their reactions, although this phenomenon was similar to the bioluminescence caused by small organisms back at earth, but here this was caused by the big number of small particles of different minerals which reside in the lake.
That was also the reason as to why the crystal oysters like to live in this area, they gather and compress those minerals to form their pearls.
Aster got up from the blanket and dragged both mother and daughter to see the phenomenon which gave this place its name, it was like being surrounded by a starry sky.
Sarina and Kana leaned their heads against Aster’s body and simply enjoyed the view, it was a perfect closure for their date, after a couple of minutes Sarina kept all the things in her spatial ring and they returned to the Wolfstein castle.
…
Contrary to earlier, for the travel back to the castle Sarina used the maximum speed of the spaceship and they reached their destination in less than an hour, just in time for the dinner.
Aster opened the door of the dining room and was welcomed by the sight of a table full of dishes and beauties sitting at both sides.
Lilia was the first one to notice him, she tapped the seat net to hers while she evaluated the slightly different atmosphere that surrounded Sarina and even Kana.
Her eyes glowed for a split of a second but she didn’t say anything, even if they all slept together, bathed together and even received love from Aster together, their time alone with him was sacred.
Aster chuckled, he went to sit next to his mother while Sarina and Kana sat in front of them, now that everyone was here all of them started digging in, since the designated chefs of the family were out today, Alice of course ordered food directly from the fragrant pavilion.
While Lilia was cutting some food for her son, Aster looked at Eris before saying.
“Eris, can you set a spirit array at a planetary scale without the need to use another of the faces of your treasure?”.
“Mm?”, Eris was taken by surprise as she was chewing on a piece of grilled meat, she drank some water before answering.
“Yes, this planet isn’t too big, so with Lilia’s help to move through space I will finish it in less than an hour… but the strength of the formation would not be that high, without the materials I have right now, I would at most make it strong enough to block genesis manifestation cultivators, that is also the limit for the quality and quantity of the spirit energy of this planet”.
Aster nodded, that was better than what he expected, and it as only possible thanks to Sarina’s breakthrough or the spirit energy wouldn’t have been enough to maintain a large-scale spirit formation of the mortal transcending realm.
“I’ll leave it to you, also add a detection formation around and inside the planet… the alarm must be triggered after detecting mortal transcending realm cultivators or above”.
Lilia immediately frowned, this petition from her son was a bit too specific for it to be something he just thought about it for nothing.
“Darling, did something happen?”.
Aster already knew his mother was going to ask him, so he explained what happened near the silver star lake.
Lilia’s gaze became cold, she always scanned the planet with her spirit sense once when she wakes up and once before she goes to sleep, it’s a habit she developed since Alice was born, her family isn’t exactly close after all so a few assassinations try were expected, luckily, she travelled way far away from the influence of the Drage family.
Lilia didn’t stay in a low ranked isolated star cluster for no reason, the only thing she needed was a small amount of blood of the Wolfstein, after that she could have left and find a higher ranked place to give birth.
But she didn’t because there was a huge possibility of someone from the other family branches to notice her, and then she would have to be on the look for all kinds of schemes, ultimately her decision paid off, after her cultivation regressed due to the whole situation with her inner demon.
Given the huge amount of star clusters the Drage family can’t be present in all of them, so they use an envoy system which go down like a cascade, explained in simple words, the Drage family send someone from one of the family branches to the families that rule the stellar systems, and the rulers of the stellar systems send someone to each of the star clusters they manage.
But becoming an envoy isn’t a decent position all the times, depending on the star cluster where they will end it could be also considered a punishment, back then when Lilia arrived at the Rodia star cluster, she saw from afar the envoy from the Atria family in the border station where the space gate which connects with other star clusters is.
And she completely ignored it, it was a middle-aged man on the early stage of the mortal transcending realm, enough to take care of any problem in this star cluster, why would a sea of knowledge cultivator offend the Atria family for a deserted place like the Rodia star cluster after all.
Even the sand mountain sect which had sea of knowledge cultivators and could be considered a tyrant in the surrounding areas, acted humbly, they were allowed to conquer other star clusters but the border station were “sacred lands” which no one besides the ruler family could own.
So, what happened here was that the envoy or someone close to him closed an eye to the group of mercenaries, something not uncommon at all being honest, the problem here was that they indirectly affected someone they shouldn’t have.
“It seems this envoy had been slacking of in the job”, said Lilia with a cold voice, the guy who hired the mercenaries was of course aware of the fact that evil practices like using women as cultivation boilers were strictly prohibited, that’s why even the leader didn’t know who they were working for.
Aster nodded, “The whole mercenary group is now gone, but someone opened them the door”.
Aster then felt that strange feeling of his blood boiling when he remembered that their target was Kana… and Sarina too but for a different reason.
“Darling?”, Lilia’s soft voice woke up Aster from his daze, he noticed all the girls were looking at him, Camila was slightly pale but in contrast, Kana wasn’t, she already experienced a bit of his murderous intent, which affected others even if they weren’t targeted specifically, so this time she didn’t pay attention to it.
Aster had an apologetic smile as he said.
“Sorry about that, ladies, let’s finish our dinner and then go to our bedroom, Camila, Mylene and Eris, you come too”.
The girls nodded and then continued eating, the slight tense atmosphere dissipated as Kana bragged about the deal she made with Aster, to Alice’s displease as it took her three years to learn the first level of sword intent.
Aster could immediately feel the bitter gaze of Alice piercing his back, but probably the ones who felt the most aggrieved here were no one but Eris and Mylene.
An intent was something personal, no one can truly teach you how to learn it, as repeating the process someone followed to learn his, would not work for a second person.
“It took me five years to learn whip intent… and I was called a genius you know?”, mumbled Eris.
Mylene was even more ashamed, besides cultivating, her only passion was to practice alchemy, she learned halberd intent only after she learned all the people, she thought were her friends and relatives turned out to be just scheming bastards.
So, it took her about eight years back then, still if someone were to see them being ashamed of that, they would probably be cursed, one must know that learning an intent after a few dozens of years is what’s considered normal, as for those that manage to do it below the ten years mark are considered to be outstanding.
Once the dinner finished Aster and the girls went to Lilia’s bedroom, while Aster and his girls sat on the bed, Eris, Mylene and Camila sat on a couch in front of them.
Seeing them all in the same bed Camila’s mind couldn’t help but strive as she remembered they were all Aster’s women, then for some reason the scene in which she appeared half naked in front of them flashed through her memory.
“Ughh, thanks to the heavens I had something on or I wouldn’t know where to put my face”, she thought.
Aster took out about thirty spatial rings from the mind space and placed them on the bed, something that immediately caught Eris’s attention, her eyes glowed with interest, as a rune master, she is well aware that a spatial ring cannot contain more than one or two spatial rings inside, because the runes will interfere with the function and that might cause the space inside of the ring to collapse.
“Wait, no, I couldn’t even feel any spatial laws… whatever it is, it isn’t a spatial ring”, she concluded.