Felicia giggled, to be honest her daughter didn’t know about Aster’s energy which was attached to most of the girls, Tiana was still young and had less practice using the abilities of her constitution, so only she noticed it.
Needless to say, but she was surprised to see family members having that kind of relationship, but she didn’t judge and instead was slightly curious about how a young man about the age of her son managed to get such a parade of beauties.
Felicia sent a message to Baron, so that the people of the sect knew there was going to be another phenomenon, she wanted them to be prepared… because she didn’t know what was going to happen.
‘I can’t believe the curse of my family which made my mother die with regrets, is going to be stopped in my generation’, she thought as she stole one last gaze to the black-haired youth who turned out to be the “fortunate encounter” she had wished to find during her whole life.
Felicia entered the fire pagoda, just like Kana she found rather interesting the feeling of Rigel’s flames, but right now she didn’t pay too much attention to that and instead sat down cross-legged as she absorbed the red particles of refined spirit energy.
Aster raised an eyebrow at Felicia dantian’s appetite, as soon as she stopped suppressing it, it was as if a black hole spawned out of nowhere, each and every particle of refined sprit energy was dragged towards her and absorbed in a matter of seconds, to the point that he had to increase the size of the fire pagoda to increase the amount of spirit energy which was refined, to keep up with the consumption.
“Mm?”, Aster felt a weird sensation of attraction towards the fire pagoda where Felicia was absorbing spirit energy, and he wasn’t the only one, the other girls with the exception of Kana and Tiana also seemed to feel a “pulling” sensation from within their dantian.
Still, after taking some distance from Felicia, the sensation disappeared, Lilia, Eris and Mylene took each one of the three directions, while Aster and the others took the remaining one.
Since it was still going to take sometime for Felicia to reach her breaking point, Aster asked a couple of things to Tiana.
“How come you and Kana weren’t affected by Felicia’s current state?”.
Listening to Aster calling her mother by her name, Tiana raised an eyebrow, but since he is their benefactor, she didn’t say anything and instead shrugged.
“Technically Mom has the ability to gather sprit energy, but it depends in her dantian, and as you know we have no control over it, Mom’s probably finally reacting due to those red particles, that’s why all of you feel that “pulling” sensation from within your inner universes”.
“Although we named them differently, Mom and me have the same constitution, but our attributes oppose each other, so we can’t take the spirit energy of the other, as for why that little girl isn’t affected, it’s probably because she just formed her star core, her reserves are too small to resonate with Mom’s constitution”.
“On the other hand, I’m not completely sure, besides the names, we only have the information left behind by our predecessors about our constitutions… and none of them ever surpassed the Star Tribulation realm, so from this moment onwards, my mother will be making history for our family at least”.
Aster had a contemplative expression on his face, energy constitutions so far seemed to be rather interesting.
A sudden change in the illumination drew everyone’s attention, the sky darkened and purple colored electricity appeared in the clouds, signaling the start of Felicia’s breakthrough.
But that wasn’t all, the sensation of their spirit energy trying to leave their inner universes, returned.
Luckily Felicia warned the people in the sect beforehand, because the current scene made the disciples think that the world was about to end.
Aster suddenly frowned, the purple electricity on the sky gathered at a few spots on the clouds before purple lightnings fell on the fire pagoda.
“Be careful, tribulation is the violent type, don’t let the lightning touch you”, shouted Lilia as she slapped a purple lightning which exploded spreading currents of electricity near her.
“Mom, your actions don’t match your words”, mumbled Aster, of course Lilia wasn’t affected by the purple lightning, she is not a Gate Transcending body cultivator for nothing after all.
Aster’s body shone in golden light and the purple lightning which threatened with hitting him, was easily blocked, Mylene used a simpler solution, she punched the purple lightning with her bare fists obliterating it.
“Look big brother, sister Mylene is quite strong too”, said Kana with sparkles in her eyes.
Aster laughed, although Mylene didn’t look like it, she was a body cultivator too, so this was a child’s play for her, the one having a “rough” time here was Eris, she had to use her spirit energy to block the lightning while also putting some effort into not letting it be absorbed by Felicia.
That being said, she simply stood there floating while she repelled the lightning, as a former Soul Queen she even took the chance to give Aster a little lesson about soul energy.
“Soul energy is susceptible to lightning, so never attack a lightning attributed cultivator with soul energy”.
Aster wondered if he was the same, his soul energy could have the properties of annihilation if he wanted to, so that was something he needed to test later.
Aster looked at the sky where all the purple lightning gathered and then fell in the form of a lightning pillar of about four kilometers of diameter.
As everyone prepared for the impact, the fire pagoda suddenly dispelled revealing a smiling Felicia.
Her hair was a bit disheveled and there were also noticeable changes, which Aster momentarily ignored.
Felicia extended her hand graciously towards the sky and dark light exploded out of her body forming a black hole from which a pair of yellow eyes could be seen.
Then under the surprised eyes of Aster and the others, the black hole swallowed the lightning pillar.
The sky cleared again but the whole area around Felicia was covered in a sea of dark mist, similar to what happened with Camila, her advance created what could be a sacred area for those with the same element as her.
The black light returned to Felicia’s body and only then everything ended, she happily flew towards Aster and the others as she played with the dark light in her hands.
“Mom, you… what happened to you?”, mumbled Tiana looking at her mother’s current appearance.
Felicia wasn’t short for a woman, but she grew about fifteen centimeters reaching an incredible 1.85 meters of height, and that wasn’t all, her originally gray ash hair now was black inked, even her skin looked paler than before, if anything she kept that honey like tone in her eyes, also her clothes now all ragged so she used darkness to create a dress which was now covering her.
‘Well, her constitution has “behemoth” on its name, I guess she is related to a spirit beast of some kind’, thought Aster remembering the yellow lamp like eyes which peeked out of the black hole.
It took Felicia a moment to came out of her daze as she inspected the changes in her body before she hugged her daughter, with a happy smile, she took the risk to advance ahead of Tiana to make sure that she could do it in the future, but the reward was bigger than what she expected.
In truth she didn’t know if she will be able to, or she was going to die, there were no precedents of people with their constitutions ever surpassing the Star Tribulation realm after all.
After a couple of seconds, she regained her composure and then smiled at Aster with a genuinely thankful gaze in her eyes, she rose the sides of her dress like a noble lady before she fulfilled her promise.
“I Felicia Garland swear with the heavens as witnesses to never do anything to harm my benefactor Aster Drage nor those who he cherishes~”.
Even Tiana couldn’t help but see Aster in a different light, he could have refused to help them, or ask for them to completely obey him, but instead of a master servant relationship, he chose to treat them as equals.
She felt her younger brother’s “I told you”, gaze on her back which made her softly snort.
‘I’m never listening to the end of this’, she thought as she inwardly sighed.
Lilia was about to transport them back to the Barbarian Heart sect, but Felicia asked her to give her a second, unlike Camila she didn’t hesitate to take the darkness that was produced due to her advance.
Once she made sure there was nothing left Lilia took them to the palace in which they were staying, feeling the others looking at her, Felicia giggled.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to leave a little gift for the people of the sect… but my darkness is detrimental to others, so they will have to content with the increase in the darkness element in the atmosphere and the quality of the spirit energy”.
Camila was still sleeping and the sun was about to set at this point, so Felicia, Erick and Tiana said goodbye and returned to their own palace to prepare, since tomorrow they will be leaving early in the morning.
Aster felt Kana poking his cheek with her finger and he turned around just to see her pouting.
“Big brother, Erick’s mother advance raised some dust, can we go take a bath”.
Aster smiled seeing the other girls looking at their clothes which also had some signs of dust, he nodded.
“Good idea, let’s go, we’ll use the open bath at the east area of the palace”, said Aster in consideration to Eris and Mylene.
The girls happily smiled and followed him, apparently although the elders of the sect were quite keen on training, they also enjoyed luxury like most cultivators.
The bath of the palace was really large and had an artificial river as well as a small waterfall and a pool, as soon as Aster closed the door, the girls undressed and used the waterfall to rinse their bodies.
“Come here darling~”.
Lilia grabbed Aster’s hand and dragged him with them under the waterfall, before she started applying soap on his naked body.