Ch-19-Cultivation Time

Trying to spare myself a long and tragic story, I ask, "Doesn't the empire have laws to prevent this?"

Yuki looked at me, confused for a moment, before saying very angrily, "It does, but no one pays any attention to them unless you become strong enough for the empire to take notice."

Thinking about what she just said, I spotted a way to clear all of this up without having to go through all of this and asked, "Why did you not try to get enough power to catch the eye of the empire?"

My question caused both Raina and Yuki to look at me quizzically.

A few seconds later, Raina almost burst into laughter while Yuki somehow got even angrier and almost shouted, "That would take too long as I would need to..."

She then trailed off before she could finish, but I already knew what she was going to say and finished, "Reach the level that you already needed to reach?"

Yuki was already looking at the table after trailing off, but after hearing my words, I could swear I saw a pair of fox ears on her head completely flatten out. Though it was entirely my imagination.

Trying to pull her mind out of whatever dark corner it was going into, I said, "By the way, it should only take you about two to three days to reach the end of body tempering if you focus on cultivation."

Both Raina and Yuki then looked at me like I had grown a second head again before Raina asked, "Didn't it take you almost a week to reach the peak of body tempering?"

I nodded at her question before explaining, "I took that long because of a few interruptions that prevented me from continuing at the time."

Raina went quiet at this, and her tail dropped, so I said, "Nothing of what you did was intentional, and there was no way you could have known. Besides, I needed to face it at some point, so thank you."

This did not seem to help much, but at least her tail did not look like a dead weight anymore, even if it was still barely hovering above the ground.

Now that the mood in the room had almost hit rock bottom, I turned to Yuki and asked without reservation, "I thought that you said you didn't have a last name?"

Yuki looked up at this and said in a dejected voice, "In my family, strength means everything, so if you get captured or turned into a slave, you lose the right to carry the family's name."

Raina nodded after hearing this like she expected it before asking, "Do you mind telling us your old family name?"

I was curious as well, so I sat there waiting for Yuki to respond. She sat there for a moment thinking and then responded, "It was the Selvaris family."

Upon hearing that, Raina's face immediately went dark, and her tail went back to its normal swaying pattern, but for some reason, I was getting a very scary feeling from it.

Regardless, I thought that now was a good time to end things. So I said, "Well, now that the mood has been thoroughly ruined. How about we call it a night?"

They both looked at me again before Raina nodded and said, "That is a good idea. You two should go to bed, however, I have something that I need to do, so I won't be here for tonight."

With that, she disappeared. Not that she simply left the room, but actually vanished from where she was standing.

Confused by this, I looked over to Yuki who appeared to be just as confused as me.

Since neither of us knew what was going on, I got up and said, "Well, since I mentioned it earlier, I will be going to my room to cultivate for the night. You can use the manual to continue your cultivation if you want, but if you encounter anything, you don't know. Wait until tomorrow so I can answer your questions and you don't make a potentially fatal mistake.

"It is better to live to see the next day than to die doing something stupid after all."

With my intentions made known, I walked upstairs and to my room.

Laying down in the center of the bed, facing the ceiling while looking like a starfish, I close my eyes and start calming my mind.

As my mind calms down, I start to see various dots of light floating around me even though my eyes are still closed.

Soon, I reach a state where my mind is completely still with no distraction or emotion present.

At this point I clear my mind of all thoughts not pertaining to my cultivation and the technique that I use to do so.

With that done, I can see that the colorful little dots of light have gotten so numerous, and the colors are sticking to gether in such a way that where I can see the entire room around me. In the center of the room, I was able to see the outline of my body through all the meridians that I now had. 

At four different points in this meridian network, I saw glowing spheres that seemed to be expanding and contracting in time with my heartbeat. The reason for that happening was my passive cultivation caused by my body-tempering technique.

Disregarding this, as it had no meaning to what I was about to do, I started activating my cultivation technique and pulled all the Qi around me into my body.

Anyone else would have called me insane for doing this, as you would normally need to strip all of the impurities from the world's Qi before drawing it into your body. However, I had set all of my subscores to strip the impurities from the Qi before it reached my cores, with the primary meridians acting as additional filters.

This only worked because all of my secondary meridians were marking each impurity that passed through them, and if any impure Qi were to reach the core, it would instantly be thrown out only to enter through the collateral meridians again so it could be broken down even further.

I was basically treating my meridian network as a massive immune system and filter instead of doing all of this manually.

I still needed to keep an eye on this, but it worked automatically so I could rest at night instead of keeping my brain working and exhausting myself even more.

Surprisingly, this felt more like a relaxing and calming dream than any actual work on my part.

After an hour of this, I noticed that the yellow-colored particles surged in number for a brief moment before they went back to normal.

Stopping the technique, I opened my eyes to see sunlight streaming through the window and heard the chirping of birds outside the house.

That feeling of only an hour having passed still lingered in the back of my mind, even though the evidence to the contrary was clear before my eyes.

Getting up from the bed and trying not to be shocked by how quickly time passed while cultivating, I start to make my way downstairs.

Normally, around this time, I would be able to smell breakfast being prepared, but this time there was nothing.

Reaching the base of the stairs, I walk towards the kitchen, only to see that there is no one there.

Grabbing a piece of bread I start munching on it as I turn to walk down the hallway with the spare bedrooms.

Coming to the last one, I knock on the door and wait for an answer. I ended up standing there for a few minutes and knocking on the door a few more times.

With nothing happening I grab the door handle and try to open the door. 

It opens without any issue, and I get to see Yuki standing there without the top half of her uniform on and in the middle of changing her clothes.

Her face instantly went red out of embarrassment, but I did not feel anything as had already been used to the site of a woman's body thanks to being one for almost half a year.

Yuki, however, remained frozen. So I walked over to her and helped her finish putting on the rest of her uniform.

This did not seem to help with her embarrassment but it did help her come back to reality and actually finish what she was doing. Afterward, I walked out of her room with Yuki following me.

When we made it to the central room of the house, she went to walk into the kitchen, so I told her to bring the meal to the workshop when she was finished, as I would be working out there.

I then watched as she nodded and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.

With all of that finished walked out of the house and in the direction of the workshop.