Chapter 37 – The Awakening of Mariane

Feicui Long sits down on his bed, accidentally sniffing the smell of his bed, a sweet smell. Although he used to clean his sheets every day, that was before Annie came to the house. Now, she is the one who cleans them every day. The sweet smell of Isabella is impregnated in the sheets.

This makes him feel a bit strange, even though he can't define what he feels for Isabella. He can't help but feel somehow a bit empty not having her by his side.

He quickly shakes his head. He needs to cultivate, cultivate!

Feicui Long then begins to gather energy and circulate the energy through his body, only to next guide it to his Dantian.

This process repeats, once, twice, three times, and so on.

Until he can almost sense the border, but something is moving the limit away. So he keeps trying, not caring about it. At one point, he touches it, but something blocks his path.

Feicui Long sighs and says: "Failing again, stupid curse. At this rate, I will break through to grade 2 in twenty more years."

Feicui Long is a bit frustrated. Even with the help of his body parts, nothing changes at all. Although he almost awakens his special soul, he lets his body fall backward onto the bed, lying down.

While thinking about the fact that he only needs one drop, one drop of his blood... That's when he remembers something. Mariane! Mariane has some of his blood, but not just some. She has his blood essence, the second best of the three blood types, only behind the blood origin.

He jumps off the bed and walks until he is in front of Mariane. Then he says: "Sorry, Mariane, your master must apologize for doing this again."

After saying this, he kisses Mariane again and introduces his psionic energy, extracting a drop of his blood.

The drop emanates a mysterious energy, with a color that changes between red, emerald, amethyst, and topaz, but also shows a celestial sight, shifting from stars and galaxies to moments in time and images of power.

Then he slowly places her on the bedroll again, although he could swear, he sees her smiling. Perhaps it is just his imagination.

In the next moment, he is once again on the bed, sitting cross-legged, moving his hands in front of his chest, placing one on top of the other, with the top palm facing downward and the bottom palm facing upward. In the middle of both hands, the drop is floating.

After that, he starts to integrate it, which causes the drop to rotate for a moment before being absorbed into his chest.

With that, many things happen in sequence. First, the image of a dragon, the exact image of his dragon form inside him but more translucent, opens its eyes. This sends out a wave of soul energy, scaring many beings for hundreds of kilometers to the point that they fall to the ground for a moment.

The second thing that happens is that the three colorful orbs floating inside Feicui Long finally go from a dull color to a bright one and also begin to orbit as if they were planets. On the same orbit, the three orbs form something like a triangle.

The third thing is that Feicui Long's body starts to radiate light and experience changes. Some important changes are his hair, which changes to an emerald color, and his eyes, which now look the same as in his first life. Other changes include marks that appear all over his body, especially in the parts where he has integrated. Additionally, the barrier keeping him in the Elemental Realm Grade 1 completely disappears due to a strong force breaking it.

Subsequently, Feicui Long senses a gaze from above and opens his eyes, looking in that direction. But in the next moment, his eyes see an extremely bright light, hurting them, and he says: "A god with divine authority! What is happening!"

He falls backward, covering his eyes with his hands while they bleed, until a powerful wave of energy coming from the three orbs disperses the force and restores his eyes.

Then the gaze from above disappears. He can't sense anything anymore, but this makes him realize that he is being watched from the door.

He runs to the door and opens it abruptly, discovering Annie. He takes her by the shoulder and says: "I need you to sign a contract with me. I can't let you go after seeing that."

Annie, shaking, can only nod and say: "I understand, my lord. I understand..."

Feicui Long claps his hands and produces a modified servant contract. He could make her his slave, but he is not that cruel, so he only modifies a servant contract that grants her full freedom, but she must be absolutely loyal to him and cannot speak about him without his permission.

Annie bites one of her fingers and signs the contract. Then she falls, shaking. Feicui Long feels a bit guilty, so he takes a copy of his cultivation technique in this life, along with an empty spatial bag, into which he places some energy stones, around 50, and gives it to her, saying: "You're now my servant. You are free. The only conditions are your absolute loyalty and not speaking about me. This is for you. I need powerful subordinates. With this, you can now cultivate."

Annie, a bit surprised, happily takes all these things and, bowing, says: "Thank you, my lord, for showing mercy..."

Feicui Long waves his hand and says: "It's nothing. Now we share destinies. It's the least I can do for you. You came to change the sheets, right? You can enter now."

Annie nods and enters quickly.

…

Feicui Long is going to eat. He has now broken through from grade 1 to grade 2, but more importantly, he can finally cultivate normally. He can also now dispel the curse affecting the twin girls. Of course, it should not be forgotten that he will now be able to produce grade 5 medicines more often. It still will not be 100%, but at least a little, which means he will now be able to earn more money and do other things as well.

Now, in the kitchen, he decides to make something light to celebrate a little. He takes one of the delicious breads Annie made, some ingredients like tomatoes, onions, and lettuce, and combines them with dried quartz deer meat. Then, he adds a little vinaigrette and sits down to eat it peacefully.

After a moment, Freja enters with dark circles under her eyes and no energy. Normally, he would not pay much attention to it, but since he is in a good mood, he shares his sandwich with her. She hesitates before accepting it but eventually does and starts eating it happily, improving her mood a little.

After eating, Feicui Long goes to see Isabella. She is sitting next to Andrea. Although he wants to spend some time by her side, he resigns himself and simply returns home, where he plays with the girls and teaches the twins until nightfall.

Tonight, Isabella will not sleep with him either. She told him she would be sleeping with Andrea for this night and the next, as they wanted to catch up.

…

The next day was nothing special. He cultivated, produced some medicines, made himself a sandwich, shared it with Freja, and played with the girls until nightfall.

But that night was different because, while he was sleeping, he felt someone climbing onto his bed. Ever since what happened with Isabella, he had regained his sense of alertness, but at the same time, since he usually slept with Isabella, he assumed it was her and hugged her, spooning as they slept.

The next morning, he was only woken up by Isabella's angry and surprised shout: "What is going on here? When did you wake up? Why are you in bed with my darling?"

He could only hear her and others murmuring. This made the tired Feicui Long open his eyes to see what was happening, and he saw it clearly. A girl with onyx-black hair was sleeping in his arms while he hugged her. She looked very happy.

Isabella, furious, was about to pull her off the bed, but Feicui Long stopped her hand with his own and, shaking his head, told her: "Don't worry, Isabella. Mariane has the bad habit of sleeping with me. It's my fault for spoiling her, sorry. But since she is already asleep, let's let her rest a little longer. She will need food soon anyway."

Isabella was quite annoyed, but she could only accept it. Feicui Long went with her to have breakfast. During breakfast, Isabella acted clingier than usual, practically not climbing on top of him only because she still had some decency left.

After breakfast, he took a bath. Isabella wanted to bathe with him, but this time he wanted to bathe alone. After all, he wanted to meditate a little on how he would tell Mariane everything that had happened and what was going on.

After bathing and getting dressed, by the way, Isabella had to bring him his clothes to the bathroom since he couldn't bathe in the bath he had built exclusively for them because Mariane was there, and Isabella didn't want to let him bathe there. Once dressed, he went to Mariane and gently shook her with his hand, saying: "Little one, it's time to wake up."

But Mariane wouldn't wake up at all. He didn't know if she was pretending to be asleep, but Feicui Long had no choice but to use the heavy artillery: "Mariane, if you don't get up, the master won't let you practice with him, and you'll have to do it alone."

This made Mariane, still half-asleep, open her eyes like lightning and sit up. Seeing this, Feicui Long couldn't help but smile. This disciple of his hadn't changed one bit since the day he picked her up as a baby...

When Mariane saw Feicui Long, even though he had several differences, like how his new body was a little inferior to her master's, she recognized him immediately and hugged him: "Master! You're alive!"

Feicui Long returned the hug and, smiling bitterly, said to her ear: "No, Mariane, that day I died. In fact, come, I need to tell you everything. But first, you need to have breakfast and take a shower. I already got clothes for you."

Mariane, a little sad, said: "That means… Master lost?"

Feicui Long chuckled a little: "I'm not invincible, Mariane. No such thing exists, well, with the sole exception of the Absolute Sovereign and the Absolute Heaven. Everyone else could be defeated."

After that, Mariane went to have breakfast and take a bath.

She didn't realize it, but a very angry Isabella was watching them, biting her lip. And her anger only worsened when she saw that, after this, Feicui Long left together with Mariane without her noticing.

…

Feicui Long took Mariane to a secluded part of the forest, threw down the fragmented formation, and slowly began telling her everything that had happened since his death, about the coffin, this life, and the others.