After leaving the underground, Yasenia did not stop and continued running. She weaved through the streets at high speed and finally jumped onto the roofs.
Her speed increased at that moment, zooming toward the Lost Town's entry at high speed. She didn't remember the place clearly, but she was able to navigate the Town easily and follow where the traffic of cultivators was the highest.
It didn't take long until she found and crossed the gate to exit the Town. Then, after looking at the surroundings for a brief instant, she decided to continue traveling to her right.
While she traversed the forest, thoughts about what to do now crossed her mind. 'I should first breakthrough, then communicate with all of them and see if they are done with their things. My communication devices haven't received any signals recently, so they should be safe wherever they are.'
This thought was strange coming from the dragoness. If it were before, Yasenia would have searched for them instantly. She would have prioritized finding all of them over whatever business she had for herself. Was it calmness? Was it better or worse judgment? Had Yasenia lost affection after twenty years of being away from them?
Yasenia's thoughts continued uninterrupted and with calmness. 'Ideally, I will take one day to breakthrough, two days at most. Then, after digesting the gains, I will reunite with all of them and explore the secret realm together for the rest of the duration. How much time is left? Han Xue said I stayed in the Trial for two weeks, so a little less than two months are left. I don't think we can accomplish much in that period of time. Maybe, I can take the chance to eliminate threats.'
Yasenia went deep into the forest and slowly found an isolated place to silently break through.
After four hours of searching for a place to stay, far away from any cultivator, Yasenia found a special cave. 'Hoh? This cave will come in handy to break through.'
She sniffed around and nodded, 'There are only low-level beasts in the surroundings. I can't detect any other smells, so they probably are the most dominant beast in the area.'
After two laps in the surroundings, she made sure her guess was correct. Then, she released a lasting scent at the entrance of the cave to avoid being interrupted by wild beasts. It wasn't a potent smell, but any beast that smelled it would directly turn tail and run away.
She entered the cave and didn't lose time. She cleaned the surroundings of carcasses and sat-crossed legged in the middle of a five-meter-tall and ten-meter-wide cave.
In the walls, there was a mineral emitting a chilling glow, and this mineral would become important shortly after.
Then she recalled her insights. 'I should be able to overcome the [Connection with the Sun], [Connection with the Moon], and [Connection with the Stars] levels. I'm not sure about overcoming the [Connection with the Celestial bodies] realm last step and entering the next, so I will go slowly instead of rushing it.'
After thinking that, she emptied her mind and began trying to feel the Sun energy around her.
After crossing the seventh, eighth, and almost ninth levels of the Mental Nourishing realm, her comprehension abilities had taken a big leap.
Across the last twenty years, Yasenia had comprehended a lot of things, perfected many others, and increased her skill in the final ones. After gaining so much-needed experience, her insights could finally keep up with her absurd strengthening speed.
Usually, a cultivator has a lot of time to think about each level, realm, and change happening in their body because it took a lot of time to increase their strength. However, a journey that even top-level genius cultivators took ten years to travel, Yasenia rushed it in two.
And this, unknown to Yasenia, hurt her comprehension abilities, creating the bottleneck she had had in her cultivation technique. No matter how heaven-defying, Yasenia was a growing and young individual, after all.
After all those years inside the Trial, she slowly understood those concepts that previously were unclear. Now, Yasenia could be said to be an average cultivator in the Sky Continent. A forty-four-year-old, level nine Mental Nourishing Realm cultivator. That is who Yasenia was at that moment.
However, even her first mistake was a fortunate reflection. This mistake was that she had taken the word "connection" too literally in the past.
Yasenia thought she had to bond with the Sun and create a spiritual connection with it, but that wasn't something someone at her level could do.
The reason that even this thought became a fortunate reflection was that it helped her create her strongest skill besides [Day and Night]—The [Celestial Dress].
Getting back on track, what Yasenia realized she had to do to advance in the connection realm was completely different but the same at the core.
She had to create a connection with the Sun-energy around her, not the Sun itself. And she had to do the same in the Moon and Star connection realm.
Not only did she have to connect with that energy, but she also had to control it as if it were a part of herself, an extension of her will. 'It will be somewhat bothersome since I have yet to unlock my spiritual sense, but I think I should have relative ease to take this step.'
And as she expected, Yasenia didn't take much time or have any complications making the process.
Even if her spiritual sense couldn't still leave her body, her [Dragon Authority] could. Her powerful will inundated the cave, creating a visible pressure around her. This pressure compressed the energy inside of it and focused on taking control of the Sun energy.
However, this alone wouldn't be enough.
Yasenia wasn't worried. She closed her eyes slowly and used her [Sun assimilation] skill to create a faint connection with the Sun energy.
The assimilation skills absorbed only that kind of energy. Therefore, it was the same as creating a channel between the Sun energy and Yasenia.
It was a delicate process. Yasenia had to control the way she moved her energy and aura to become one with the Sun energy. To do this, instead of using her usual meridians, she used the ones in her long dragon tail.
The energy absorption trait of her tail came from specific organs and glands below its scales. Yasenia didn't waste a single resource at her disposition to advance in this realm.
Slowly, but surely, an aura began building up inside the isolated cave.
One hour, two hours, three hours. Yasenia continued this process carefully because the Sun energy inside this cave was low.
However, when the fifth hour approached, an abrupt change occurred. The low temperature inside the cave suddenly raised tens, hundreds, thousands of degrees!
A powerful scorching aura filled the cave. This aura came from the dragoness in the middle of the cave, melting the rock walls and ceiling around Yasenia.
However, Yasenia wasn't done yet. The reason she chose this cave over the others was that it had plenty of Moon energy inside. It came from a mineral Yasenia knew, [Moonglow ore].
This mineral was created after a cave formation created a crystalline structure that could contain the Moonlight, smearing the rocks with that energy. After thousands of ears, the mineral gave a distinctive chilling glow, transforming into the [Moonglow Ore]. This mineral was very hard to find because if it were exposed even to something close to warm temperature, it would explode the chilling Moon energy stored inside in a powerful explosion, destroying the whole cave system with it.
This time, it was not different.
After the [Moonglow Ore] on the walls made contact with Yasenia's powerful Sun energy release, They burst into a chilling explosion of Moon energy.
*BOOM!*
However, as said before, Yasenia did this on purpose.
Her [Celestial Dress] came into being, covering her in that distinctive white, body-hugging dress, and [Dragon Authority] boosted her aura tremendously. This aura literally caught the explosion, making it unable to expand nor contract, and she began refining that Moon energy.
The Sun and Moon energies were complete opposites. In a normal case, Yasenia trying to contain this energy would result in an even larger and more destructive outcome. But Yasenia had something that let her use polar opposite energies with ease.
In these cases was where the [Celestial Yin-Yang body] shone the most.
A ripple spread from Yasenia and submerged the berserk energies in the surroundings. The moment this energy touched the energy, it calmed down instantly as if they were a puppy in the hands of its owner.
Then, they obediently moved as Yasenia commanded them for the next step.
For Yasenia, controlling the Moon-energy was harder than the Sun-energy. Even if the Sun-energy was not weaker than the Moon-energy, it was related to life, light, and fire.
Its relationship with life made it easy for Yasenia to manipulate it because Yasenia had more affinity with the Yang energy she normally used to nourish women. Of course, this didn't mean that she was not skilled with her Yin energy, but it was a relationship like the dominant and non-dominant hand.
Furthermore, the Moon-energy had death, darkness, and ice properties, making it more difficult to control.
Still, Yasenia was calm as she manipulated it. Even if her Yin energy manipulation was weaker than her Yang energy manipulation, her problems ended with Yasenia having to take three extra hours to enter the [Connection with the Moon realm].
A chilling aura burst from her, freezing the previous hot surroundings. The temperatures dropped to below zero Celsius like a switch, creating ice crystals in the surroundings.
In total, Yasenia had spent almost thirteen hours inside the cave.
The final step, the [Connection with the Stars] realm, was the easiest but the most tedious.
Outside was the middle of the night, so Yasenia could feel the Star energy increasing in the surroundings. Now, using the same method she used for the Sun connection, she had to connect with the star energy.
It took the whole night to get there.
When morning arrived, Yasenia opened her eyes and used her cultivation technique to absorb all the energies around her like a vortex. Her cultivation soared, and after thirty minutes of absorbing everything created by the breakthroughs, she reached the limit of the ninth level of the Mental Nourishing realm. She would need at most two weeks of cultivation to break through.