When Yasenia opened the door and went outside, she took a deep breath and stretched her body. Her tail straightened backward while she leaned forward to maintain her balance. After a sensual sigh, she returned to her usual position, straightening her back and walking confidently. "I wonder how long it has been since I entered Close Door cultivation?"
Yasenia was unsure since her cultivation space had no day and night cycles. Her room absorbed the outside energies and filled it with them. So, while there were very slight variations of each type of energy during day and night, it was not noticeable enough for Yasenia to tell the passing of days.
Yasenia smiled and was about to move when a golden blur appeared and threw itself into her arms. The dragoness could instantly tell who it was, so she didn't dodge and opened her arms.
"Omph." The impact made Yasenia grunt as she was pushed back three steps. She couldn't help but laugh. "My baby is so strong."
Angel rubbed her face between Yasenia's soft bosom and giggled in happiness. "Yasenia~, Yasenia~, Yasenia~."
The dragoness looked down with a tender smile and hugged her closely. "Yes, yes. I'm here, baby. Were these months difficult?"
Angel lifted her head, showing a pouty face. "I missed you so much."
Yasenia caressed her hair and leaned down to kiss her lips and pick her up. "I'm sorry for making you feel like that, baby."
Angel shook her head and asked. "How did it go? Did you manage to progress?"
Yasenia nodded. "I won't be overconfident, but I progressed a lot. How about we meet with the rest, and I tell you about my experience?"
Angel smiled and nodded while being carried away by Yasenia. While moving toward the main room where the rest were probably waiting, Yasenia spoke. "By the way, Baby."
Angel answered with a hum while her face was buried in Yasenia's neck. "Hm~?"
"Well, I was wondering," Yasenia asked, "How much time did I spend in secluded cultivation?"
Angel answered with a muffled voice as she sniffed Yasenia's scent. "Nine Months. It felt so long."
The dragoness frowned. "Nine months? I thought it would be more, to be honest."
Angel complained. "Hmph. Did you want to stay away for so long?"
Yasenia clearly heard her Baby's playful tone and desire to be pampered, so she complied with her little play. "Ho ho~, perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn't~. What do you think, Baby?"
Angel lightly bit her neck and complained. "You should answer that you didn't want to!"
Yasenia laughed and separated Angel's face from her neck to give her a deep kiss. After a few moments, Yasenia smiled softly. "I love you, Angel."
Angel nuzzled her cheek with Yasenia's and laughed. "I love you toooo!"
It didn't take long to arrive at the main room of their house, and, as Yasenia expected, everyone was there. Not only her family and maids but even leaders of other parts of the sect were here to welcome her. The dragoness couldn't help but feel surprised. 'Impressive that they managed to organize this so fast.'
Once inside, they congratulated her as one, with different gestures depending on their relationship with Yasenia. "Congratulations on your successful closed-door cultivation, Sect Master."
Yasenia looked around and smiled. "Thank you, everyone. You can relax since I've met my objective with flying colors. If there are any urgent reports, you can do them now via spiritual sense. If there are no reports, you can return and go rest."
The dragoness heard around seven people sending her messages. Using her powerful mind as a cultivation tool, she listened to all conversations attentively, absorbing the reports.
Yasenia felt that none of them needed immediate action on her part, so she sent them away with a message of acknowledgement and a quick solution.
Of all the messages, there was one in particular that interested her. 'So, that one spy we left alive has finally become useful. Hm… It is a shame for his innocent family, but well. Now we know their method of infiltration a bit better, and we can use a reverse spy tactic more easily.' Yasenia paused and shook her head. 'Let's leave all of this for later. I now have much more important things to do, for example…'
A little purple and golden bullet flew in her direction, very similar to how Angel threw herself on her. Yasenia expertly moved the big and small baby into her arms, managing to fit both of them with her tail as support.
"MOMMY! I MISSED YOU!"
Yasenia's face softened as she hugged Kaleina tightly and rained kisses on her cute and pretty little face. "I missed you too, love." She smiled as the two pairs of golden eyes locked with each other. "You are so agile now, baby. You've worked really hard."
Kaleina giggled delightedly. "Mommy is the best after all!"
Yasenia approached the others with her arms full and maneuvered around to kiss her dears. "How was everything, Honey?"
Kali smiled. "There was a lot of progress on our part. We also managed to stabilize our foundation. Although…"
Yasenia lifted an eyebrow. "What's wrong?"
Kali smiled sheepishly. "Without your… nourishment, our cultivation speed has dropped to a crawl."
The dragoness laughed. "Well, although I gave you all the Yang energy I could before entering closed-door cultivation, it is impossible for it to last nine months. How much did it last for each of you, by the way?"
Kali entangled her hands. "Well, it lasted four weeks for me. After that… It was a bit hard, to be honest."
Yasenia was curious. "How was it hard?"
Kali touched her navel and said with her face becoming increasingly red. "I-I felt empty."
The dragoness's lips arched as she knew that Kali wasn't talking about an emotional emptiness. "My little fox is so cute."
Kali blushed, and Yasenia whispered. "Before I break through, I'll spend my time with all of you. Don't worry~."
Kali's four fox tails started wagging uncontrollably as she nodded bashfully.
The dragoness turned toward her mischievous girl, making Evelyn smirk. "After being pumped full of…" Evelyn looked at Kaleina's curious and innocent eyes and coughed. "… love, it lasted around three weeks for me. Stabilizing the foundation of my God Inheritance was really energy-consuming."
Yasenia laughed. "Well, that's good. How about the rest, did you also feel… empty?"
Evelyn crossed her arms and said while looking into the horizon. "My existence has come to a point where my void needs to be filled with lots of love. The state of my desire and body currently is large enough that I would've become a skilled dragon rider if you didn't need to do a few things before that."
Yasenia burst into laughter with the rest. Kaleina blinked. "Evelyn Mama, do you want to ride Mommy like Andrea did?"
Evelyn looked at her and seriously nodded. "Wouldn't that be cool? Jumping up and down, left and right, back and forth? Doing so until the dragon spews the flames and fills the cavern with the hot, searing magma!"
Kaleina imagined Yasenia in her dragon form spewing flames and her eyes glittered innocently. "So cool!"
Yasenia was speechless about how this sentence could sound entirely innocent, yet the innuendos hidden were too many to count.
She approached and leaned down a bit while Evelyn tip-toed to give her a kiss. "You really are a master with words, eh."
Evelyn lifted her eyebrows and smirked. "I need to circumvent my limitations somehow~."
The dragoness shook her head with a pampering smile. "Sure, sure. How about the rest, Dear?"
Evelyn smiled calmly this time. "Everything is going nicely. Although I've become quite involved in the sect's workings, I hope you don't mind much~."
The dragoness blinked. "Why would I, Dear? That's great news."
Evelyn smiled widely. "I knew you would say that, haha. I love you~."
The dragoness tilted her head, not knowing what other answer she could have. However, she answered regardless with a smile. "I love you too, Evelyn."
Then, her gaze moved toward her tail and heroic darling and approached with a coquettish smile. "How about you, darling~?"
Andrea's lips twitched as the seduction and charm radiating from that endearing word made her heart skip a bit. She chanted some sutras in her head to calm Little Andrea, who was about to wake up and smiled. "Everything is good, love. My Blacksmithing is making progress, and I even managed to create the first part of a transforming armored dress for Kaleina."
Yasenia blinked. "An armored dress?"
Andrea nodded. "Together with Evelyn, we are using your scales to create a metal thread that can be sewn using spiritual tailoring. It's a mix of both crafts to create a dress that feels and acts like cloth, but is, in truth, armored."
Yasenia's eyebrow slowly raised in praise. "Wow, and it works? Can I see the design?"
Andrea had it prepared since she knew that Yasenia loved these things, so she waved her hand and showed it to her. Yasenia looked at the drawings and notes, and her free tail began wagging. The rest of the tail remained unmoving because it was being used to support Angel and Kaleina. "This is so clever! You've used the innate qualities of my dragon scales to adapt and mold to make it!"
Andrea nodded. "It will probably end up as a middle-level Earth-ranked dress since our materials are very gentle, specially selected for someone at Kaleina's level. But it should last Kaleina for a long while. Moreover, it will be able to transform with her until she manages to unlock her innate dress as a beast."
Yasenia nodded. It was indeed an appropriate treasure level. Too high-level treasures could damage the user if they were not carefully constructed so as not to overwhelm the user with their powerful auras.
For example, Yasenia's ring's functionality has always been significantly sealed because Yasenia was still too weak to use the Supreme Level treasure in its entirety.
If the ring didn't have something like this, its aura would be enough to severely injure or even kill Yasenia by overloading her meridians and Dantian with energy.
Andrea looked at Evelyn and commented. "Also, why didn't you speak about that achievement? It is quite a revolutionary thing."
Evelyn smiled. "Well, she has already noticed, most probably."
The dragoness looked at Evelyn and nodded. "I did, but Dear, I am waiting for you to tell me to congratulate you."
Evelyn pouted. "Oh, you did? What did I do, hm?"
Yasenia burst into laughter. "Seeing the harpies clothed has been quite a surprise." Yasenia praised honestly. "Great job, Dear. You've achieved what no other tailor in this entire world managed to do: create functional clothes for the harpies."
Evelyn smiled and giggled. "Well, that I did~. It was much simpler than people made it out to be, to be fair. Once I realized what was wrong, the only thing that the clothes needed was to have energy veins that would transfer energy into the harpy's body. The spiritual veins in the clothes were difficult to create so that they could be used in any dress and for all harpy levels, but with a bit of trial and error, I managed to do it."
The dragoness pondered and nodded. "That's clever." She smiled. "Do not dismiss your achievements so much, Dear. No one else made it before you, so it is clearly not as simple as you make it out to be."
Evelyn giggled and nodded.
The dragoness's eyes then moved toward Cecile and Tatyana, locking on Tatyana's stomach. However, she didn't see the flat stomach she had expected to see. Instead, while so faint that a mortal would probably miss it, there was a small bump on her navel. 'H-Huh!?'