Yasenia and the rest went from world to world, but they didn't locate a signal from Ayanduin. The dragoness looked out to the vast outer space. Her Spiritual Sense spread out for hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
As she looked at the celestial bodies passing by and the occasional Star Beast, she couldn't help but feel like everything was so… relaxing.
At the start, she felt uncomfortable out in space. However, day by day, that uncomfortableness disappeared, and a sense of freedom replaced it.
Her senses caught everything easier, and even when the maids didn't recommend having the Spiritual Sense spread out, Yasenia didn't listen this time. The reason the maids gave her was that she could have a sensory overload if they suddenly passed through a cluster of matter.
At the end of the day, Spiritual Sense was a cultivator's mind's eye. It was a way of looking at the surroundings. Too much information could overcharge it.
Kali approached Yasenia and looked at her with curious eyes. "What are you looking at? Isn't it a bit boring to see, love?"
Yasenia smiled. "Boring? It is fascinating. I could probably spend years to no end and never get tired of looking at this scenery."
Kali tilted her head and asked. "Really? I can't find the appeal… Why don't you tell me about what makes it so interesting for you?"
Yasenia looked at Kali and walked behind her. Then, she hugged her fox and looked ahead with her. "I find the hidden traces of life in such a vast void interesting. Unlike a world that is filled with beings and energy all around, everything out here is so thinly spread. Why is there so much… nothingness? If life only thrives in world-like places, why is the universe different from a secret realm? A big landmass full of life that's trapped in a spatial bubble, so to speak."
Kali hummed and got thoughtful, leaning back on Yasenia and feeling the dragoness's soft body. "Looking at it that way… We live in islands that are sparse in an ocean that can only support extremely resilient life."
Yasenia smirked. "Right? If worlds suddenly stopped existing, how many creatures do you think could thrive?"
"Humans? Their younger generations would perish in the void of space."
"Beast humans? Most of their infants can't really live as infants outside certain environments; space is a big graveyard for them."
"Beasts? Only a few could survive."
Kali asked with a small laugh. "What about Divines and Demons?"
Yasenia chuckled. "Who knows? But what I mean to say is that space's emptiness is… strange."
Kali tilted her head upward to look at her tall dragoness. "Strange? How so?"
Yasenia got thoughtful, organizing her thoughts. "I mean… Why isn't the entirety of space covered by the Heavens?"
Kali understood the depth of that question, but she asked back. "What if it is?"
Yasenia paused, and her pupils shrank. Kali smiled and looked out to the vastness of space. "What if everything is covered, but we are so incredibly small. So incredibly weak and insignificant, we cannot even gaze upon it? Can a mortal look at or understand the vastness of their world? Many primitive lifeforms think that the world ends after their previously explored maps."
Kali looked at Yasenia's face and smiled. "We have a lot to learn, love."
Yasenia looked at Kali and kissed her lips with a smile. "We do. Now, can you go inside? I need to meditate here."
Kali nodded and ordered aloud. "Give space to your Young Miss! Don't let anything interrupt her thoughts!"
All the maids answered as one. "Understood, Madam Kali!"
Kali caressed Yasenia's face and smiled gently. "Go."
Yasenia chuckled and jumped out of the ship, not caring about their current speed. Somehow, she knew that nothing would go wrong.
Her energy surged around her, and her voice echoed through space even without air.
"[Empyrean Cosmos Dragon Transformation]."
The faint energy in the void of space was transmitting her voice, not air. And right after she did so, Yasenia's dragon form manifested.
Her majestic body blended with the surroundings in perfect harmony, surreal and illusory.
Meanwhile, the maids who didn't expect Yasenia to jump out were stunned for a fraction of a second before Alaia barked out orders. "Turn around! Activate the energy radar! Scouts, I'll kill you if you lose Young Miss's energy traces!"
"UNDERSTOOD!"
Kali blinked several times, looking at the place Yasenia jumped from. "W-Why did she jump!?"
Valeria laughed. "Young people are surely energetic."
Kali blurted. "Energetic!? Who jumps into the void of space without a single safety net!? I swear that if she has even a single scratch, I'll smack her butt until it is red!"
Kali imagined her hand sinking in Yasenia's bouncy, jiggly, and large buttocks and corrected herself. "I'll smack her butt even if she isn't scratched!"
Valeria looked at Kali's opening and closing hand with a deadpan. 'Well, I guess that even the most reserved of people will become perverts if they have Yasenia as a wife.'
Of all the bodies she had during her years, this one was the most voluptuous, without a doubt. The main reason was that, usually, when people summoned her in the past, they imagined her as a motherly and elegant creature. While she had curvy figures in the past, none were as shapely as Yaseina's.
Kali looked at Valeria and saw her using her hands to lift and release her giant twin green mountains. She asked, stupefied. "What are you doing?"
Valeria blinked and answered. "Admiring the bounciness of your lover's body. Look."
Kali looked, and Valeria lifted her breasts, letting them down after that. The small gravitational field in the ship wasn't strong enough to stop the jiggle of Valeria's breasts until they bounced almost seven times.
Kali cleared her throat. "Impressive indeed."
Meanwhile, Yasenia let herself float through space, not moving as she slowly drifted into her dragon form.
Her eyes were closed as she felt the movement around her. While there was no wind or any other indication that she was moving, her enormous spiritual sense could detect the shifting of the asteroids in space, giving her a sense of movement.
'Hm?'
When the dragoness was standing on the warship, the ship's anti-gravity field blocked her from feeling the cosmic forces. Now that she was allowing her body to drift, there was a very faint sensation of the Sun's gravitational pull attracting her into an orbit around it.
The sensation was so vague that almost nobody else would have felt it, but Yasenia did. In addition, the nearly untraceable pull of nearby Celestial objects started affecting her, making her body deviate from her previous straight path while slowing her overall speed. 'Slowing down? Why? There is no friction here to slow me down.'
What Yasenia was feeling was a phenomenon that usually would be impossible. After all, Yasenia appeared out of nowhere and was suddenly influenced by the gravity of the Celestial Objects around her. This meant that the gravitational pull was slowing her down and trying to guide her into an orbit around the Sun.
As a relatively large star, the Sun of this Solar System had an incredibly large gravitational pull.
As Yasenia was mesmerized by all of this, she couldn't help but think of what she represented. "A dragon that represents the endless firmament. I should be like this Sun, pulling everything towards me and keeping it under my control, for I am the [Empyrean Cosmos Dragon]."
The dragoness's aura swelled as she absorbed the cosmic energy around her. Not having been purified by the Heavens, it was not recommended to absorb lots of it unless it was a life-or-death scenario. However, Yasenia couldn't stop, and even if she could, she wouldn't.
As the raw cosmic energy entered her meridians, it acted like a wild creature trapped in a cage and ran wild inside Yasenia. Still, it could not escape or even do damage.
[Celestial Yin and Yang Body] was an equalizer of everything. The constitution that could balance even pure [Celestial Energy]. Yasenia's biggest and most important strength was not her energy, comprehension, or any other quality.
It was her constitution.
Without [Celestial Yin and Yang Body], not to mention growing into what she had become, even starting her cultivation journey would've been nigh impossible.
So, when the cosmic energy tried to cause trouble inside Yasenia's meridians, a terrifying pressure fell upon it, stilling the energy into shock.
Nothing seemed to happen from the outside, but inside, a presence that made even the [Celestial Energy Star] tame manifested. With it, the energy fell into the Dantian, and a terrifying suction force came from one of the treasures there.
The [Primordial Energy Core] sucked in those energies and quickly refined them. Like many of Yasenia's treasures, the origins of the [Primordial Energy Core] were anything but ordinary. It was with it that Yasenia could rebirth, and it was with it that Yasenia could absorb almost any type of energy and quickly refine it into her own energy.
Moreover, her own energy, thanks to the Core, never really had Heavenly Influence. Therefore, the peculiarness of the cosmic energy fell into fancy and new energy, not a hazard of any kind.
As Yasenia absorbed torrents of energy, she felt her connection with the cosmos around her deepening, and her understanding of energy increased.
Yasenia muttered. "A sea of nothingness when seen from a mortal's eyes, A sea of life when seen from the eyes of an immortal. Celestial Energy is not just about destruction. It is about creation as well."
With such thoughts, the blockage that had been stopping her weakened, and Yasenia managed to break through the bottleneck.
A ripple of energy spread outward as Yasenia reached the [Celestial Intent Level 8]. Moreover, she could feel that it would just be a matter of time and a deeper comprehension of what she understood now to reach the ninth.
Yasenia returned to herself and started moving, spreading her wings and using energy to turn in what felt "right" to her. She then looked around and blinked. "Well… Where am I?"
She looked toward the Sun in the distance and tried to calculate how far she was. However, she didn't really know how to do that, so she gave up. So, without thinking much about it, she looked around her body and found the Communication Device she always had on her. "Hello? Kali?"
Kali's voice reached her from the communication device. "Have you finished?"
Yasenia answered with a happy tone. "I did! I also broke through into the eighth level of the Celestial Intent!"
Kali hummed. "I see~."
Yasenia blinked twice and asked. "Why don't you sound as excited as I thought you would?"
Kali laughed a bit. "Well, you took four months. It's not quite a good thing when I know that you have so little time to live, right?"
The dragoness sighed. "I am sorry, Honey. I'll return right away."
"Don't be, love." Kali's soothing tone was heard with a bit of malicious intent. "When you come back, I decided to slap you one time per hour you were outside the warship."
Yasenia's forehead started perspiring even in the void of space. "T-That's 2880 slaps…"
Kali laughed a bit more. "2893, love. We are in the 13th hour of today."
Yasenia saw the warship approaching, and she had an urge to flee. However, like an obedient wife, she resigned herself to her fate. "Please, be gentle…"