Author note: Happy Thanksgiving~! <3
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After Skye's Heavenly Tribulation, Andrea looked at her daughter and asked with a smile. "Are you prepared to faint?"
Dawn snorted. "I'll prove that I am strong, not fainting after the Tribulation!"
Andrea laughed and ruffled her hair. "That's a great mentality, love." Then, she asked. "Do you have everything prepared?"
Dawn nodded and waved her hand, summoning a large halberd and armor. Her black curly hair cascaded behind her heroically, while her golden slit eyes shone with valiant emotions. Her slightly brown skin glowed with the sun, giving her a healthy sheen. She said confidently. "I have everything prepared, Mama!"
Andrea nodded. "Great, now go on. Well, before that, look up."
Dawn looked up, and Yasenia threw several stars from the sky, making them explode into the shape of letters to cheer Dawn with a lovely message like the other two.
Dawn giggled. "Thanks, Mommy."
Then, she stepped forward confidently and stood in the middle of the garden, looking upward.
Gathering energy with her cultivation technique, Heaven detected Dawn's attempt at breaking through and started to gather Tribulation Clouds above Dawn.
With the clouds hovering above her, Dawn moved her energy and looked skyward.
RUMBLE!
With Heaven's roar, Dawn prepared her halberd, holding it horizontal, and bent her knees. "Come!"
A thin Heavenly Lightning Bolt descended, and Dawn spun the halberd twice and swung it skyward.
BANG!
The weapon and lightning bolt collided, and the effects were similar to what happened before, throwing the halberd against the ground.
Dawn snorted and tried to lift it from the ground. However, to her surprise, the weapon was stuck. "Huh?"
Looking down, she noticed that the stroke against the ground had tangled with the halberd's edge, locking it there.
Andrea's face dropped together with the second roar coming from Heaven.
RUMBLE!
Looking skyward, Andrea shouted. "Dawn! Let your weapon go and resist it with your body!"
Luck is also part of life, and sometimes, even when someone doesn't deserve it, bad luck punishes them unjustly.
Dawn's weapon getting stuck was nothing but a coincidence that happened due to a stroke of bad luck. This made her nervous, and when she was pulling the weapon out, she heard her mother's voice together with Heaven's rumble.
'My body?' Dawn gritted her teeth and looked skyward. The attack was already there and would descend in the next instant.
Her face changed from frustration to a wide grin. "My body is quite tough, thanks to Little Mommy's beating. Let's see if you are stronger than her."
The Heavenly Lightning Bolt descended, and Dawn crouched down, jumping upward and spinning to strike the bolt with her tail.
"BREAK!"
BOOM!
After the collision, Dawn streaked downward, cratering into the ground.
Andrea wanted to rush forward, but she needed to wait and see if the Heavenly Tribulation was over. If there was a third lightning, she might lose her child today.
Thankfully, similar to Skye and Aurelia, Dawn only received two bolts before the clouds started dispersing. The instant they started dissipating, not only Andrea but Flora, Valeria, Kali, and the rest of the healers rushed forward.
Valeria arrived first and waved her hand, sending a healing wave and lifting Dawn from the ground. Looking at her scorched tail, her eyebrows came together, and she said. "We'll need to place her into intensive care for a month at least, to make sure that her tail doesn't have permanent damage. Flora, go to the treasure and get one of the [Jade Recovery Pills]. I don't have any on me."
Andrea waved her hand. "I have a few. Here."
Valeria looked at Andrea and smiled faintly. "You are prepared, that's great."
Andrea snorted. "As if I'll lose my child because we are lacking one medicine. My ring is full of every single type of pill that we own."
Valeria fed Dawn the pill and then very gently lifted her up while holding her charred tail with energy. "Okay, I'll be in the infirmary with Dawn for a while."
Andrea followed behind with the medical practitioners. The spectators began commenting between each other.
"Poor girl, she almost lost her tail."
"Right? Her tail would've carbonized if the lightning bolt had been slightly stronger."
Cecile clapped her hands once. "Enough, don't gossip about that if you don't want a nervous dragon beating you up."
Everyone imagined how Yasenia might look and decided that being silent was the most intelligent option.
Meanwhile, in the sky beyond the planet's atmosphere, Yasenia was looking down with a stiff face. Tatyana was standing by her side, so she could feel the restlessness in her. She laughed faintly. "I feel like you each time you face a Heavenly Tribulation." Tatyana patted Yasenia's back and commented. "These things happen. But, this time around, it was preventable. Let's make sure that the following tribulations are done on a stone floor and not a garden where vegetation can mess around."
Yasenia opened her mouth and finally spoke. "That was scary."
Tatyana nodded and listened, and the dragoness commented. "I thought that I was somewhat accustomed to the feeling of loss because of the War Trial, but the second the possibility of losing Dawn flashed in my mind, I felt like the whole world was crumbling around me."
Tatyana spoke faintly. "There is no way to get accustomed to that feeling besides becoming numb and losing oneself. Only when your sense of self dies do the deaths of close people stop affecting you. By then, whether you are considered the same person you were before is hard to fathom."
Yasenia sighed, trying to exhale the nervousness that had gripped her heart for those seconds.
After a few moments, she commented. "How is the creation of the [Soul Tablets] going?"
Tatyana grabbed Yasenia's hand and smiled. "Come, come. They are already done. I've even made copies for each of us."
They flashed through the sect, arriving at their residential floor, and then entered deep into their mansion. Going through a few secret passages, Yasenia and Tatyana arrived at a large room with thousands of pedestals that spread outward. On the walls, a lifelike representation of Yasenia, Tatyana, Evelyn, Angel, Cecile, Kali, and Andrea was carved with a gem on the forehead.
"Those gems are our soul tablets. They will continue shining as long as we are alive. Once any of us dies, they will dim down. If we are able to salvage our souls at the moment of death, a part of them might be absorbed by them and become something like a [Soul Strand]. Don't worry about Heavens not liking it, this is something quite commonly done in higher worlds. Experts of different families must protect their families while being alive and also after death. That's what being part of a family means."
Yasenia smiled. "I wasn't going to complain. If a part of me can live on and guide future generations, that's more than what I could ask for."
The dragoness looked at the other pedestals and saw seven of them glowing. Each of them gave off an aura that was very easy for Yasenia to distinguish. "The children."
Tatyana nodded and saw Yasenia look at one of them, the dimmest one. Yasenia approached and gently caressed the dim soul tablet. "My little Dawn suffered this time around."
Tatyana smiled. "This will only make her stronger. Don't worry; she will recover. You heard Valeria, right?"
"I know." Yasenia sighed. "I wish I could go down and warm her up with my body. Dawn really loves falling asleep between her Mommy's arms, after all."
Tatyana laughed. "Who doesn't, eh? That's a shared trait by the Dravory Family."
The dragoness snorted. "Of course! Where is more comfortable than in my arms!? Nowhere!" Then, she laughed and looked at Tatyana. "Thanks for doing all of this. If I didn't have you, I would've taken centuries building all of this…"
Tatyana smirked. "Centuries? This spatial sect would need a bit more than centuries without Valeria's, Mirrory's, or my help."
Yasenia rolled her eyes. "Leave me a bit of face, will you?"
Tatyana snorted. "Ha! Face is earned, not given! If you want a face as thick as a city wall, you'll need to become more shameless!"
Yasenia burst into laughter. "Sure, sure." Then she asked. "Speaking of this… How is your main body doing? You should be close to breaking through, right?"
Tatyana smiled. "Only three more years, and I'll become a Third Level Demigoddess! With my methods, I am already scraping the bottom of the powerhouses in Sky Continent's Heavenly Layer."
Yasenia sighed. "The bottom, eh?" Yasenia looked at Tatyana for a few seconds and asked. "Tell me honestly, Tatyana. Do you think I have a chance to catch up to you?"
Tatyana paused and looked at Yasenia for a few seconds. After a while, she answered. "I don't know. I don't really know how fast I'll go through the next cultivation realms, and I also don't know how fast you will go through yours." Tatyana smiled. "But, I feel optimistic. You will eventually catch up."
Yasenia smiled, and Tatyana added with a grin. "And if you don't, just let yourself be cared for by Mommy for the rest of your life~. "
The dragoness snorted. "Sure, sure. I'll just thank the Heaven for being born as your daughter and be pampered for the rest of my life!"
Tatyana burst into laughter. "As if! You will try to catch up even more desperately if the chance of that even starts appearing."
Yasenia raised her eyebrow. "It's good that you know. So, tell me a bit about the Sky Continent's situation."
Tatyana hummed. "After the beating I gave to Demon Mom and Demon Dad, the children all didn't dare speak up. So, I conquered a third of the Sky Continent. Then, I told my people to kill as many demons as possible, so there has been an ongoing massacre. Sadly, the stupid demonic cultivators of the Sky continent fell prey to the Demon's sweet words, and they have made many summoning portals that pour demons without stopping."
Tatyana shrugged. "Most of the previous powers have now either been destroyed or completely changed. Speaking of which, the Tang and Long families are only alive because I've been keeping them alive by manipulating a few threads from the back."
Yasenia laughed and asked. "Why are you keeping them alive?"
Tatyana snorted. "They tried to bully you so much; if you don't send them to hell by your own hands, I won't be satisfied!"
Yasenia rolled her eyes. "Don't they have a bunch of high-level Transcendent realm cultivators? Are you planning on keeping them alive for a few centuries and millennia until I am strong enough?"
Tatyana blinked innocently. "Why not? Isn't it just keeping a bunch of good for nothings alive for a few millennia? I've done it before~."
Yasenia laughed dryly. "I see."