Hello, dear readers! Here's chapter 68! Next chapter is chapter 69, so you know what kind of chapter to expect. To be honest, it was purely coincidental... Mostly coincidental. Well, chapter 70 will also be a R18 chapters, so you're welcome!
Anyway, enjoy the chapter and see you all next week!
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Molvograd, Molkovia, Earth.
Demian's P.O.V.
"We're listening." Adeliya said with an 'I'm dying to know' expression on her face. The other two kept silent but the intense curiosity painted on their faces betrayed their inner thoughts. Gesturing toward one of the sofas in the main room, he declared. "We might as well sit while we talk. No need to stay standing like that." Once everyone was seated and eagerly listening, a wry smile appeared on his face as he started his explanation. "To be honest, there's not much to say. That man... Reynard, I mean... I just feel like there's something wrong with him. My guts are telling me that we should be very careful around him... And before you say anything, no I don't have any 'concrete' proof of what I'm saying... There's just something about him, as if he hates us with a passion, just not the right kind of passion."
That lame attempt at a joke did raise a few lips' corners but could not entirely vanish the tension brought by his words. The three women, who very well knew that he would not make up some untrue story just to frighten them, looked very thoughtful. As the young man observed the faces of the three most important women in his life, he could see that despite trusting him, Adeliya and Bryn still had some doubts. On Seraphine's dark skin, however, none of those doubts were present. "How sure are you?" She asked neutrally. Her question made him slightly hesitate. After all, intuition was a pretty abstract concept. Of course, cultivation itself could also be considered insane talk to uniformed people.
Reading his thought like an open book, the purple-haired woman added. "I don't care about any proof. I just want to know how you TRULY feel." Noticing the silent support hidden in her words, he shoved all the doubts about his own capabilities out the window and declared firmly. "100%. That guy is bad news for us." Nodding, she replied. "Good enough for me." Pausing for a second, she added. "In that case, we need to be careful around him. Especially you Mom." The middle-aged woman narrowed her eyes slightly at her words before nodding reluctantly as she clearly understood the implications behind her daughter's words.
As Seraphine was about to continue, Bryn interrupted her. "Are you sure about that Reynard? I mean, from what we saw earlier, that Lirov woman seemed much more pissed off at us." Shaking his head, Demian replied. "I haven't gotten any intuition about her, so I can't say. Since it's a pretty recent thing, I can't really tell if my intuition is a 100% thing, or just randomly activated. In any case, we should just be careful around everyone and we should be fine. Aunty, you should never walk alone in the estate. At least one of us should accompany you, the ideal would be me since my cultivation is the highest."
"Back to being a burden..." Adeliya muttered under her breath before agreeing reluctantly. "Fine. I'll listen to you, then." Seraphine, the people's whisperer, quickly added. "You don't have to feel down, Mom. From what I can sense, Demian isn't far from his strength, while Bryn is a bit further away, at least if it's only about her inner energy. Though with her talent, it won't take her too much time to catch up." Her words brought some confusion to the two concerned faces. Noticing their confusion, the long-eared woman did her usual head-tilt, something that Demian always found adorable. "What's wrong?" She asked.
Out of the two cousins, Bryn was the only one not affected by her sister's captivating appearance and was thus the first to respond. "That man should be at the Late Chi Gathering stage, correct?" Seeing her little sister nod, the giant woman resumed. "Since Demian just reached the Fourth Level, why do you say that his strength has almost reached that man's? Don't get me wrong, I know that with his Perk, he'll definitely overtake him quickly. But this is it and that's that."
Her explanation brought an expression of understanding to the younger woman's face who replied. "I see your confusion. I didn't understand it myself at first either. How should I put it...? My Divine Sense seems different than the one described in the book Mister Sergei gave us." Her words roused Demian's curiosity as well as Brynhild's if the expression of interest visible on her face was to be believed. Tapping her chin lightly with her right index, Seraphine continued. "I'll need to test out things further, but from what I already noted, my Divine Sense is 'better' than yours. I can feel farther, even if there's a formation trying to block me. At least, that was the case earlier at the estate's entrance..." At that point, she stopped as if waiting for them to say something while wearing a playful smile. Understanding her character, he knew she was waiting for them to say something before continuing. As a good lover, he thus played along after rolling his eyes discreetly. "That still doesn't explain what you said earlier?"
Pointing her finger toward him, she exclaimed. "Bingo! There's indeed something else! Something amazing!" Shaking her head, her big sister retorted in an irritated tone. "Stop messing around, Sera. Get on with your explanation." Her words elicited a frustrated pout from the younger woman who replied. "You're no fun. Alright, then. My Divine Sense can assess someone's energy level and quantity... don't you guys think it's amazing?" That sentence brought a multitude of thoughts to Demian's mind who replied. "Overpowered, I'd even say. So... you can tell someone's cultivation base?"
Nodding her head with a proud smile, Sera specified. "Yes, but it goes deeper than that. I can also tell the purity of someone's inner energy and the strength of one's body." Scratching his chin thoughtfully, he asked another question. "That's interesting... So, when you told us earlier that I was close to that guy's strength, you meant that my inner energy's purity was higher? Or maybe that my body was stronger?" With a 'You've guessed it' expression on her face, Seraphine answered. "Both, actually. His energy seems very... Murky, I guess. At least, much more than any of us. Now, it's only an educated guess, but I'd say that despite having a greater quantity of energy, its low purity should affect his strength negatively."
So far, her explanation made sense to them, prompting the others to keep silent and listen to the rest of her explanation. "As for Body strength... It's a bit strange..." She seemed to briefly struggle before saying. "I guess there are two things. The first is that the body of every cultivator on the estate seems... Uneven. Well, at least compared to the three of us. It's like they're full of weakness. Of course, you go even beyond Dem and I Big Sis, so... Congrats, I guess?!"
Wearing an amused smile on her face for a brief moment, she then shook her head, as she continued. "Joke aside, their body strength is also surprisingly low for their cultivation base." While feeling impressed with the impressive depth of her Sense, Demian asked curiously. "What do you mean?" Turning her face in his direction, Sera answered hesitantly. "Well, if we take the cultivation Level as a base, besides Uncle, there's no one whose body's strength goes beyond the Low Chi Gathering Rank. And even for Uncle, he's barely at the Mid Chi Gathering Rank if we only consider his body. Of course, his inner energy is much stronger so it doesn't mean that he's weak."
Nodding his head, he asked rhetorically. "From your words, I can guess that we're different?" "Exactly! Besides Big Sis who's got a much stronger body than her cultivation base, our own matches our Levels perfectly. That being said, if I'm not wrong, our base inner energy and body strength should be much higher than an average cultivator of the same Level. IF the cultivators in the Estate are a good sample of the average cultivator, of course."
Her words brought a satisfied smile to Bryn's and Demian's faces before they immediately disappeared at Adeliya's following remark. "You're only talking about base power, though. Those people definitely mastered some spells and should be used to fighting against cultivators, unlike you three." As everyone turned to look at her, she shrugged her shoulders slightly before explaining herself. "Look, I don't want to be that kind of girl, but, besides some basic stuff, we still don't know much about the cultivation world, so we shouldn't be complacent, alright?"
Her words prompted the three to nod somberly, which brought an amused smile to the middle-aged woman's face. "You don't have to make those faces either. You're all already great. You just need some time to adjust. That's all." The seriousness on their faces melted instantly with her words, turning into surprisingly similar confident grins. "I'm sure it won't take us much time to get used to this new world. By then we won't have to always watch our steps. By the way, Big Sis?" "Uh?" Bryn let out a cute grunt before Demian questioned. "How far did you go with creating your own cultivation technique?"
Just like him, the gigantic woman threw herself into figuring out a technique that suited her perfectly from the neutral 'Basic Chi Gathering Technique'. Of course, using the word 'creating' might be a bit of a stretch since she already had a solid base to infer from, but the semantics did not really matter. "I'm almost done. You?" Cocking his brow at her response, he retorted in slight disbelief. "You're already done?!" Shaking her head, she corrected. "I said 'almost'." Speechless at her answer, it took him a moment to recover, prompting him to ask disbelievingly. "Aren't I supposed to be the one with the overpowered Perks? How come I feel like you're the special one, Sis?"
His reaction made his two cousins chuckle lightly while Adeliya rolled her eyes before exclaiming in an annoyed tone. "You're aware that you went from having absolutely no cultivation to reaching the Fourth Level of Chi Gathering Rank in around a month and a half? I doubt that anyone would call that slow, even though I don't know much about 'normal' cultivation speed." As her words reached his ears, he breathed a sigh of relief before muttering loudly enough for the other three to hear. "Thank God I'm still special!" Looking a bit annoyed at his shenanigans, Adeliya retorted. "More like, special in the head."
Setting his right palm over his heart and his gaze on her face, he then replied in a mock-serious tone. "Thank you for your compliment, Aunty. Your kindness always warms my heart." As soon as his words resounded in the room, Bryn and Sera burst into laughter while Adeliya's lips' corners rose slightly before the latter let out a snort that felt more cute than angry to the young man. A few seconds later, the two sisters regained their calm before Bryn remarked with a small smile that displayed some of the confusion she was seemingly experiencing. "Actually, I'm not exactly creating a new cultivation technique. It feels more like... I guess, getting back some kind of memories... As if it'd always been inside my mind, but I couldn't access it in the past..." A brief moment later, the thoughtful expression on her face changed to resignation as she shrugged her shoulders and declared. "I can't explain it better than that. It's just too weird."
From everything he had read in the past, Demian had a few conjectures as to why she was experiencing those strange memories of cultivation techniques despite being completely new to the cultivation world herself. After glancing at her physical appearance, and then quickly doing the same to Seraphine's, one of the reasons he thought of started becoming more and more likely in his mind. However, he would need some time to check if he was right. Hopefully, it was not the worst-case scenario, the one where a strong cultivator was trying to possess her body. If that was confirmed, he would convince her to bond with him immediately, so that his Soul Perk could protect her. Whether that would work or not? He could not be sure without trying. Nonetheless, that possibility was not very likely.
Despite his enhanced thinking speed granted by his cultivation, Seraphine immediately caught on to his thoughts, prompting her to ask. "From your reaction, you're thinking those memories originate from her physical transformation?" Nodding his head, he glanced at the three women while saying. "It's one of my hypotheses. The one I believe is the most likely." Noticing their curiosity, he specified while gesturing toward the two sisters. "Both of your transformations should have something to do with some sort of bloodline awakening within both of you and, if I'm correct, those memories you talked about should be something that was embedded in the said bloodline. From what I read in the past, depending on the type, purity, strength, etc. of the bloodline you girls have, you'll get different stuff through it, like cultivation techniques and spells. Take that with a pinch of salt, though. After all, those were just fantasy novels, so they may or may not apply here."
His explanation made them pensive, plunging the room into silence for a few seconds before they were disturbed by a few knocks coming from the door. While standing up calmly, Demian reassured them with a warm smile. "You two don't have to think too much about it since we'll be able to tell as time passes. In the meantime, I'll go get the door."