Free Web NovelChapter 596: Yanxia Exits Her Secluded Cultivation
Liam appeared in the Dimensional Space, on the clearing below where Yanxia was cultivating.
He looked up and what he saw stopped him.
Where the contained sphere of flame had been when he last stood in this space, there was now a massive golden Three-legged Crow hovering above him, filling the sky from one edge of his vision to the other.
The wings were half-extended, each one spanning a distance that made the Dimensional Space feel smaller than it had before. The three legs were tucked beneath her. The golden light pouring from every feather was not reflected light — it was from within, deep and steady and alive, and it pressed against his skin with warmth that should have been dangerous and wasn’t, mostly because of the bond between them, and secondly because of his Primordial Forge Authority talent.
A proud smile crossed his face and he immediately flew up to meet her.
He rose through the warm air, the golden light intensifying as he climbed, and when he reached her position their eyes locked. He saw the shift in her gaze, the particular change that moved through her expression when she found what she had been looking for.
The look in her eyes that was as big as a house, became one of happiness and thrill, and through the bond between them he felt it before he saw it.
"Yanxia," he said in a low voice filled with warmth, his smile widening.
"Papa!" Her voice arrived directly in his mind, clear and sweet and carrying months of waiting behind it.
Liam was taken aback for a moment. He hadn’t expected that they can now communicate telepathically.
He understood immediately that it was an ability that came with the depth of the bond they shared.
"You have grown," he said to her telepathically. ƒrēewebnovel.com
"Yes, Papa. I’m now at the Middle Stage Golden Immortal Realm." The pride in it was unmistakable and entirely genuine, the pride of someone who had worked toward something in isolation for months and had arrived and wanted to be seen arriving.
Liam nodded slowly, the satisfaction on his face deepening. The system had told him what realm she would reach when her consolidation was complete. Hearing her confirm it was different from knowing it in advance.
The heat emanating from her body was significant. It pressed against him from every direction, radiating from her scales and her feathers and the air moving around her wings.
If it wasn’t for his immunity against flames, he would have been burnt to ashes the moment he appeared on the clearing below.
"Come here," he said, spreading his arms. "Let me hug you."
A sound came through the bond. It took him a moment to identify it as laughter.
"Papa. I’m too big. You can’t hug me like this. I’m too huge."
She extended one wing slightly, just enough to make the point, and the air displacement from the motion pressed against him like a warm hand from fifty meters away.
Liam looked at the wing. Then at her eye, which was watching him with great amusement. He chuckled when he understood she was right. She was massive, easily dwarfing his A380, her wingspan making the Dimensional Space feel modest around her. There was no version of that hug that worked.
"Okay," he said. "Show me your human form."
He heard a proud chuckle move through the bond, and then golden light gathered around her and her form began changing rapidly, the light seeming to reshape what it touched rather than simply illuminate it.
A moment later the Three-legged Crow was gone.
What stood in front of Liam was a young lady who looked no older than eighteen, with flowing dark hair that carried a faint golden undertone where the light caught it, and golden eyes that had their own internal light, genuinely luminous in a way that no human eye achieved. Her skin was smooth and fair. The robe she wore was deep gold, with patterned drawings of golden birds worked into the fabric in a detail that shifted when she moved.
"Wow," Liam muttered.
The word came out before he had considered it, carried purely by what he was looking at.
Yanxia covered her face immediately with both hands, feeling the embarrassment of someone caught being seen in a way they hadn’t quite prepared for.
"Why are you covering your face?" Liam said. "You look stunning."
The hands came down slowly. She looked at him and her expression softened.
"Thank you, Papa," she said in a low voice.
"Come here. Come and give me a hug."
The smile that broke across her face in the next moment was the only warning he got.
She shot toward him.
The distance between them disappeared and she crashed into him with the full enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting months for this specific moment and had given no consideration whatsoever to the physics involved. The impact knocked him clean out of the sky.
They fell together, Yanxia still holding on, the ground coming up fast below them, and when they hit it the impact sent a shockwave through the red soil, a deep crater forming around them instantly, a cloud of red dust rising into the air and climbing thirty meters before it began to spread outward.
Liam lay in the crater, Yanxia still attached to him, and looked up at the dust settling above them.
"Yanxia!" he exclaimed, his voice carrying more amusement than any genuine reproach.
"Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was too excited," she said, the bright smile on her face suggesting the apology and the smile were coming from entirely different emotional states.
Liam ruffled her hair, chuckling, then slowly pushed himself up from the crater floor with Yanxia still clinging to him with the determination of someone who had decided on a position and was comfortable with it. He flew out of the crater and landed a short distance from it, Yanxia still attached.
"Okay," he said. "You can come down now. Enough hugging."
"No," she said immediately. "I don’t want you to leave me again."
Liam turned and found Lucy already there, having followed them down, standing a few meters away. The expression on her face was the mischievous one.
"A little help here?" he said.
Lucy shook her head without hesitation. "I’m sorry, Master, but Yanxia has the right to hug you for as long as she wants."
"Thank you, Aunty Lucy!" Yanxia said, her voice bright and immediate.
Liam looked at Lucy. Then back at the space behind his shoulder where Yanxia’s voice had come from. Then at Lucy again.
"Are the both of you ganging up on me now?" he asked, his eyes narrowing in a way that carried no actual suspicion.
"It might look like that," Lucy said pleasantly, "but we aren’t. We are simply telling you how it is."
"I see," Liam said. "So, that’s how it is." He smiled, ruffled Yanxia’s hair one more time, and finally managed to set her down on the ground.
The moment her feet touched the ground, Yanxia turned toward Lucy with the same expression she had worn before launching herself at Liam.
Lucy saw it immediately and lifted off the ground.
"I’m sorry, Yanxia, but you will ruin my body’s operating system with the heat emanating from your body," she said, rising further as she spoke.
Yanxia understood at once. She pulled the heat inward in a single controlled motion.
Lucy saw it and descended.
Yanxia did not wait for her to land fully. She moved and hugged Lucy with all her might, sending the two of them hurtling through the Dimensional Space together, Lucy’s voice trailing behind them.
"Master, save me!"
Liam stood where he was and laughed.
He was genuinely happy seeing that Yanxia had completed her cultivation consolidation.
"With her Golden Immortal Realm cultivation, she’s the strongest here," he muttered to himself, watching them move through the space above him.
The thought carried something interesting with it. Yanxia’s hug had knocked the breath from him and sent them both to the ground, and that hadn’t been her trying.
For comparison, his First Transcendent Stage cultivation level placed him at the Loose Immortal Realm in the cultivation universe’s terms. The gap between that and Middle Stage Golden Immortal was not a small one. His Abyssal Dragon Constitution was what had kept him from being seriously injured by that fall.
If Yanxia had had even the slightest hint of malice toward him, there would have been nothing to do about it.
He filed the thought, then turned his attention inward.
The 1,000 years worth of cultivation from the sign-in reward was there for him. He expects it to push him to the edge of the Second Transcendent Stage after absorbing it.
With hesitation, he settled into a lotus position, hovering slightly above the ground, and started absorbing the years worth of cultivation.
An immense amount of spirit qi flooded his body immediately, dense and pressurized, pouring into every channel simultaneously. His Origin Devouring Constitution received it without strain, converting it to Primordial Essence in continuous cascading waves.
He stayed like that as the sequence of spirit qi filling, converting, Primordial Essence accumulating, continued for a few minutes.
Fifteen minutes later, the reward was exhausted.
Just as he had expected, it had pushed him to the edge of the Second Transcendent Stage. He was now as strong as Earth Immortals in the cultivation universe.
He opened his eyes and smiled, flexing his hand slowly, feeling the weight of what had settled into him.
"Nice," he said quietly.
