I opened my eyes to the sound of someone knocking. And by all means, it was quite the rude awakening.


    Blinking my eyes, I could feel my panic growing as I couldn''t quite get a handle on reality, all the while the incessant knocking continued, making the need to shake my drowsiness off more and more urgent.


    One time after another, I continued to blink my eyes, hoping that by doing so rapidly, I could clear them of whatever made them so sticky and hard to keep open.


    Bit by bit, my consciousness fought off the drowsiness, slowly bringing me back up to the world of the living…


    Only for me to realize that right now, neither I nor ire was in any state for anyone to walk in on us.


    "Ah, I''m sorry, I trained too hard and ended up falling asleep here," I called out toward the doors, hoping to dy whoever it was that continued to keep knocking.


    Finally, the knocking stopped.


    "Good, I was about to burst through the doors!"


    Hearing the familiar voice, I breathed a sigh of relief. But knowing that it was Chihiro behind the training room doors…


    Surprisingly, it didn''t make the situation any better.


    Not with ire still sleeping all naked atop me, her pajamas torn to shreds, and her skin still shiny from all the sweat and love juices that we had sttered all over the ce in the process of our dual-cultivating.


    "Can you give me a minute to properly wake up?" I called out toward the doors while grabbing ire''s shoulder and gently shaking her, hoping this would be enough to bring her out of her slumber.


    Sure, I felt bad about doing so with just howbored her breathing was, but cutting her sleep short seemed like a much better oue for the current situation than having her father walk in on us in this quite unfavorable position.


    "You mean, you two?"


    Hearing Chihiro''s counter, I could only sigh.


    ''He knows, huh?''


    To be perfectly honest, it would be weird if he didn''t. Not only was he a parent, giving him the natural instincts to figure stuff like that out, but he was also a cultivator of a peak mortal stage — perfectly capable of sensing our cultivation even through the closed doors of the training room.


    ''Wait, speaking of cultivation…''


    Prompted by a sudden worry, I focused on the state of the spirituality around the two of us…


    Only to then gulp my saliva down.


    "Actually, would you mind bringing us some fresh clothes?" I asked, instantly giving up on the idea of pretending I was in the training room alone. "And I hope we''re not in a hurry because…"


    For a moment, I hesitated, not exactly sure how to bring up the next part to the man.


    "We actually are," Chihiro said, a tinge of curiosity brimming in his voice. "The sky-carriage of the n is set to arrive within an hour. So, if you want to have any breakfast before that…"


    "Sir, right now, we have something far more important to discuss than some stupid breakfast, as delicious as it could be!"


    I gritted my teeth, opting to keep the problematic part a secret… Or, at the very least, not shout about it through the doors for all around to hear.


    ''But still…'' I gritted my teeth as I looked down at the powerful currents of energy harmoniously flowing between me and ire even though we had long since stopped dual-cultivating.


    It wasn''t even about the weird flow of mana between the two of us. It wasn''t the first time it happened, and right now I could just assume it to be the natural evolution of what we already achieved before.


    No, the shocking part was — in the process of screwing our minds out, we both managed to advance, mutually reaching the ninth cultivation rank!


    The scariest part about it all, however, was how I couldn''t remember a single thing about either of us actually doing so!


    ''How could we break through the limit when we didn''t even begin to formte the ideas on how it would work?'' I asked myself, only to then grit my teeth. ''Heck, even now I don''t have the slightest clue how my cultivation is supposed to work now!''


    This was an actual, pressing problem.


    Sure, I could still wield my cultivation and manipte my spiritual energy… But now that I''d lost grasp of how this entire thing was supposed to work, the tool that I knew almost as well as I knew how to throw a punch suddenly became unwieldy, foreign!


    "I understand," pulling my head out of the depths of my thoughts, Chihiro finally managed to figure something out. "I will go get you some clothes and be right back. Sit tight."


    Hearing this, I finally could breathe a sigh of relief… a very small one, though. Because while it removed a small part of the ongoing urgency, it didn''t make it any easier for me to figure out just what the fuck was going on!


    "Mmm…" Hearing ire moan through her sleep, I put all thoughts of the situation aside, focusing all my attention on just her and her alone.


    "ire… Wake up," I called out while shaking her shoulder again, doing my absolute best not to get excited by how her body shifted with my actions.


    Yet, even after a night of making out so wildly I could hardly remember a single detail of it, it was pretty challenging not to appreciate the way her curves shifted, nor to ignore how she resisted my attempts to wake her up, opting to just hug herself even more into me than she already was.


    "ire!"


    Knowing full well that we didn''t have the time to just y around, I raised my voice a bit before giving her a slightly heavier shake than before.


    "Hmm?" Shaking her head, ire rose from my chest a bit and raised her hand to wipe her eyes. "Tim?" she asked as she blinked her eyes a few times and looked ahead, only to lock her gaze on my face and then smile lovingly.


    "ire, wake up and stay calm," letting go of her shoulder, I moved both of my hands before locking her head between my palms.


    "Hmm?" still drowsy, ire closed her eyes before tensing her entire face for a moment. She then opened her eyes wide, blinked her eyelids a few times, and finally focused her eyes on my face.


    "Tim…?" she muttered, not exactly sure what this unorthodox treatment was for. "What''s going on?" As her consciousness started to return, so did the realization that something was wrong.


    "First thing first, stay calm. While stuff happened, it''s nothing bad. And right now, we need to get ourselves back into a presentable shape, so…" I cut my voice for a moment, looking for the correct way to trante my sprinting thoughts into proper words.


    "Why are you scaring me first thing in the morning?" Half-frustrated and half-curious, ire closed her eyes again before tensing her entire body as she tried to stretch without actually moving. When she opened her eyes again, however, a long wrinkle appeared all along her forehead as she actually started to sense that something was indeed quite wrong.


    "Focus on my face!" I raised my voice just a bit to make it more authoritative, doing my best to distract ire from the sense of wrongness, fully aware that after raising two cultivation ranks overnight and with no actual effort, if she were to overreact…


    Given myck of control over my own cultivation right now, I greatly doubted if I could control her. And sure, Chihiro was close enough to intervene if a situation problematic enough were to arise… Find exclusive content at empire


    But that would both draw quite a lot of attention to us while we were doing our best to stay low-key on this trip and inevitably lead ire''s father to see us in quite the unpresentable state.


    "Okay…?"


    Still confused, ire swallowed her saliva down before squinting her eyes a bit and following my request, making an adorable face as she stared right into my eyes.


    "Good, now…" I pressed my lips into a thin line before taking a deep breath and finallying to a decision. "Good news first. You are no longergging behind when ites to cultivation," I announced, only to watch how ire''s face brightened up.


    "Yay?" Her happiness didn''tst long, as it quickly mixed with the confusion from before, making her question my weird reactions.


    This wasn''t how I would normally react if she were to advance to a higher rank!


    "The problematic part is…" For a moment, I considered the idea of veiling my words a bit. In this way, by forcing the girl to take her time to figure out the meaning behind my words, I would also give her the time to slowly get herself somewhat used to the idea of what happened.


    "Fuck it," I rolled my eyes, already too tired of all the scheming and plotting as I finally opted to just give it to her straight. "We both advanced to the ninth rank."


    ire squinted her eyes again, as if unable to reconcile the meaning of my words with reality. Then, her eyes suddenly widened, only for her to take a deep breath and reach out for my shoulders.


    At first, I was worried the worst scenario woulde to pass… Only for ire to prove my worries wrong when she breathed out and leaned her head to the side.


    "How?"


    I pressed my lips into a thin line again, only to then avert my eyes.


    "No idea," I shrugged my shoulders before gently pushing her off me and down to her knees.


    Freed from underneath her weight, I could finally rise up and take a look around the room.


    "Oh shit…" I muttered before gulping my saliva down.


    The training room, supposedly designed to withstand the powers at y of exercising cultivators… Suffice to say, either the two of us exhibited powers beyond the scope of what this room was projected to withstand, or the men responsible for constructing it took quite a lot of liberty siphoning the proper materials and recing them with ones of much lesser quality.


    "Wha…" Before ire could finish her question, she looked around. And as she saw the ruined state of the training room, she failed to even finish this one word of hers.


    "I hope the n can afford to have this room rebuilt…" I muttered under my nose, only to finally rise up before reaching out to help ire do the same.


    "We should get dressed," still somehow holding on, ire looked around in search of the clothes, only to see their scraps thrown all over the ce, with some pieces of her pajamas somehow ending up stuck to the room''s ceiling.


    "I''m back, move away from the doors," Chihiro''s voice announced his return, giving me just enough time to grab ire''s hand and pull her to the corner of the room before her father opened up the doors and threw a bunch of clothes inside, only to then quickly shut the doors back down.


    "Woah…" ire sighed out, her body all tense. "That was… scary…" She shriveled up into herself, her eyes wide from the sudden shot of adrenaline.


    "It''s all good," I patted her head, hoping with all of myself this would be enough to calm her down a bit. "For now, let''s get dressed. We still need to go get ourselves cleaned up…"


    "What''s the hurry?" Noticing yet another weird angle in my behavior, ire looked up at me right as she started to move to where the fresh clothes had ended up falling.


    "Well," I raised my hand and scratched the spot behind my ear while looking away. "We do have less than an hour before the carriage of your mom''s n will arrive."