When Emily next came to her senses, she was caught aback by the familiar yet unfamiliar environment of the fifth layer of the pagoda. Very quickly, she came to the conclusion Leonardo must have brought her over.
Her entire body felt giddy and weak, especially down there. That experience was a nightmare. Even now, she shudders from thinking about it. Suddenly, a surge of information exploded in Emily's head, and her eyes slacked briefly as they went blank.
A few minutes later, clarity returned to her eyes, quickly followed by shock and disbelief. Very quickly, she disregarded the state of her body and sat down meditatively, reciting the 'revised' Qing family scripture. Slowly thereafter, her aura began to change subtly.
Sometimes it would rise, sometimes fall, and other times a blast of invisible force would sweep out, wreaking havoc in the room.
A day passed…
Two days passed…
Three days passed…
An entire week passed… A stinging pain suddenly wracked Emily's face and star core as cracks webbed on the surface of both. With the disturbance, her masquerading technique was quickly melting away as a golden luster bled into Emily's hair, while her face contorted.
Her storage ring flashed as a silver mask quickly covered her face; all of this was executed instinctively.
Despite the pain, Emily proceeded to follow with the cultivation method. With a bang, both her domains exploded; one was dark and infested with sinister shadows while the other was nothing but invisible forces that twisted space and launched stationary objects into motion with incomprehensible speeds.
Emily hadn't expected both her domains would explode from her body as neither of them was compatible with the Qing family's cultivation methods.
Even as she started to panic, dense pure ether rushed into the fragmented domain through the cracks and rushed into the star core; the gateway to the heart of Emily's sub-dimension.
Emily didn't know that while Leonardo revised the cultivation method, he fashioned it after his improvised soul pearl cultivation method, the same technique he used to fuse his different domains back on planet Arcadia.
When Leonardo first put the concept together, it was a very crude way of execution. However, he had some inspiration from the revised version of the Fourth Dimension Cultivation Scripture that was the product of the remnant soul's efforts. Of course, that remnant soul was the shadowy silhouette in the fragment from the Infernal Throne.
With help from his eternal night martial intent and the insane calculative abilities, he was able to stabilize his split soul into a separate consciousness that was also under the control of his main soul.
What Leonardo did was blend the Qing family's cultivation method into the soul pearl technique, while leaving behind a strand of his will to help with the mending process. The soul pearl technique stands as the foundation for Leonardo's cultivation technique and could easily balance four domains with the help of his innate martial intent, let alone only two.
Without the guidance of Leonardo's will, this cultivation method would simply lead a person to their death, hence why Leonardo wasn't worried about the method's potential leak.
Emily could also feel a foreign power controlling the influx of the pure ether to balance out the fusion of her two domains, and she could guess the origin of this power even if she wasn't half as intelligent.
At this moment, she only needed to endure the pain and keep circulating her energy, essence, and spirit following the guidance of Leonardo's will. Very quickly, her star core began to crack and reshape itself following the image of an illusive cocoon that somehow enveloped Emily.
Her fragmented domains suddenly overlapped into an internal sphere of dense, dark, sinister energy while surrounded and suppressed by an external sphere of invisible energy that spun at an incomprehensible speed, the force exuding so much pressure it caused the black sphere to compress more and more. Even as Emily's body of law began to crack and bleed out, she didn't care.
She knew that her foundation was being rebuilt and she would re-experience entering the singularity realm as her essence, energy, and spirit were compressed together with her domains into the star core. If her foundation was stable, her domains wouldn't have exploded out from her core so easily and began to clash with the outside world.
Typically, rebirth realm cultivators would project an illusory domain that mimics their true domain. They can accomplish such a feat by projecting their comprehension of laws and martial intent, rarely do they ever project their true domain as any damage inflicted upon the latter would scar their foundations and star cores.
If not for the presence of the Judicial Inquisitors and the alliance with the Renhuang Sector, other 7th-tier commanders might have already started attacking Emily's base the moment they caught a whiff of the impending changes to the ether in the skies of the Qing Sector.
A funnel of pure ether pierced the formation blocking the outside world from the core region as clouds overhead churned about. This phenomenon caught the attention of all soldiers and servants alike as they either dropped to their knees or performed a solemn military salute.
Far in the Renhuang Sector, Roxfield suddenly shot to his feet and pierced the sub-dimension, appearing in the skies of his military base. Then, his aura exploded and rushed in all directions, easily transcending space-time, locking onto quite a few powerful auras that began to grow restless.
His explosive battle intent immediately deterred the other two from making a move. This change escaped the eyes of most ordinary people, with quite a few only witnessing the sky changing colors from blue to black, then red, and then back to blue.
Emily was of course oblivious to these changes but she didn't care one bit about it. She had this feeling that if anything, Leonardo would rush back to protect her as she went through the transformation.
A woman's intuition is quite scary as very far on the deck of a flying ship, Leonardo stood there while looking back in the sector's direction.
A faint smile surfaced on his face when he sensed Roxfield's aura, finally relaxing and sauntering back to his room on the ship.
Three months later, the disturbance in the ether from the Seven Stars Province settled down, and around this time, the procession had also crossed several provinces and bordered the territory of the Jin Dynasty's Central Prefecture, the territory of crouching tigers and slumbering dragons.
On this day, Leonardo left his room and arrived at the haul of the flying ship, taking in the grand scenery of the Jin Prefecture, the heart of the dynasty.
The Jin Prefecture, the Dong Prefecture, and the Luan Prefecture were the largest, most populated, as well as the most dangerous human-governed zones on the surface of the Core Mainland.
Quite the pity, commutation bracelets couldn't transmit messages across provinces, let alone prefectures. Leonardo thought about leaving Emily a movement technique, but after second thoughts, he realized that her most powerful technique was her martial intent.
Emily and everyone else in this world that didn't progress much in science, grossly underestimated the power of kinetic force.
Just like time and space, kinetic force is a universal law that proliferates the entire plane. Her body of law was too deficient in the past to harness the martial intent to its full extent. Now, however, things were different.
Leonardo looked forward to reuniting with that woman. But first, he needed to blend into the political circle of the Jin Dynasty and get his hands on the coordinates to the stellar world where planet Arcadia existed.
He had this feeling that Wendy would leave the stellar world and explore the cosmos beyond the world barrier on her own, perhaps looking for clues as to why the star core from a magic plane descended into this barren plane. Furthermore, he needed to find Eternus and seek some questions from the guy.
No matter how powerful Eternus was, Leonardo was confident he could subdue a guy with a crippled star core. However, he was a bit concerned about that woman Eternus mentioned as his wife; he had also mentioned that if she were to wake up, the entire stellar world would collapse, let alone planet Arcadia.
Just how powerful was that woman? Could she be a World King? As much as Leonardo was curious about what the title World King represented, he opted to ask for answers from the mysterious Grandmaster Sin rather than waste his time asking anyone irrelevant.
"You're finally out for some fresh air?"
Leonardo heard the question and glanced back, finding the speaker to be the 'kind' lieutenant who seems to go by the name Marley.
Leonardo smiled. "We were moving too fast, it wouldn't have made a difference whether I stepped out of my room or stayed inside."
Marley paused for a second before laughing. "You're right— I forgot your cultivation realm is too low. Haha."
Slapping Leonardo's shoulder lightly, the man pulled Leonardo toward the edge of the haul while the ship continued to slow down.
He said, "Well, son… take a good look at what grandiose actually means! One deep breath might actually propel you up to your next breakthrough in cultivation!"