Consequently, seeing somebody die didn't disturb her in the slightest; she wasn't horrified by Mikael's actions or even mildly put off. On the contrary, her heart beat faster as she saw Mikael fight for her and 'protect her'.
Of course, while she loved to see his protective side, a part of her was worried, and she was ready to intervene—the instant the fight against the Core Disciple began to go wrongly she would have stepped in and killed the bastard!
No matter if some people then talked behind her back for her actions, for having interfered in this Life and Death Battle, she wouldn't have cared!
The one she found herself to love, though her mouth wouldn't agree, her heart knew the truth was infinitely more important compared to 'losing face', and she would be damned if she let him get hurt because of that!
After the incident with the Core Disciple of the Stillwater Palace, time began to pass uneventfully, with nothing else this 'exciting' happening anymore, the only thing that mattered was the trio passing time with each other as their relation grew thicker and closer by the days.
In this fashion, two weeks passed in a leisurely manner before Mikael unfortunately needed to leave the Stillwater Palace, after all, he couldn't stay there forever… could he?
He had, after all, the girls 'waiting' for him at the Wandering Sword Sect, and he couldn't bear to be far from them for too long.
Because of that he said his goodbye, a goodbye that took the form of a passionate night with Yulan and a shy kiss from Lifen.
Before leaving, he obviously proposed that they come with him to the Wandering Sword Sect, but as he expected, Lifen refused for both herself and her sister. He understood the reasoning behind her refusal, so he hadn't been surprised.
Seeing that the best possibility wasn't possible, he turned to the second alternative and proposed that, instead, they visit each other's Sect as often as they could.
After all, while both Sects were separated by an immense distance, they were all powerful cultivators, so even crossing a vast distance didn't take much time, and that was true even for Yulan and Lifen with their far, far, far inferior speed.
Consequently, Mikael's idea worked really well and solved both problems at the same time without 'sacrificing' a side.
Logically, both girls were enthusiastic at the idea, and after promises of seeing each other soon enough, Mikael finally flew away, leaving behind the gazes and the waves of the Bai Sisters as he departed from the beautiful lake and the Sect nestled atop it.
Once back at the Wandering Sword Sect, he spent some more time with the girls, even did some 'social', and also visited his 'friend'—not really a friend, but at the same time a little friend—that was Renjiro.
There he sparred with the sword-obsessed fanatic before eventually making his way to visit his Master.
Toward his Master, Mikael's feelings were relatively… neutral, with some amount of goodwill and gratitude.
After all, his eccentric Master Jianhai was a dubious teacher and Master at best, and during all the time Mikael had been in the Sect he didn't see him often and didn't receive much help from him, like having him as a Master versus not having him wouldn't have slowed down much of Mikael's progress.
The two biggest 'contributions' Jianhai made were granting Mikael access to the fourth floor of the Scripture Pavilion—and in truth it wasn't even really him who granted that access, but rather the fact that it was part of the 'contract' when Mikael was recruited so… yeah.
His Master wasn't the most reliable, but at least he had given Mikael and the girls talismans to protect them, and for that Mikael was grateful. He also offered really, really occasional guidance, which, while scarce, still counted for something.
Considering all that, he truly wasn't the best of Masters, another Grand Elder probably would have been far better, but even then Mikael still carried some goodwill and gratitude toward Jianhai.
Not only for the small things he did for him, but also, and above all, because he had helped the girls progress.
Jianhai didn't help them much, the same amount as what he gave to Mikael, which wasn't far above nothing, but while small this was still guidance offered for free when he 'technically' wasn't obligated to anything, and the help his eccentric Master offered to the girls changed everything of his opinion toward his Master!
If Mikael was honest with himself he could recognize that he had some kind of double standard when it came to himself versus toward the girls: if somebody tried to kill him he 'wouldn't really care' — he would obviously kill them, but beyond that his feeling on the situation would be relatively neutral, but if this happened to the girls—
Oh boy! If somebody tried to kill one of his girls, forget being neutral, forget being angry, he would be worse, far, far worse, he would instantly hunt down the culprit with the fury of an asura crawling out from the depths of hell!
Because of that the handsome cultivator's feeling toward the eccentric old man was neutrality and a small amount of goodwill for what he had done for him, and a relatively large amount of goodwill for the help he had given to the girls.
Consequently he took it on himself to visit the old man, eccentric at best and crazy at worst, and listened as Jianhai passionately talked about 'real' and 'totally logical' things.
This 'conversation' carried on for hours on end before Mikael finally took his leave and refocused his attention on his training, training that he hadn't done for sooo long that he was beginning to itch to throw himself back into the grind.
After all, he had a Myriad Lightning Convergence Physique +++ to master, didn't he?
On that note, Mikael focused on training his newly acquired Physique.
In this fashion, a couple of months passed during which he learned to control his new Physique and more, far, far more… but what exactly he had learned and how he would use it in the future—
That was something that was still to be seen!
But Mikael was satisfied enough with his progress that after those couple of months he stopped training his Physique any further and shifted his focus onto something else.
And this 'something' was… Cloudbreaking Stride!
The Movement Technique was the only one of his Cultivation Arts that was still at Small Success, everything else ranging from Mastery at best to Great Success at worst, and consequently he turned his attention to this Cultivation Technique, planning to raise it to Mastery.
Because of that he began to train it, prioritizing it above any other potential thing he could have chosen to focus on.
To deepen his understanding of the Movement Technique he tried to align himself with what the Technique was truly about, and consequently he 'cultivated' Cloudbreaking Stride by moving through the clouds high in the sky, all the while obviously relying on the usual pills to speed up his progress, and surprisingly his comprehension advanced at an extremely fast pace—faster than ever before!
Three weeks and a half.
It only took a little more than three weeks to bring the Technique from Small Success directly to Mastery!
And this was even faster than the last time he had done similar training for the Moonpiercer Sword Art and the Sword Nurturing Art.
At that time it had taken more or less a month for each of them to be brought from Small Success to Mastery, and that was considering he had Prodigious Sword Talent Level 3 and Sangrelia's presence to speed up his progress.
But this time he didn't have Sangrelia's help, as this wasn't a Sword Technique, while his related talent—his newly evolved Fluid Motion Talent—was 'only' at the Prodigious Level 2, so being faster didn't make sense. He should only have been slower, never faster, right?
And while it looked like that at first glance, that was without counting a single… small detail, and that was that Fluid Motion was a Rare Type Talent which, compared to the Common Type Talent that was the Prodigious Sword Talent, was actually far stronger, as it was a fusion constituting multiple Common Type Talents!
And this was the main reason why his progress was so rapid, looking as if he was advancing a thousand miles a day.
But even though his power was rapidly increasing, Mikael, as ever, wasn't satisfied and continued to train, throwing himself into his next endeavor which was—
To reach Mastery in all of his Cultivation Methods, raising them from the Great Success they were currently at.
To do so, and considering his present comprehension, talents, cultivation realm, and the fact that all of these Methods belonged to a 'complexity' at the High Core Formation Realm level, the cultivation time required wasn't short.
The 'normal' pace he should have been able to comprehend them at, given his comprehension, talents, and cultivation realm, was: 2 weeks to reach Entry, another 1 month to reach Small Success, an additional 2 months to reach Great Success, and finally 5 more months to reach Mastery.
In the end, it would take a total of around 8 months per Cultivation Method of this level of difficulty.
Of course, this time frame was only an approximation and could end up being longer or shorter depending on numerous factors, but it still gave a good idea of how long it would more or less take.
Considering he already had his Ninefold Impurity-Free Physique Method at Mastery, he couldn't train it further unless he evolved it into something stronger.
As for the other Cultivation Methods, the story was different: the Elemental Unity Path, Sun-Moon Unity Technique, Obsidian Spirit Reinforcement, and Divine Sense Refining Method were all sitting at Great Success, and taken together, it would require 20 months to bring them all up to Mastery.
Fortunately, he had his pills that he was eating like candy to speed up his comprehension, and with their help he could cut the time down by a little more than half, so it would take around 2 months and 1–2 weeks per Cultivation Method, meaning that in the end it should only require 9–10 months.
And that was without taking into account Mikael's newly evolved talents, for while he unfortunately didn't have any talent related to comprehension evolve during the Perfected Thunder Vein Dew absorption, it didn't mean that the other now stronger talents were useless.
In truth it couldn't be further from the truth, they were all useful.
Like the Vital Vessel Talent, which was a 'Body Talent' that not only strengthened his body compared to how it was before the Heavenly Wonder absorption, but also enhanced his Body Talent in such a way that if he trained a Body Tempering Method he would progress far faster and with greater ease.
For now it was 'useless,' as the Ninefold Impurity-Free Physique Method was already Mastered, but in the future it was sure to prove its worth.
And it wasn't like all of his other newly evolved talents were 'useless' in this scenario either, as Mikael had 3 talents related to energy and consequently Qi that had grown stronger, and because of that not only had his combat power increased but even his Qi Talent had dramatically improved.
A 'Qi Talent' which affected his progress in the 'classical Cultivation Methods,' namely the Elemental Unity Path and the Sun-Moon Unity Technique, both of which he knew would advance far faster because of it.
He estimated that instead of the 2 months and 1–2 weeks he was supposed to need for each of them, the time should be cut to a maximum of 1 month each!
In the end, this entire training should take more or less 7 months from the initial 20, an initial 20 months that was already transcendentally monstrous in the cultivation world for a cultivator of Mikael's realm.
And so Mikael launched himself into training, time slipping away amidst the ever-changing flow, a flow like an unstoppable river that never ceased to move forward as the seasons turned one after another while he cultivated and pushed his strength ever higher.
In the end, his estimation proved right, for after exactly 7 months and 16 days since he had begun training these Cultivation Methods, they had all reached Mastery!
These multiple 'breakthroughs,' coupled with the earlier Physique one and the Movement Technique, pushed Mikael's battle power to an all-time high.
Normally this would have been something joyous, but—
Mikael couldn't bring himself to feel much joy, because at that moment he had reached his limit!
Author Note:
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All hail the Sacred Grind!
To be honest the Cloudbreaking Stride appearance in Mikael's training plan was kinda a misstep on my side, I don't know how but it slipped through the crack when I was writing my note and I forgot to include it in the list…
Fortunately I checked and remembered to add it, so now Mikael will train in it, and while it create a small incoherence it isn't that bad with the current timing and if we don't look too closely it can look like it was Mikael optimized list.
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