Chapter 1208: Sienna’s Breakthrough: Jealous Goddess

Her brows drew together.

Again.

Phei disappeared from one point and returned at another.

Then again.

Each movement became cleaner.

The Void swallowed his position and released him elsewhere without allowing the distance between either place to matter.

His movement technique had changed as well.

True Void Steps.

Of course she did not know the name Phei’s System had given the evolution, but Sienna had lived for so long and understood things he could barely fathom. He was no longer merely moving through a shallow spatial hollow. The Void itself was accepting his position, swallowing it and yielding another.

That was considerably more interesting, Sienna closed her eyes again: "He learns quickly."

Her voice carried quiet satisfaction... she returned to her own cultivation but this time, she cultivated both her energy and body cultivation.

Sienna drew another portion of Phei’s essence.

Her heartbeat stopped; silence entered her body for one impossible instant.

Then her heart struck again.

BOOM.

The sound remained buried within her, but the pressure did not:

A wave of Nether burst from the bed and rolled through the bedroom, lifting the curtains, rattling glass and pushing loose objects several inches from where they rested.

Sienna remained perfectly still.

Another burst happened:

BOOM.

Her physical cultivation surged: Phei’s Dragon essence flooded the newly opened depth and stabilized the breakthrough while Nether Essence rushed after it, tempering every layer that had just been forced wider.

Her dark hair lifted behind her while sheets rippled around her legs. Black-violet light gathered beneath her skin until she seemed almost translucent beneath the pressure of her own cultivation.

Across her lower abdomen, Phei’s Mark stirred.

Sienna felt it watching and ignored it for now as her breakthrough surged higher.

Her body cultivation crossed the next threshold first, followed by her energy cultivtion and every deeper layer of her physique until the pressure surrounding Sienna abruptly changed.

A sovereign weight settled over the room.

Her body cultivation stepped across its threshold and stabilized at the Divine Queen Stage as her previous energy cultivation.

Sienna exhaled slowly: Black-violet mist left her lips and dissolved several feet away, carrying such concentrated Death Essence that moisture vanished wherever it passed.

Her body felt entirely different, her physical cultivation had taken the leap she needed.

The far greater transformation waited deeper as Phei’s Soul Energy sank toward her spiritual foundation where her energy cultivation stagnated a bit.

The bedroom faded from her awareness as Sienna descended into her Soul Realm.

Her consciousness returned to the endless wound she called home.

Black lakes stretched farther than sight beneath the colossal decaying body occupying the heavens. Vast ribs and vertebrae crossed the upper darkness while their ancient organs pulsed within ruined cosmic flesh, each contraction sending tremors across the realm below.

Mountains of unfinished bone rose beside the lakes as Death mist rolled through valleys where mortal life had never existed. Her Unfinished Children moved everywhere, crawling through black waters, nesting within enormous ribcages buried into the land or drifting beneath the lakes as immense silhouettes visible only when the darkness shifted above them.

Sienna stood at the heart of it all.

Her Soul Realm had changed.

The ancient fractures spreading across the horizons had begun closing, for years since her reincarnation this realm had forced her to contain more of her ancient soul than her body could contain. Entire regions had eroded into Nether and rebuilt themselves only to collapse again, while distant stretches remained half-formed memories of the realm she once possessed.

Phei’s Soul Energy had entered those wounds.

Black-white threads stretched throughout the broken regions, embedded deeply enough to anchor the Soul and Body foundation while Sienna’s own Soul Realm rebuilt itself around them.

Her black lakes deepened.

Nether Essence gathered within them until their surfaces swallowed even the violet light descending from above. Death Energy condensed beneath those waters, obscuring ancient skeletal mountains that had once remained visible beneath the depths.

New ridges of bone rose elsewhere.

Above them, the corpse stretched across the heavens shuddered.

One of the immense organs contracted:

The Soul Realm shook and black rain began falling.

Every drop contained condensed Nether and DeathEssence.

Her Unfinished Children erupted from the lakes.

Thousands rose toward the rain, malformed wings spreading, skeletal claws reaching upward and twisted jaws opening as they drank the descending essence. Their bodies strengthened beneath every drop while Sienna watched with quiet satisfaction.

Sienna’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Cracks across the horizon brightened before Nether flowed into them. Regions that had remained blurred for years had gained shape, and the boundaries of the Soul Realm began pushing outward.

Black mountains emerged beneath violet mist, rivers of concentrated Death Essence formed between them.

The realm had expanded so much.

Sienna’s spiritual cultivation responded; the moment her spiritual cultivation consolidated firmly within the Divine Empress Stage than before, every black lake in her Soul Realm erupted.

Columns of Nether rose toward the body-sky while Death Essence spiraled around them in continent-sized rings. Mountains cracked beneath the pressure before reforming harder and denser, and countless Unfinished Children lowered themselves toward their Goddess as her spiritual presence spread across the realm.

For the first time since reincarnation, since yesterday this portion of her strength no longer felt like ancient power temporarily remembered and belonged to her present existence again.

Sienna remained within the storm while her Soul Realm continued repairing itself, Phei’s essence feeding the restoration until even the wounded boundaries grew noticeably quieter.

Then something happened through their bond.

Sienna froze.

Phei disappeared again.

This time the sensation was completely different from his earlier Steps.

Before, she had still felt the continuity of him. His location vanished and returned almost instantaneously somewhere nearby, the Void swallowing one position and granting another while their soul connection remained perfectly clear.

Now his presence dropped out of the surrounding world so completely that Sienna’s eyes snapped open inside her Soul Realm.

The bond remained but Phei did not.

For one astonishing moment, she could feel from the Dual-Nether Souls with absolute certainty that Phei still existed while every sense connected to his position insisted that existence had misplaced him.

The Nether storm around her slowed, then she felt something else wrapped within that disappearance.

Another presence; a woman... Sienna’s eyes narrowed.

She knew that aura.

For several breaths, the Nether Goddess merely stood beneath the raining darkness while understanding assembled itself with chilling efficiency.

Phei had disappeared into the Void.

With Consort.

The black lakes beneath Sienna became perfectly still.

One of her Unfinished Children slowly lowered itself back beneath the water as though developing excellent survival instincts.

Sienna’s expression did not change much, only the faintest narrowing of her violet eyes betrayed her: "So." Her voice crossed the Soul Realm softly. "That’s the infamous Consort."

Phei’s soul-presence returned to ordinary space and Consort’s presence returned with him.

They were together.

’Very close together.’ Sienna stared through the bond for several long seconds, of course, she could not see what they were doing but she was no naive and one who shameless Phei was.

Her mouth flattened.

Apparently while Sienna sat here refining his essence and repairing several thousand years of spiritual catastrophe, Phei had found time to disappear into the Void with another woman.

Efficient bastard.

The irritation lasted only briefly before reason caught up. She had felt the entire sequence of his breakthrough, the repeated movement, the refinement of his control and the way his Void had changed around him.

Whatever had just happened with Consort was almost certainly another experiment.

Sienna looked toward the black heavens. "His hands had better be where experimentation requires them."

Several Unfinished Children raised their heads toward her.

"Enough." She called softly and the entire realm obeyed.

The immense Nether storm gradually weakened, its spiraling currents sinking back into the lakes while the black rain thinned into scattered droplets. The corpse across the heavens resumed its slow diseased breathing, and her children returned toward their nests, lakes and skeletal hollows with a degree of disappointment Sienna found mildly offensive.

Phei had spoiled them already.

Her consciousness rose and the bedroom returned.

Sienna opened her eyes.

Violet light flooded the room.

For several breaths, black-violet Nether and concentrated Death Energy revolved around her body in slow rings, carrying the pressure of two freshly stabilized cultivation stages. The surrounding formations remained illuminated beneath that pressure, ancient lines visible across portions of the walls and ceiling.

Her hair settled across her shoulders as silence returned.

Sienna looked down at her hands.

Her body cultivation had entered the Divine Queen Stage.

Her spiritual cultivation had consolidated firmly within the Divine Empress Stage.

Meanwhile, Phei had apparently evolved his Void perception, transformed his movement skill into something frighteningly close to true surrender into the Void, and then celebrated his progress by disappearing from existence with Consort.

Sienna stared toward the bedroom door.

A faint warmth entered her violet eyes followed shortly afterward by suspicion.

"That idiot..." Her fingers moved toward the little Dragon Mark Sienna looked down at it; "If he comes back smelling like that woman, he won’t see it coming."

The corner of her mouth betrayed her a moment later.