After the battle at the Lakeshore’s Market, for now, Blackshore family is the top dog, and so, the businesses of the city naturally leaned towards them. The Patriarch of the Blackshore family received visits from many businesses, and these came with gifts and tributes. 

Wines were shared, and praises were sung. 

For the businesses that could afford it, they put money into the pocket of both sides, after all, they didn’t know when the winds may change. They would send a delegation to the Amberblade side too, but usually discreetly, given the balance of power.

The city was back to normal. The mortals were used to the two families fighting it out on the streets, and repairmen were already on the way. Sects like the Verdant Snow Sect often compensated the mortals for the trouble.

Tundra, Celestia and Agnia walked the city the day after the battle, partly to ensure that the remnants of the Yellow Cloud Sect and Blood Blade Sect left, and also because Tundra wanted a day to rest. 

The wood energies present in Lakeshore was slightly higher than most, and last night, he used it to cultivate and help Celestia’s cultivation. She was already at the peak of the 4th realm, and that made her the strongest of his wives. 

Tundra believed she needed to change her cultivation method soon. Her current methods, derived from the methods of the Angel’s Whisper, would no longer fit her once she reaches the 5th realm. But this was a discussion once they were properly settled. 

The market was crowded, but all made way for the three. Life went on, for mortals, whether it was the Amberblade family, or the Blackshore family in charge. It was just the same old shit, with a different name.

“Distinguished master, some flowers for the beauty next to you?” The three cultivators passed a stall filled with flowers, manned by an old man. The old man asked. 

Tundra stopped, and wondered whether Celestia would look nice with flowers. “Celestia, what flowers do you like?” 

Celestia chuckled a little amused. “If you buy flowers for me, Elly and Marin will ask for flowers too.”

The regressor grinned. “If my wives desire to have regular flowers in our homes, I will have the servants buy them by the wagon.” 

The mortal seller, noticing Tundra’s interest in his flowers, quickly went into his sales pitch. “Lord Cultivator, these flowers are the freshest from the Lakeshore’s East Flower Farms. They are each carefully cared for, and pollinated by the Thousand Bark Bees of the Lakeshore Barren’s forests. The fragrance of these flowers can last for a week. Please, here’s one for you-” 

Tundra smiled, and tossed the seller a coin. He picked up a light-pink tulip, the Pastel Lakeshore Tulip. It was truly a mortal plant, though he had seen spiritual versions of such flowers. It takes special care, and spiritually imbued waters, but even mortal plants could transform into spiritual herbs. 

“The fragrance is decent. Do they make dried petals with them?”  Tundra asked. 

The mortal seller shook his head. “No, lord cultivator. They lose their fragrance when dried. The farmer tried preserving them, but they couldn’t capture the smell.”

“I see.” Tundra nodded, and turned to face Celestia.

His wife stood and watched, with a mixture of amusement and shock.

“Would you like one, Celestia?” Tundra asked again.

Celestia blushed. How was a woman supposed to act when her husband asked which flower she wanted in the public markets? She reluctantly nodded, and spoke quietly with a blush on her face. Despite her age, this was the first time a man ever offered her a flower. “Anything is fine, husband.”

The old man caught it. “If it’s for your wife, Lord Cultivator, please, take three! They say three flowers is a symbol of love.”

Tundra heard this pitch before, and chuckled. It was a lie. It’s only if it’s three red roses, not the three flowers that this old man sold. But he was amused by his brazenness, and decided to play along. “Clever old man.”

The old seller clearly realized that Tundra knew he was lying, and looked absolutely horrified. Tundra took out some additional coins.

“I’ll humor you though. Give me three, then.”

Celestia’s face, which was already a light peach, turned redder when Tundra presented the small bouquet of three Pink Tulips. The old man was clearly experienced enough to tie a set of ribbons to the bouquet. Celestia felt strange to receive flowers at her age, and even stranger that she was flustered and didn’t know how to react to it. It was as if she was just a young twenty-something little girl on her first date. 

It is true that cultivators, in their pursuit of power and immortality, often neglect more mortal aspects of life. Dates, flings were seen as distractions, and in some cultivator families, still wanted to preserve the sanctity of a woman’s first union with their partners. It was also a selling point, should a female daughter be offered up as a marriage candidate. 

Tundra smiled, and the three continued their walk on the market streets. Agnia, naturally, sensed the mood was really, really unusual, and felt like she was the third wheel, intruding on the Sect Master’s private moment with his wife. 

So, Agnia walked further and further away. Tundra chuckled, and wondered whether he should find a suitable husband for her, or whether she was the type that liked women, or both. 

After walking with the bouquet for a moment, Celestia didn’t know what to do with the pink tulips, and so she decided it was too embarrassing to walk around holding a bouquet of three pink tulips, and dumped it into her spatial ring. 

“Uh, Sect Master, I have somewhere to go-” Agnia couldn’t stand the weird atmosphere anymore, and decided to make herself scarce-

“No. Stay.” Tundra knew she was trying to weasel away, but he wasn’t going to let her go anywhere just yet. “Let’s eat lunch. It wouldn’t do for me to leave without tasting some of Lakeshore’s cooking. Tell me, where should I eat?”

Agnia shifted uncomfortably, before recommending the best place in Lakeshore. There really only is one institution worth visiting in a town like this. 

***

Lunch was a fairly typical affair. Tundra realized almost all restaurants, in his travels, served the same blend of braised meats, roasted duck skin, some ginger-picked chicken, stir-fried vegetables, some kind of fried or steamed tofu, and some kind of plain steamed bun, or the same bun but deep fried. 

The uniformity of the dish was something that puzzled him, because there really was no reason for restaurants on other sides of the world to serve the same thing. 

At one point, he got so annoyed in his travels as Sect Master, that he actually sent one of his disciples to investigate why restaurants all over the realm seemed to cook the same damn thing. 

The results of his disciple’s investigation amused him. It was not because the restaurants and chefs didn’t want to innovate or try new things. Many chefs often experiment on dishes on a private basis, and would even serve it for special guests and trusted customers. 

But to the public, they would not even put up the item on the menu. 

The reason, simply, was because it was ‘safe’. These were inoffensive dishes that cultivators were used to, and because cultivators, if they didn’t like something, would often trash a place up. 

Most chefs wanted to keep their heads connected to their necks. 

So, rather than risk earning the ire of cultivators for serving them something potentially wonderful but also potentially horrible, shops ended up with this bland set of menu that became the ‘cultivator’s standard menu’. Inoffensive, that cultivators would say it’s not great, but not bad enough to cause the restaurant trouble. 

“So, Agnia, how was it in Lakeshore?” Tundra asked, and he could see the Core Disciple shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

“What do you mean, Sect Master?” Agnia asked. 

“You’ve been here for a few years since we participated in the power battle with the Amberblade family. What do you think of the place, and your opponents?”

Agnia paused, and wondered whether this was a review of the sequence of events. “The Amberblade family, without the patriarch, is really nothing much. Even now, they are spending all their resources to heal the patriarch’s wounds. This weakness allowed both the Yellow Cloud and Blood Blade Sect to increase its influence over the young master. I just didn’t think they would go so far as setting up a formation to trap us.” 

“That formation was still quite terrifying. This disciple is thankful for the lightning-resistance pill.” 

Tundra didn’t need to say she would’ve died. She didn’t know, after all. To her, this is her reality, and the prospect of death was unlikely. The formation hurt her, but the resistance pill meant it did not destroy her flesh.

Tundra nodded, and remembered that in his version of the future, about two to three thousand years from now, the Yellow Cloud and Blood Blade Sect were assimilated into the Verdant Snow Great Sect. They were the hegemon of the region, and almost all the ‘competitor’ sects were absorbed or destroyed. Those that didn’t were all allied or subordinate sects who knew better than to oppose his rule.

He was in the 9th or 10th realm then, and in the eyes of many, he may as well be a god. His elders, trained from all over the region, were in the 8th and 9th realm, and were proper powerhouses that shook the earth everywhere they went. 

The regressor looked at Agnia, and nodded. “It’s the Blood Blade Sect’s 2nd most powerful formation, and the only one that’s somewhat discreet, due to its diffused energy patterns.” 

Agnia, being a cultivation focused cultivator, immediately asked. “What’s the most powerful?”

“Their home defense, the Blood Blade Defensive Sealing Formation. Good enough to stop 6th realm cultivators.”

“Wow.” Agnia exclaimed, while Celestia nodded. 

Of course, every formation has some weakness. In the Blood Blade Defensive Sealing Formation, its weakness was the ‘gate’. It had a gate that needed to be protected, but this was a secret the Blood Blade Sect kept very, very well, that only its master and Formation Elder knew.

Tundra nodded. “Our Verdant Snow Sect’s formation is a similar type of formation, though ours can handle up to the 7th realm.” 

It was an expensive formation, proposed by his own master. They commissioned a formation master from one of the Great Sects, Misty Mountain Great Abode, to make it, and paid a fortune. Tundra remembered that the construction of that defensive formation almost bankrupted the entire Verdant Snow Sect. 

He was an elder then, working all day and night in the workshop, producing pill after pill for years, just to rebuild their coffers.

Agnia nodded in admiration.

Tundra then looked at Celestia, and back at Agnia. There was a part of his question that went unanswered. “What’s your opinion of this city, and the area of Lakeshore?”

“It’s alright.” Agnia said. “A little boring. I spend most of my time meditating and cultivating the wood energies, but it is quite cumbersome to transmute the wood energies into fire energy before absorption.”

The Sect Master nodded. 

Transmutation of natural energies, or some called it form changing of the energies. required concentration. From a single mote of wood energy, depending on the cultivation method, it is possible to change wood to up to six fire energies. But this process was a laborious one, and the time spent meant it’s usually better to directly cultivate the correct energy type.

Of the five essential energies, it all formed a loop. 

Wood to Fire, Fire to Earth, Earth to Metal, Metal to Water, and Water to Wood. This was the constructive loop, and each transmutation from one to another, created more out of less.

It is therefore possible, with the right cultivation method that could perform all the basic types of elemental transmutation, to make something out of almost nothing. 

This was, in a way, the essence of a cultivation chamber. Naturally. It is time consuming. Time is the price a cultivator pays to grow. Time is the cultivator’s real race. A cultivator races to ascend a realm before time catches up with him. 

Agnia looked at the Sect Master, wondering whether she misspoke. Celestia naturally noticed her worried experience, because Tundra didn’t say a word beyond nodding, so Celestia spoke. “I quite like this place. I believe I’ll remember that old flower seller for some time.”

His wife’s answer snapped Tundra out of his thoughts, and he chuckled. Celestia was probably older than the flower seller, and believed she would remember it for the embarrassment she felt. He looked at Agnia, and smiled. “You did well, disciple Agnia.”

Tundra took out a Wood Ignition Transmutation Pill and gave it to her. “This should make it temporarily easier to transmute wood to fire, but it’ll only work for two to three days. Make it count.”

Agnia nodded. “Thank you.”

“In the meantime, you should use the funds made available to you to reinforce our branch office with some defensive equipment. The Yellow Cloud and Blood Blade Sect will try to get back at you.”

***

With matters settled, both Celestia and Tundra began their journey home on Tundra’s flying sword that afternoon. She stood behind him, holding his waist. 

“You’re not going as fast.” Celestia noticed once they started their journey. 

From high up in the sky, everything looked small. “Did you ever stop to smell the flowers, Celestia?”

“Well, I did today.” Celestia blushed slightly as she remembered the three Pastel Tulips still in her spatial ring. 

Tundra briefly didn’t get what she meant, until he remembered the flowers earlier that day. He slowed down a bit more, and looked at the land around them. Here, floating above the lands, the mortal lights were like little fireflies glowing in the distance. 

Most of their surroundings was just darkness, with just a faint afterglow of the moon’s reflections on the trees, waters and hills. 

“In my dream, around the later years, I remembered a time when I was just rushing from place to place, on flying ships and flying swords. War after war, crisis after crisis. I was always in a rush, and I traveled with the fastest flying swords I could get my hands on.” 

Celestia smiled. “How fast was that?”

“Sixty times faster. But the energy consumption was- well- something only a pill master at the 9th realm could support feasibly.”

“I see. What’s it like, zooming everywhere like lightning itself?” Celestia asked. It sounded exhilarating. 

“Nothing. Everything is a blur, just a process of getting from destination to destination. A flying sword was nothing more than a thing I used between battles” Tundra said wistfully, thinking about how, somewhere along the way, the joy of flying was lost. It was his childhood dream, when he first grew up under the previous Sect Master, to fly on a flying sword. 

Back then, it sounded like a great, wonderful thing to do. 

He tried to remember that. 

Celestia’s arms grabbed Tundra’s body, hugging him from the back. “That does sound like something you’d do. Always on a rush, always getting somewhere, doing something.”

He touched her hand. It was cold, although the flying sword itself emitted a small barrier to protect its user from the winds of travel, but it did not stop the cold. Those that provided a controlled environment were of a higher grade. 

Tundra thought about what he said, a few days ago at the inn. He didn’t get an answer then. “A few days ago in the inn, I said I’d like to have children with you, Celestia. Would you be willing?”

Celestia turned beet red at the question. 

Tundra waited. It was a difficult question, and he wouldn’t force her. 

It was true that wives were expected to do the deed. 

Bear children, and create descendants. In most cases, the men took the lead, driven by their own desires. But Tundra was too busy, and though he did have desires, his sense of duty and ambition often took him places away from his family.

Often, for Elly, Marin, and even his earlier wives, they were the ones who took the lead to make children. Part of it, family pressure, and the other, was their own. At some point, his wives doubted their own value when their husband didn’t spend time doing what a man and a woman should do as a married couple. Society expected them to. 

He felt sorry for treating them that way. Even if they were married out of politics and obligation, it was unfair of him to subject them to that sort of treatment. 

He looked back at his wife. 

Celestia eventually nodded. “I would like to, but I don’t think I am ready. I don’t think- I don’t think the extended family is ready.”

Tundra nodded. Celestia’s child will be thrust into a world of family politics, and that was something he needed to solve. He needed to cool down the subtle stressors between the various sub-branches of his family. 

The regressor’s eyes darted around and admired the world around them from high above.  “I understand. I will wait, and I will do my best to get the family ready to welcome you and our future child.”

Their eyes met, and eventually, She answered. “Okay.” It was a topic that made her feel strange emotions, and she needed time to process it. 

Tundra held her hands. “Please wait for me, Celestia. I promise I will not make you wait too long.”

Yet, as the words left his lips, it suddenly felt like there was a mild pain in his soul. Memories of his previous life came back, as he remembered a similar scene. 

A promise to a Celestia of the different life. Tundra promised to cure her of the Zuja worm in her body, only to have her vanish before he delivered on his promise. 

Even now, with Celestia right next to him, those memories of his broken promise to a different Celestia still stung.

It was as if Tundra was momentarily transported back to that time, when Celestia told him about the Zuja’s Infestation in her soul. He remembered the grotesque, corrupted Celestia that he fought. 

He looked at the beautiful scenery from his flying sword, and felt regret. What other broken promises did he have? 

Celestia didn’t know that, of course. Instead, she buried her reddened face into his back, embarrassed at the talk about children.