Liang Chen cooked up some fish and some vegetables while also preparing a bit of hot tea, storing both into his interspatial ring so that he could keep it warm for when Yan Ling finished her cultivation. Once it was all prepared, he returned to the bedroom and sat down on one of the couches, pouring himself a cup of tea and proceeding to quietly look at Yan Ling cultivating, working on his future cultivation plans.
Even though the blue pear that she was holding was nearly drained of energy, it still took her another two days to fully absorb the remaining energy, her cultivation starting to approach the late stage of the Heaven's Gate realm. Normally it should take her a bit longer to reach this stage, but here she was able to freely use a supreme technique like the Chaos King technique, this fact coupled with the plentiful resources they had acquired made it so that her cultivation speed had increased quite a bit.
The pear turned into water once its energy was completely drained, splashing onto Yan Ling's hand and staining the wooden floor. Yan Ling spent another hour cultivating, digesting the energy she had absorbed and merging it with her Ascended Tower. She then slowly opened her eyes, her gaze landing on Liang Chen, who took out the warm tea and food from his interspatial ring, placing them on the table in front of him with a smile.
"It's only been about two weeks, not long at all. I've prepared some tea and food, you should fill your stomach."
In the past, two weeks might have felt like quite a bit of time to him, but now two weeks was nothing to him, he could pass that time in the blink of an eye if he just focused on his cultivation. Stronger cultivators could even pass years, even decades or millennia, like this, barely noticing the passage of time as they cultivated. Yan Ling sprung up from her seated position, drying her hand on the bedsheets before skipping over to the couch and sitting down, looking at the cup of tea in front of her.
"Did yo..."
Liang Chen already knew what Yan Ling was going to ask about, he had known it before she even sat down on the couch, so he cut her off with a light chuckle.
"Yup, three spoonfuls of sugar in the tea, so sweet it makes your teeth hurt just looking at it."
Liang Chen simply couldn't understand how Yan Ling could drink her tea with so much sugar, or how she could drink the sickly sweet wine he had bought for her. He himself much preferred spicier wine and a more bitter tea, but just like he failed to understand Yan Ling's tastes, she couldn't understand his. Yan Ling wasn't annoyed that she got cut off, she instead grabbed the cup of tea with a smile.
"I knew you'd get it right, just had to test ya."
She downed the entire cup of tea in a single gulp before holding the now empty cup in front of Liang Chen, tipping it slightly. Liang Chen obliged her, taking out the teapot from his interspatial ring and filling up her cup again, placing the pot on the table after filling up his own cup again. Yan Ling brought some sugar out from her interspatial ring and poured it into the cup, drinking it more slowly this time. While drinking, she also ate the food and looked Liang Chen up and down, tilting her head after a little over a minute.
"I take it the creation of the Dragon Lotus was a success? The flow of wind around you seems a bit different, more controlled and calm. Does that mean we can start our rush to the third floor?"
Yan Ling was very sensitive to the wind in her surroundings, so now that Liang Chen's new Dragon Lotus was interacting with the wind around him, she immediately noticed the change. Liang Chen nodded his head, spinning his finger and causing a wind to appear in the room, forming a calm tornado around the two of them.
"Yup, as you can see, it went flawlessly. I still need you to continue teaching me how to fight using the law of wind, but my control over it has strengthened greatly. As for rushing to the third floor, there is something I want to test with your help first."
Liang Chen had given his future cultivation plans a bit more thought, especially his body cultivation, and now there was something he wanted to try with his body cultivation. Yan Ling swallowed a piece of fish, looking at the tornado for a bit before nodding her head.
"Alright, I'll just finish eating and then we can test what you want to try out."
It was one thing to control a law, it was something completely different to use the law to attack others. Liang Chen was lucky that his first laws were poison and lightning, two laws that were perfectly suited for attacking and didn't need much thought behind their attacks. When it came to a law less suited for attacking, like the law of wind or the law of water, it was best to ask someone more experienced for help.
Yan Ling quickly finished her first portion of food, swiftly starting and finishing her second and third portions before she was finally sated. She brought the dirty plates and cups to the kitchen, giving them a quick wash before placing them to dry. She then returned to the bedroom and sat down on the couch again, removing the table that separated her and Liang Chen.
"Alright, so what do you need me for? But do keep in mind that my time is incredibly valuable, so you better be ready to cough up a lung or two to compensate me afterward."
Yan Ling rubbed her thumb and index finger against each other while talking, her lips curled into a smirk as she put on the best overly exaggerated greedy expression she could muster. Liang Chen could only shake his head when he saw this kind of extortion, slightly loosening and opening his robe while putting on a bashful expression.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
"I don't think I'll be able to live on if I have to cough up a lung or two, so I'll just have to pay with my body. But do please be gentle, it'll be my first time."
Yan Ling's expression immediately crumbled as a red flush spread over her face. She had expected him to tease her in return, but she hadn't expected him to be this vicious in his teasing. She quickly stuck out her tongue and did her best to pull his attention away from the blush on her face.
"Bleh, who would want something like that from a lecher like you? If I accepted that as payment I would just be doing you a favor."
Liang Chen chuckled lightly and fixed his robe upon seeing her reaction, tactfully choosing to not draw attention to the blush that went all the way up to her ears. He stretched out his right arm, cupping his hand and using his left hand to point at the air directly above his cupped hand.
"Aye, can't really deny that statement. But yeah, what I need your help with is that I need your water Qi. I'd like you to continuously channel your water Qi into this spot."
He specifically asked for her water Qi because Yan Ling's water Qi was different from the water she created using said water Qi. Water Qi was the concentrated Qi she had within her body, the Qi that had fused with her law of water, it was highly concentrated and carried her aura. She could use this water Qi in tandem with her law of water to control the Qi in the air around her, turning it into actual water by altering it and then controlling it. It was the same for her law of wind and Liang Chen's laws, this was how they could create vast amounts of water or lightning without having to drain all their Qi. Most of the time one just called their Qi for Qi, only when they had to be specific for some reason did they bother actually mentioning which element of Qi it was.
Yan Ling nodded her head after receiving the explanation, not even bother to ask what he needed her Qi for. She stretched out her arm and pointed her finger at his palm, a thin stream of ocean blue Qi floating out from her finger and over to his palm, gathering into a small orb that was slowly growing larger.
Liang Chen's expression turned serious as he looked at the slowly growing orb, placing his left hand directly above his right, the two cupped palms facing each other. His own Qi seeped out of his hands, all of his elements except for his poison gathering around the orb of Yan Ling's Qi. Liang Chen then started to slowly bring his hands together, more and more of his and Yan Ling's Qi gathering between his palms, forced together into a single small spot by Liang Chen using a mixture of his Qi and bloodline.
The air around his hands started to violently distort due to the energy that was unleashed when the four different elements were forced together, the energy just barely contained by Liang Chen. Yan Ling raised her eyes, a mixture of worry and curiosity visible in them as she looked at Liang Chen. But seeing that his expression was still calm, if a bit serious, she lowered her eyes and focused on giving him as much of her Qi as she could.
The four different elements were forced to squeeze against each other, compressed again and again while they tried to reject each other. But thanks to Liang Chen's Qi, especially his powerful time Qi, and the pressure of his bloodline, the four elements were slowly forced to merge together fusing into a single entity. Liang Chen had done something similar twice before, when he fused his law of time with his law of lightning and then with his law of poison.
The pressure and energy between his two palms grew greater and greater, the distortion of the air around his palms growing so strong that even space itself started to creak and moan, warning that it would soon form cracks under the pressure. But just as space was about to become unable to handle the pressure, Liang Chen's two palms clapped together, a shockwave spreading out from his palms and shattering the floor beneath him. Liang Chen and Yan Ling were strong enough to resist the shockwave, so they remained unharmed.
All the energy that caused the air and space to distort was sucked into his clapped palms, the distortion calming down. Liang Chen slowly pulled his hands apart, Yan Ling looking at them with great interest. When Liang Chen pulled his hands apart, he revealed a fingernail-size gray crystal floating a few centimeters above his palm. The crystal wasn't the same gray as his law of time, it was a far darker shade of gray, resembling the dark clouds one saw during a heavy storm.
All the energy had gathered inside the crystal, so perfectly contained that one couldn't sense the slightest fluctuation of energy from it. Liang Chen's eyes were blazing with light as he looked at the crystal, the corners of his lips involuntarily curling up. Yan Ling tilted her head while looking at the crystal, not quite understanding what it was.
"Well, don't just smirk to yourself like that, what is it?"
She couldn't feel it, but she knew just how tremendous the energy stored inside the crystal was. But what she didn't know was how Liang Chen planned to use it, using it to attack someone else didn't seem quite worth it. Liang Chen grasped the crystal between his fingers, his smile growing wider as he spoke.
"Didn't you say it? You and I are the perfect inheritors of the Storm Wolf sect thanks to our laws and bloodline. This is our storm, the birth to the Endless Storm God Physique."
This was the plan Liang Chen had come up with for his future body cultivation, and the key to it had been the words Yan Ling had told him. Water, lightning, and wind had a connection in that they were all part of a storm, a natural occurrence where all three elements worked together beautifully.
He had been able to fuse his law of lightning and his law of time while cultivating his Lightning God Physique, so what's to say he can't fuse more laws into it at the same time? Poison didn't have any connection to lightning, wind, or water, so he didn't bother fusing it with them now, it might even cause the entire thing to become unstable.
With this crystal as a test, he now knew that he could fuse all four elements together into a single one, forming a timeless storm that he could use to cultivate his body. His bone marrow would become a liquid storm and his bones would become a crystallized storm, just like the one he was holding right now.
In the future, he might even be able to add more laws to his bloodline, laws that he could fuse with his poison to enhance his soul cultivation just like he was doing to his body cultivation right now. Just the thought of it fired Liang Chen up. Of course, Liang Chen didn't forget that this technique had one thing that could be called a demerit, it needed Yan Ling.
Without her to provide the water, he couldn't create this timeless storm element. But he didn't mind that, he had already decided that she was the one he would spend the rest of his life with, it was fine to rely on her like this.
Yan Ling had spent enough time with Liang Chen to understand what he meant, understand what he planned to do with this fused element they had created together. And because of this, she also understood the demerit it had, that it required her aid, it needed her to be at his side. So for Liang Chen to choose this as his future cultivation path, it showed her how much he cared, how much he wanted her at his side. And to her, this meant more than any sweet and honeyed words.
Liang Chen looked at the gray crystal, his thoughts drifting back to the past. When he first started cultivating, he had done so during a violent storm, and now, now he was going to become a violent storm himself.