45 One Year Later

Star Leaf opened her eyes, slowly adapting to the feeble blue light of her room.

She didn't move her eyes around, using her energy to sense the world around her. She smiled, feeling every single corner of her bedroom with her mind. What a wonderful feeling it was. Her cultivation base was now almost as strong as his.

The expression on the woman's eyes changed as her consciousness flew over the adjacent room. It was the same size as hers, but instead of a large bed and drawers, it was filled with countless books all around the wooden floor. In the middle of the room, there sat a large pillow where he normally lied down to pass his days studying and reading.

'He's not there... Car, where did he go?' asked the green haired beauty, directly in her mind.

After a couple of seconds, a gentle and calm voice resounded in her head, only audible by her.

'He went to train more on his poison technique'

Star Leaf nodded satisfied. He was really working hard.

She thought back at their first meeting in the Blood Woods. At the time, she had been terrified by his presence. And it was only because of her stubborn nature that she decided to gamble and try to rope him to her.

"Probably the best decision I took in my entire life" she murmured, lost in her thought while looking at the ceiling of the room.

At the beginning he was angered, always trying to find new ways to harm her in any form. Thankfully, the Heavens had long decided that their fates were bound together and sent a blue saint to help them finalize their bond.

The girl laughed loudly, thinking back at his vicious expression where he realized that the blue energy inside them was an incredible gift that helped them to practice dual cultivation better than any other way. Plus, it was quite pleasurable.

'He's almost breaking into the middle stage of the Soul Agony, that's good...' she thought, while a servant entered her room with its head down. Star Leaf moved from her bed, allowing the servant to help her bath and prepare herself for the day.

She was like a queen in the Outpost. When they arrived, almost a year ago, the Elder that was in charge of the area was immediately put in his place by her companion. If she didn't ask him to be merciful, he would probably torture him for a while before killing him in the most gruesome manner.

It seemed almost as all the stress and anger that he couldn't reverse on her had been instead directed on the other people in the colony. He immediately became the local dictator, not even caring that the Elder was the father of one of the two people that were chosen to become outer members of the Heavenly Reptile Sect.

'Yeah, why he would care?' snickered the green-haired beauty. 'He just had to wait until the recruitment team arrived in their region and he would, without doubt, be begged to join the sect. Outer disciple? He had a chance of becoming directly an Inner one!'

Although his cultivation hadn't progressed much, his rune skills had improved by leaps and bounds. He even inscribed a grand defensive formation of his creation around the Outpost and in the herbs' fields to help them grow faster and with improved quality.

Even Carelia called him to incredibly doted in regards of Rune Manipulation.

Now that she thought about it, it was right at the same time when he started to be nicer to her that his passion towards runes became way more pronounced. Before, he was always grumpy, giving her nasty looks and insulting Carelia at every opportunity he got. However, after the first week in the Outpost, he completely changed. It was a completely drastic change but probably that was because he finally understood that having her around was way better than retaining his freedom.

Their cultivation, thanks to the blue link, was incredibly faster. If it wasn't for her, he would probably have needed years to heal the damage to his Natural Heart.

He didn't open up with flowery words and nice behaviors. He acted on it. For example, allowing her to keep the Blue Cave ring on her all the time. To protect herself, he told her. He truly didn't need that, thanks to the abnormal strength that his breathing technique allowed him to have.

'It's a shame that I can't learn it,' thought the green-haired maiden. She tried plenty of times but she just couldn't use it no matter how hard she tried and how carefully he tried to help her.

A smile appeared in her young and beautiful face while she touched the seemingly simple iron ring on her right hand.

The girl moved outside her room, walking through a narrow corridor into a large hall. A group of people were already sitting around a long rectangular table. All of them had green hair, making it evident that they were people of her Leaf Family. She was the only youth, other than a young man with a nasty scar across his face, running down his neck and disappearing under his long white robes.

"Is there something I need to know? Why are you all here so early?" asked the girl, with a smile.

She moved to the position on the front of the table, sitting while looking at the people around her. The respect that was in their eyes was evident, except for two particular people: an old man with a short beard and the other youth.

These were the old leaders of the Outpost, the brother of her Family Head and his son, one of the two people that had received a place in the Heavenly Reptile Sect in exchange of the Silver Leaf Tulip. They still resented her, but they couldn't do anything but to obey her orders. Even without her companion she was way stronger than them.

"So?"

A man at her right finally answered to her questions. "The Fire Earth people have attacked the territory of the Black Elks yesterday night" he revealed to Star.

"A raid in the Yellow Lake Region?" Star Leaf was surprised. Even the Fire Earth didn't dare to destabilize a region like this. They wouldn't allow groups of raiders to hurt their commercial interests.

"No, a full-fledged attack. They conquered the Outpost of the Black Elk Tribe... it was a slaughter..." continued the same man, stopping suddenly.

"An attack? The Fire Earth declared war to the Black Elk? Are they insane?" Star Leaf didn't believe her ears. The Black Elks had the same fighting power of the Fire Earth but they never had any problem with their people. Now that they were attacked, they could join together with the other tribes that hated the red scaled raiders to punish the Fire Earth. Why would the Elders of the warring tribe allow such a senseless attack?

"They... they also have a... very powerful warrior," continued the man, "and the description that we got from our spies are very... concerning" the man stopped, not willing to continue.

"Speak!" ordered Star Leaf, her eyes shining with silver light.

"A violet snake, following a young maiden with long black hair." finally revealed the warrior, not daring to look at the eyes of the powerful woman before him.

[In a Remote Corner of the Outpost, inside a Complex of Natural Caves]

"It's time."

A sparkle of silver energy shined in the darkness for a second, then all went black again for a long moment. A slow throbbing sound started echoing in the black cave and a blinding silver light emerged from the center of the room. The sudden light made the place completely bright: it was some sort of circular chamber, dug into hard white marble.

At the center of the room, there was a huge pit from which the silver light came: it was a pool of some sort, surrounded by a large number of complex runes and symbols. A lonely black figure stood between the array of marks.

It was a long and robust snake, with shiny black scales and two flaming violet eyes. He had a strange expression on his triangular face that made it impossible to determine what he was thinking.

Countless silver threads came out from his body, touching several points of the large formation that covered almost all the surface of the cave.

On top of the pit filled by silver plasmatic energy, there appeared a strange ripple. It was very disturbed, but if you could concentrate enough, you would be able to read a couple of crimson words: "Black Hand Marker".

"It's time to respond to your crimes against this Prince, Black Hand Marker" echoed a cold voice coming from the snake, while silver sparks exploded from its mouth.