God Of Crafting

"Bang!"

My fist connected with Chihiro's palm, carried forth by all the cumulative strength of my cultivation, physical fitness, and five years' worth of practicing this exact punch.

At first, my entire arm froze in place, seemingly stopped by Chihiro's block… only to then carry on, pushing his palm in and forcing the man to retreat two steps, just far enough for me to exhaust the reach of my attack.

"Huff…" I exhaled, allowing the tension of my body to disperse, just like I would after fisting the wooden cock of a training target I used to strike for so long.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"He attacked a clan's senior!" Despite just having his face saved from my punch, the leader of the cultivators didn't lose out even the tiniest bit of his enthusiasm. "Kill…!"

"Shut it!"

Letting go of my hand and turning around on the spot, Chihiro raised the very same hand he just blocked my strike with… only to slap the man across his face hard enough for the satisfactory sound to fill the air. Continue your saga on empire

And as if this sound was akin to an elder's order… the other cultivators stopped in place now that they no longer had a leader or a scapegoat for them to push all the blame and responsibility on.

"Shit, kid," ignoring the cultivators behind him, Chihiro turned back to the two of us while rapidly waving his hand in the air as if to air out the leftover pain from having blocked my punch with it. "Just what the hell did you do in that garden for you to grow even stronger…" At this point, Chihiro cut his words short as he took a step towards us, locking his eyes on my face, only for his face to then twist in surprise. "Wait, weren't you a quasi-ninth rank already? How come you are now…"

Once again, before he could fully voice out his surprise, Chihiro cut his sentence short, signifying he now remembered we weren't in a closed-off space where it would be relatively safe to discuss what was going on.

"Well, it doesn't matter. What matters, though," he added while stealing a quick glance at the crowd of the cultivators behind him, "is how come you returned unharmed? Did you, by any chance, opt out of aiming for the third floor, despite Leila trying to egg you on it?"

"Honestly, do you really think this is something we are happy to discuss with so many folks listening in?" I pointed out my concerns while turning my eyes over the man's shoulder, straight at the cultivators that still refused to step away. "Because I certainly have no intention of letting them know anything, especially after they dared to point their weapons at Claire," I mentioned, allowing my expression to grow darker as I locked my eyes on all the targets behind Chihiro.

If not for the fact that Claire's clan likely had people powerful enough to easily overcome all of the strength I could bring up to a fight, I would be more than happy smashing the skulls of all those fuckers for the crime they've committed against my girl!

And judging by the feelings I could sense through our bond, Claire was in quite the similar mindset, just with her burning rage centered around me instead of herself.

"I understand where you are coming from, but this issue…" Chihiro gritted his teeth before pressing his mouth into a thin line and closing his eyes for a moment, only to then open them back up and take a long breath. "This issue is too big for you to conceal it. The clan has its fair share of worries related to your presence in the garden, worries that wouldn't be any different if any of their young were granted this kind of privilege. So, I will have to ask you again, while hoping you will disregard the presence of those that slighted you. How far did you go inside of that garden?"

I patiently listened to all that Chihiro had to say before taking a moment to think things through.

'So, that whole commotion was all about us? And our presence in that garden somehow could lead to massive problems warranting the rise of an entire unit of cultivators?'

Before making any sort of decision or even deciding on the direction for my thoughts to head to, I opted for the third option and looked over to the side, to where Claire scanned our surroundings with vigilance, ready to pounce on anyone that would dare to try to make use of this opportunity to jump us.

"What do you think, dear?"

I could almost hear the sound of a hundred men clenching their jaws when Claire looked over to my face and then gently smiled. A sound of jealousy that turned into the most lovely of music for my ears.

"Whatever you decide, I'm with you, as always," Claire stated with a shrug of her shoulders, her cultivation still ramped up to its limits, regardless of all the explanations Chihiro already provided.

'So, she's willing to put my safety above her dad's attempts to calm her down?' I thought, only to feel a strange yet also familiar kind of warmth spread throughout my chest.

Yet, this was no time for me to melt over just how adorable and lovable Claire was or how lucky I had to be to somehow luck out to make her my wife-to-be.

"We never managed to reach the third floor, if that's what you are asking," I finally made my decision before revealing the truth not only to Chihiro but to the crowd behind him too. "Not because we couldn't do it, but because we decided we were gone for too long and didn't want anyone to be too worried about us," I added the reasoning as well, despite not being sure whether or not anyone could believe it.

After all, it was one thing to consider others' perspectives while locked away in the garden, but it became a whole other topic when we came to face the consequences of hiding away in the garden for so long!

"Just one more thing…" Chihiro muttered, his face tensing up for some reason I couldn't really see through. "When you mean the third floor…"

"I mean the floor Leila suggested we would be able to reach. But due to the concern I just mentioned, we opted out of cultivating further and decided to go back, leaving that part of the cultivation garden for a later date," I explained before shrugging my shoulders, still failing to figure out just what was wrong in this entire situation.

Was it all some sort of nefarious plot concocted by Claire's mom? Was she the villain all along, egging us to reach the third floor in hopes we would fail, have our cultivation go berserk, and turn into some sort of monsters that could be then killed off, all for some unspecified reason?

'I really don't think that to be the case,' I thought, squinting my eyes as I struggled to make sense of it all. 'She never really struck me as someone who could act this well…'

My eyes twitched.

'Wait, maybe the fact that she didn't appear to be acting is actually the proof of how good of an actor she was?' I thought, sensing as if I was approaching some sort of revelation, an insight that would serve as a key to unlock the mastery of just what the fuck was going on!

"Haaah…" Chihiro heaved a long and tired sigh, shaking his head as he lowered it.

"What's wrong?" I asked, eager to finally find out just what all of this mess was all about. "All those cultivators, even the way you react… It doesn't make even the slightest sense!"

Chihiro slowly dragged his eyes up before taking a deep breath and raising his hands right as he took a step forth, only to then drop his hands down on my shoulders as he looked directly into my eyes.

"You see, there's one crucial piece of the puzzle that you are missing, a piece that you were supposed to learn from the guide, who has already admitted to the crime of keeping it from you," Chihiro revealed, instantly throwing a wrench in all of my estimations.

'It was all the guide's fault? But what could it be that she didn't tell us? The nature of the floors or something?' I tried to guess again, even if all I had to do was to wait a few moments for Chihiro to explain everything himself.

"Basically," Chihiro took a deep breath before looking right into my eyes again, "what your guide failed to mention is how the first floor of this garden is actually underground," he revealed, only to let go of my left shoulder and point his hand out to a much bigger door hidden just behind the corner of the doorway that we used to enter the place. "So, when you mentioned almost reaching the third floor, you were actually talking about the fourth floor of the garden," Chihiro explained, his face growing slightly whiter as he did so.

"And that place, even the clan's patriarch dares not to enter."

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