Chapter 1173. Diving Into The Lake.

Once the twenty people noticed the two giant beasts, they didn’t even hesitate before breaking a teleportation talisman each, disappearing from there instantly. Yasenia, who was prepared to see the excitement, couldn’t help but become despondent and sigh. ‘They escaped so easily… I wonder if these two will continue fighting.’

The two flying beasts looked around, their spiritual senses expanding outward at an alarming rate. Yasenia was prepared and quickly harmonized with the surroundings. Once the spiritual sense of the beasts passed over her, Yasenia held her breath and prepared a Teleportation Talisman.

Thankfully, the wave passed by her, and the beasts didn’t react to her presence. After a few moments, both beasts took off and left, leaving the lake vacant. ‘Hm? Are they chasing after those people? Well, if that’s the case… Don’t mind me if I explore what’s below this lake first~.’

She moved forward neither quickly nor too slowly, trying to blend with everything around her. Once she reached the crystalline ice, Yasenia placed a hand on it and felt a piercing pain. Quickly retrieving and looking at it, her eyes widened. “So cold. My hand almost froze after just touching it.”

While she had touched it without protection, her body was extremely resistant to cold. A normal cultivator might’ve lost their hand after touching it without protection. She focused and then placed her hand on the ice again.

Yasenia’s silver eyes focused as she started resonating with the ice. Her Moon Energy slowly seeped into the ice, giving her control over it, and her body started sinking down through the ice sheet. Snow was falling constantly, so she was covered by it in no time. However, Yasenia didn’t mind and continued drilling down.

The ice sheet covering the lake was around 50 meters thick, and when Yasenia was around 34 meters down, the two presences of the flying beasts reappeared above her. Yasenia lowered her efforts to the minimum, and the ice around her started mending together.

‘... Will my current energy be able to hold off the ice from trapping me inside?’ Looking up, our dragoness noticed that the upper hole had already closed. A world of blue ice surrounded her. ‘Well… since I am already here. I should continue digging down, right?’

Her treasure senses were tingling like crazy. She knew that there was something very useful below this sheet of ice.

BOOM!

The two beasts started fighting again, creating a powerful shockwave that traveled through the ice and struck Yasenia. Her mind became dizzy for a second. ‘They are so powerful… Well, now that they are fighting, I can restart my little digging adventure~.’

After one hour, Yasenia finally made it out of the ice sheet and fell into the dark waters of the lake. If the ice was cold enough to freeze some limbs, the lake water could probably freeze mortal cultivators to death in just a few minutes.

Thankfully, Yasenia was far from a normal mortal cultivator. Her body, attuned to Moon Energy, absorbed the Yin energy of the lake greedily. In just a few minutes, Yasenia had accustomed her own body to the terrifyingly low temperatures. “Woah. Now I can finally move. If Darling was here, she would’ve been in trouble!”

The surroundings were similar to being in the middle of the ocean: a massive expanse of water with no life around at first sight. The few rays of light that crossed the ice illuminated no more than a few hundred meters down. Still, beyond that, everything was black.

“Woah… That’s quite a scary abyss. Can I swim around here normally?” Her body moved like a mermaid, aided by her tail. Her speed was quite high, making her eyes regain confidence. ”My swimming speed is unaffected.”

With that, Yasenia summoned a small ball of silver flames, illuminating the surroundings with a cold light, and then she dove down. Darkness quickly encroached around her, leaving behind her spiritual sense and the ball of fire as the only illumination. Yasenia’s eyes were very sharp as well, so she would be able to see silhouettes of things if there were any.

“... How deep is this lake? Ridiculous.” Yasenia breathed in the water, filling her lungs with it to see if the scent she detected was still there. After exhaling all the water, Yasenia paused and looked down. “I need to go further down? I have been diving for almost twenty minutes.”

However, the fact that whatever was down there managed to emit scent above the lake was already quite a tell that it was truly extraordinary.

A small energy fluctuation appeared on Yasenia’s side, and Soluna suddenly appeared. “Gyashenhia!”

Yasenia’s eyebrow trembled. “You are underwater, Soluna. Speak with Spiritual Sense.”

Soluna blinked her gorgeous sun-and-moon eyes and smiled. “Okay~.” She glanced down at Yasenia’s navel for a second, and her eyes glittered. “So nice!”

Yasenia chuckled and patted her head. “Why did you come out?”

Soluna blinked. “Oh, right.” She pointed downwards and commented. “There is something down there that’s very useful for me as well!” Soluna pondered. “With that and another thing related to Sun, I should be able to break through into the Sixth Realm!”

“Oh?” Yasenia was surprised. “What is the thing down there?”

Soluna smiled. “A lake!”

The dragoness deadpanned. “We are in a lake already.”

Soluna tilted her head. “Well, who said that there can’t be lakes inside of lakes?”

“...Touché.” The dragoness hugged the petite spirit and smiled. “So, my little spirit, what is the thing that we are heading to?”

Soluna happily snuggled in Yasenia’s arms and raised her head with a big smile. “I don’t know! Also, Yasenia, you look super beautiful with silver eyes and silver hair! Like a snow goddess!”

Yasenia smiled softly and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Soluna. Let’s go down.”

“Okay!”

Both of them swam together, and Yasenia suddenly asked. “By the way, why are there no beasts around here? I thought that it would have some powerful creatures because of the treasure.”

Soluna answered while happily swimming around her. “There are a few. However, your dragon aura is quite intimidating, and they don’t dare come closer~.”

“Huh?” Yasenia’s eyes widened, and she stopped, looking around closely. Soluna giggled. “You can’t see them, silly. They are right outside your detection range~.”

Our dragoness couldn’t help but become somewhat solemn. “They can sense my detection range?”

“Well, your detection range has this… ‘I am the queen of this place!’ aura. Didn’t you have almost no encounters with beasts while traveling to the Tundra?”

“... Right.” Yasenia didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Am I really that arrogant?’

Yasenia didn’t know that her presence had become highly overbearing after practicing the soul art. Without adjusting it, she would always emit this tyrannical, queenly aura, restraining it only when she was hiding, like before.

Since the lake monsters didn’t want to mess with Yasenia, our dragoness similarly ignored them and continued her descent. Almost an hour later, when the cold and pressure of the lake had started to slightly affect Yasenia, she saw something glowing at the bottom. “Oh? Is that it?”

Soluna was hanging on Yasenia’s tail, being swished around as our dragoness swam. “YeeEeEeEeEs!”

Yasenia flicked the playful spirit forward, hugging her in her arms. “Aren’t you dizzy when I flick you around like that?”

Soluna laughed. “I am not! I am testing how strong you can swish your tail for your children!”

Yasenia blinked and smiled wryly. “Well, that’s a bit far away, don’t you think?”

Soluna blinked and pondered. ‘She will need quite a few years for her pregnancy, so…’

“You are not wrong. I guess I have plenty of time.”

Yasenia sighed with a smile. “Ah. Don’t think about it. When it comes, it comes.”

Soluna smiled and hugged Yasenia’s neck happily. “Okay~.”

“We are here.”

Both of them stopped right above a glowing blue lake. Yasenia was surprised to find that, as Soluna had said, there was a lake at the bottom of the lake. The freezing temperatures that came from it made Yasenia feel quite intimidated. She didn’t even dare enter that lake as she did with this one.

“Hm… What’s that, Soluna?”

“That?” Soluna smiled. “That’s a [Moon Soul Pond]!”

“Huh?”

Soluna explained with a happy smile. “A [Moon Soul Pond] is an amalgamation of extremely powerful Moon energy left over after a Moon Spirit has failed to become a Sixth Realm spirit. This spirit here failed their tribulation, and this pond was left behind. The entire tundra materialized from the constant emissions of this pond! I am sure that this tundra was desert around 120 to 150 thousand years ago. It has some traces of back then.”

Yasenia gasped. “A desert transformed into a tundra because of the death of a single spirit? That’s quite a powerful spirit.”

“Well,” Soluna explained. “A spirit is an amalgamation of energies that have gained sentience or sapience after many, many years. It’s not rare for their deaths to be quite… violent.”

Yasenia nodded in understanding and then asked. “So… How do we store this? Do I use my ring?”

Soluna pondered. “Your ring might be able to hold it… However, it’s quite risky, and it might break. Are you sure you want to try it? The ring's spatial region could collapse if subjected to this pond’s energy.”

Yasenia’s heart pounded. If her ring broke, she would cry for a month straight. There were too many important items in the ring to lose them all!

After staying silent for a while, she asked Soluna. “So… What do we do? How do we use this thing?”

Soluna blinked and smiled. “We bathe in it!”

“... We bathe in it?”

“We take a bath!”

“... Do you want to kill me?”

Hearing Yasenia's speechlessness, the Sun and Moon spirit placed her hand over her mouth and raised an eyebrow. “What? Is our big dragon scared? Moreover, this will be very good for the little one! Are you sure that you don’t want to?”

Yasenia frowned. “Even if it is good for Draheart and the rest… Can I really block the freezing nature of this thing? I am feeling cold now, and we are more than 100 meters away from it!”

Soluna bonked Yasenia’s head. “You naturally won’t dive inside like a brainless person. Slowly approach, become accustomed to it, and then close more distance. Rinse and repeat until you can submerge your legs in it!”

Yasenia sighed and nodded. “Okay then. Draheart, Dramel, Celestial Pearl, Primordial Core, come out and bathe in that thing with me.”

All of them materialized around Yasenia and glanced at the thing that Yasenia pointed at. After a few moments, the Primordial Core and Celestial Pearl returned to Yasenia’s Dantian, leaving her speechless. “... What's wrong with those two?”

Soluna laughed. “They say that this low-level thing is useless for them.”

Yasenia’s eyebrow twitched. ‘What in Heaven's name is the rank of those two treasures!?’

While she usually felt powerful, she felt lacking when she compared herself to her treasures! Was this the life of a rich woman? Yasenia wanted to cry a little bit.

Then, Yasenia approached until she couldn’t anymore and sat cross-legged. Opening her Black Hole Energy Core, the freezing energy around her started flowing into her body. When the energy crossed her meridians, Yasenia’s body burst with chills at how cold it was. There was also pain the longer she absorbed it, as if her meridians were freezing over.

Thankfully, her Primordial Energy Core and Black Hole Energy Core helped her digest and transform the violent frost energy. They slowly converted it into nourishing soul energy, skyrocketing Yasenia’s Soul Cultivation speed. ‘Wow, I am just at the edge, and my cultivation speed is five times faster than normal.’

Slowly and gradually, Yasenia approached the center of the [Moon Soul Pond]. After two months, she finally managed to step inside and start her real cultivation. The speed by this time was comparable to two weeks of cultivation per day.