Devouring the Heavens (ATG)

Back in Shane and Qingyue's courtyard, where Xiao Lie was sleeping in a wicker chair with Coral lazing about on his lap, Dongling was mechanically preparing for a congratulatory feast while lost in thought.

The four youngsters would be travelling to Cyan Forest Town tomorrow and she wasn't going with them... Despite her status, the young maid couldn't help but frown at being left behind. 'if you do choose this, we will never mistreat you, in fact, we will treat you akin to family'

Shaking her head to clear the useless thoughts, Dongling continued her preparations. She understood of course, they were going for training, fighting and to gather resources but why did it still cause a little bit of sadness and longing to appear whenever she thought of it?

During the last month, she had grown especially fond of the lively atmosphere that covered the courtyard and even fonder of the one responsible for it...

The one teased her and played with her by 'forgetting' to put up a sound-insulating barrier at night, while he made her Mistress scream out his name.

- She raised a hand to her modest breast and tightly pinched her already erected nipples through the robe, letting out a muffled moan -

The one who made her body turn hot and her mouth turn dry with his powerful aura and threatening words.

- The maid closed her eyes and gasped as her other hand snaked its way into her undergarments, finding and teasing the little nub on top of her already moist core. -

The one who pressured her into willing submission with his soul-piercing gaze and that overbearing feeling of formidable might as he suffused the air with his cultivation.

- Her fingers started to dig deep into her core and pump vigorously as she imagined him pushing her against a wall while those wild crimson eyes, clouded with desire, bored into her own -

The one who acts gentle and kind most of the time but underneath is actually a feral bea-

"Dongling! We're back!"

"Ahhh, cumming master!"

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When they entered the courtyard, Shane raised an eyebrow but wasn't entirely surprised to see the old man sleeping under the porch with Coral on his lap. The family of three basically spent all of their free time here anyways.

In her little chibi chick form, Coral stirred at the familiar presence of her master, spread her wings, and shot off of Xiao Lie's lap. Gliding over to Shane's shoulder in just a few seconds and consequently waking the poor old man up.

After a few grumbles and a few shared pleasantries, Shane and Qingyue left Xiao Che and Lingxi to excitedly talk about their breakthrough and called for their maid.

"Dongling! We're back!"

"Ahhh, coming master!" The sound of something being knocked over followed by a half moan half shout was the reply. Shane, barely managing to refrain from using his Spirit sense to check, turned to Qingyue only to see her smirking and instantly realised she had no such qualms.

"Don't tease the poor girl." He booped her nose playfully and put his arm around her waist while they waited for the maid. The girl appeared a couple of minutes later, looking prim and proper with just a barely noticeable flush still lingering around her neck.

That couldn't fool Shane's senses, however, as her close proximity and professional bow carried the lingering scent of her arousal into his nostrils causing him to flinch slightly. Qingyue, who was very good at reading him by this point, noticed, and her smirk only grew wider.

"What can I do for you Master and Mistress?" The state of address had changed and Shane had to admit, he very much enjoyed it.

"We would like to talk to you alone," Shane said in mock seriousness, it was hard to stop himself from teasing this girl...

"O-of course M-master." She stammered, clearly caught off guard and unable to hide her nervousness.

"Come with us to our room," He said, grabbing Qingyue's hand, walking past the girl and into the house. To his wife's credit, she managed to keep the pout off of her face until they had walked all the way through the doors and into the building.

"You told me not to tease her yet you started right after!" She hissed at him in English. Shane had been using their nights inside the dreamscape to teach her the language. That way, they could communicate secretly, even out in the open.

Obviously, they wouldn't communicate important things through speech but he had no idea if there was a way to intercept spirit transmissions, so it never hurt to have more cards on hand.

"I know I know, I couldn't help it!" "Hmph" He replied similarly in English, only to be shut down by a sound of mock indignation that almost fooled him and similarly caused him to be proud of her at the same time.

'She is getting better.' She may never become a great deceiver, but her progress still showed that people are only limited by themselves and everything should be possible.

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Meanwhile, the maid's mind was running at a million miles an hour. Panic, fear, trepidation and mild anticipation fighting for control, although due to Shane's seriousness, panic was winning by a country mile.

She frantically tried to remember if she had done something to displease them and after a few seconds, decided that it could only be that her shameful actions were discovered earlier or…

Dongling paled in fear when she thought of how defensive her Mistress was of her Master. What would happen if her Mistress noticed her budding crush? Would she be dismissed ...or punished? The last one didn't seem so bad but still, she was afraid!

The maid was so lost in her own mental tirade that she didn't even realise that they had already entered the master bedroom until she heard the door close behind her.

Then she heard her mistress's voice carrying salvation. "Husband, you scared her!"

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"Shit! My bad." Shane turned towards the maid with an apologetic smile on his handsome face and raised his hand to pat her head.

Despite her being older than both him and his wife, no offence was taken and it, fortunately, had the desired effect, being that she immediately relaxed and pushed happily into his hand.

Shane felt this gap between her blushing shyness and professionalism quite cute and only removed his hand when he had appreciated it enough which also coincided with her calming down enough to talk. "Qingyue, if you could, my dear."

The girl nodded and closed her eyes for a second, when she opened them, her already blue eyes glowed with an icy light.

Then, the room was suddenly so thickly suffused with Qingyue's Ice Energy that even the Spirit sense of an expert at the peak of Earth Profound would not be able to see what was happening inside.

Waving his hand, Shane created a bubble in the middle of the room covering him and Dongling so that she would be more comfortable. Qingyue had no need for that, The Ice Energy was fully under her control.

"First of all, I wanted to talk to you about our trip," he said gently.

The girl stiffened a little and opened her mouth but he didn't give her a chance to speak and continued...

"While we do not wish to leave you behind, you are currently a non-combatant and believe me, the outside is a dangerous place." Shane lifted his outer robe out of the way to display both sides of the jagged scar just under his ribs to emphasise his point.

Shane rolled his eyes as both girls suddenly seemed extremely interested in his 'scar' "It may have been my own stupid mistake that caused this, but it still doesn't change the fact that there is danger out there."

He let go of the edge of the robe and it fell back into place.

""Tsk"" He deadpanned, It wasn't exactly like he wore many clothes as it was.

"Anyways, What I meant by that was that Myself and Qingyue will start to train you when we return so there will be no further situations like this in the future.

Unfortunately, we have been extremely busy the last couple of weeks getting used to our new weapons and I will be brutally honest here, that took precedence over training you." Dongling tried to smile understandingly at him but he saw through the acting immediately and smirked.

"That doesn't mean I forgot about you~" Shane teased and booped her nose while she blushed up a storm in embarrassment at being discovered.

He then waved his hand and pulled two large Sandalwood boxes and two jade boxes out of his storage, before placing them on the bed.

"These are for you. The one here contains a pair of daggers that I personally forged for you." Shane said proudly as he motioned for her to open the box and when she did, the aura emitted by them almost overwhelmed her.

"These daggers are as close as you can get to a Spirit Profound weapon, without actually being one. They only have one thing special about them, beyond being impossibly sharp of course.

They can disguise their shape and aura by transforming into a pair of rings. Go on, drip a drop of your blood onto them and imagine them transforming." She did as instructed and when the daggers flashed once and appeared on the girl's open palm as a pair of gold and silver rings, Shane smugly appreciated the look of worship that coloured her pretty features.

Their aura also completely disappeared and Dongling kept turning the rings over in her hands in wonder and gave no indication of stopping any time soon. Shane chuckled a little and coughed to interrupt her. "*Cough* Okay, you can appreciate them later. Let's move on to the next ones, shall we?

This box here contains a personal Incense burner for you, enough heartwood to burn for a week and some separate boxes of the beta strain Spirit Incense in a few different flavours.

These will aid you in the increase of your cultivation and should be used in conjunction with these." He said as the two jade cases floated from the bed and into his hands.

Swiftly inscribing the formation letter for seal onto one of the cases, he started to explain. "These two cases contain pills created specifically for you by myself.

The one without the formation letter on it contains 'vitality pills'. You are to take them 3 times a day and also after every breakthrough.

Not only will they help to strengthen your body, but they will also allow you to rapidly stabilise your cultivation realms without needing to spend days or weeks focusing on it." He said while waving his hand as if it were an annoying and trivial issue.

"Now the second case contains Profound Gathering Pellets that are suitable for increasing the cultivation of Nascent Realm cultivators." The maid gasped and looked as if she wanted to say something yet again but Shane stopped her with a wave of his hand.

He really was enjoying the delicious look on her face. Torn between not wanting to accept something so precious and absolutely not wanting to go against her Master's wishes.

In the end, she stamped her foot in frustration, sighed defeatedly and kept her silence although her eyes did turn a little red. 'Ahh, beautiful. This girl truly brings out the hidden sadist in me.'

"Like I was saying, There are pellets for you in this case and there should be enough for you to reach the late stages of the Nascent Profound Realm at the very least. How far you manage to go after that, will be up to you.

Unfortunately, the real problem is your lack of opened entrances…" She flinched but Shane paid it no mind and patted her on the head nonchalantly.

"While I am unable to do anything about that currently, that won't be the case forever and in at most a month, it will be a non-issue." Shane looked meaningfully at Qingyue, only to see a face full of pride as if it were her own achievement he was talking about.

"Take out one of the pellets now, I will help you to break through to the Nascent Realm." She did as she was told and tried to remove the lid of the case with her shaky hands but had no such luck.

Fortunately, someone took pity on the girl and a soft yet strangely cool hand, the colour of fresh snow, took it from her. Seeing her Mistress's gentle smile from this close, the girl couldn't help but be a little charmed.

The long, slender, jade fingers grasped a single pellet and held it out towards her mouth before popping it inside while a large warm hand pressed down on her shoulder until she was seated on the bed.

"Swallow the Pellet and Focus!" Shane's deep voice brought Dongling out of her daze and she closed her eyes in attempted meditation, just a second too late to catch a peak Elementary Profound wolf's corpse appearing above Shane's other hand.

The Wolf erupted into a cloud of shining white particles before being sucked into the miniature black hole in the centre of his hand.

Shane flicked his wrist and a mostly translucent-white, 'vitality pill' appeared on his palm, even as he used his own intent to guide the previous pellet's energy towards his maids' Profound Veins.

He smiled wryly, 6 entrances did not give him much to work with and although the girl was at the very peak of Elementary Profound, she would have been likely to stay that way for years.

Using his pinky and thumb to pinch the girl's chin, he passed the Vitality pill into her mouth, quickly diffusing and guiding the energy to spread across her entire body.

The vital energy had an immediate effect and provided substantial reinforcement to her relatively weak body, while her profound energy absorption rate sped up considerably.

It took almost 30 minutes and over half of the pellet's energy being wasted before Shane was able to help her charge into the Nascent Profound Realm. Thankfully, the excess vital energy in her system quickly stabilised her new realm. 'Aiya! Having only 6 open entrances is truly too cruel!'

When Dongling finally opened her eyes, they were shining with crystalline tears and she hurriedly stood up and turned to the side, trying to wipe them away.

That was unfortunately to no avail as they built up momentum the more she wiped until they were falling like raindrops on a stormy day.

Qingyue and Shane both felt incredibly awkward, both being people who wore their hearts on their sleeves, smiling when happy and crying when sad, they were stumped.

Maybe they were both a bit emotionally retarded when it came to situations like this but shouldn't she be smiling? wasn't this supposed to be a happy thing?

So, Shane just did what he felt was right and patted the maid's head hoping to comfort her a little.

Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect and her tears fell even more freely while she continually sniffled and rubbed her puffy red eyes, still refusing to look at him.

She actually resembled a struggling child trying to act brave, it seriously tugged at his heartstrings, making him want to comfort and protect her. A quick look at his wife confirmed that she seemed to be feeling the same way.

Finally, the girl managed to calm down a little and utter a single, strangled word "...Why?"

Shane sighed. "I told you before, stay loyal to us and we would treat you like you were our closest family, right?" He barely finished the words when Dongling launched herself into his bosom, holding tightly onto his robe and started crying loudly.

Now, he wasn't some dense idiot, it was obvious the girl had some sort of feelings for him and if he were to act as her emotional support at this time, she would only fall deeper. So, he did the only thing he could think of...

His arms shot up in the air and an involuntary look of horror appeared on his face as he turned to Qingyue, only to find her silently giggling at his plight and signalling with her eyes for him to hug the girl back.

He was already feeling the need to hold the girl tight and comfort her, so not needing to be told twice, Shane wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back while Qingyue snuck over and glomped onto the girl's side, softly rubbing her cheek.

They stayed like that for a while until Dongling finally calmed down and mumbled a soft "...Thank You"

Shane just tightly wrapped his arms around both of them, feeling a little sour in his nose as he once again enjoyed the warmth of a family.

Neither Shane nor Qingyue were aware of the fact, but this small moment of care and comfort was like a cool breeze to the maid, one that cleared away her doubts and fanned the flames of a budding devotion deep within.

To the girl, this small amount of care was priceless. Since her mother died and she was adopted into the Xia Clan, she had always been alone, always yearning for a place to truly belong, and now, she had found it...

This small feeling of devotion would swiftly grow, like a raging inferno, into an allegiance that would forever remain untested. A loyalty so fierce and undying, it would even become famous throughout all the realms in the future...

Even after a long period of time, the three of them felt no discomfort in their closeness but unfortunately, Shane still had other weapons to give out and so after a few minutes, he broke the hug.

Qingyue, seeing that it was all over, withdrew her profound energy from the room but didn't release the girl from her arms, rubbing their cheeks together.

Shane swiftly created another 'bracelet', this time for Dongling, obviously simpler in looks than the one Qingyue had. He didn't want to die okay! It was, however, no less effective.

That way, he could assure that her sudden power increase wouldn't be noticed by anyone while they were away.

He then quickly created two more, except these were even simpler and styled like tassels, before storing them away.

Giving Qingyue a deep and powerful kiss that left her breathless, Shane left the room with a swagger and headed outside where he saw the family of three still happily chatting...

*Ahem* "Anyone else Hungry?"