Aridel watched over her sleep and since the nightmare had been bad enough, he gave up on making Mei return to her side of the bed. She spent the rest of the night snugling happily, her face pressed to his chest. He had been intimate with other women before, but never done this particular thing and it further unnerved him.
After their conversation about the future, Mei seemed to become a lot more focused about her training and Aridel thought that was a good thing at first. Cultivation required a clear mind and her progress could be clearly seen to have improved after that night, to the point that she reached the first milestone, mastering the Martial Flame level only one month after her arrival when it usually took children 3 to 4 years to complete.
He had been enlightened too when he explained the many levels of Martial expertise. Current knowledge spoke about Martial Flame, Qi Thunder, Martial Core, Nascent Star and Immortal Sun but when he showed her those as ilussions in her realm, Mei had corrected his knowledge of the universe in a way that left him still reeling. She understood the levels well enough and likened them to level of light and power contained in different celestial bodies. He had shown her first a weak flame dancing in the wind, a mighty beam of lightning, then a raging volcano spewing lava, for the Nascent star, he showed the brightest star they could see at night and the image of the sun for the last. She asked if that was all there was and he answered no, that was only what he comprehended so far. She had then corrected his notions and showed him the first three the same as he did. For Nascent Star, she showed him something called a nebula in the process of revolving upon itself until a tiny star was formed that then kept attracting matter unto itself. For Immortal Sun level, she showed him the last memories of the sun her civilization had gotten, not a small disk in the sky but a raging monster of heat and light in the blackness of space that made all the planets and things revolve around with its huge power.
-By logic, after that you should get all these-she showed a star many times the size of the sun exploding-lets call it Supernova Warrior-followed by a thing that could only be described as darkness itself, surrounded by a halo of light and dust and spewing light beams from its poles-That is a blackhole and despite looking dark it was actually filled with light and brightness so lets call it the Blacklight level.
When he thought that was all there was. She showed him all those wonders contained in a beautiful spiral she called a galaxy and explained that there were billions of those in the universe, each containing more suns than there was sand in the sea.
-I dont know about filaments and supercumulus-she said while showing the superstructures to his amazed eyes- lets leave those out for now because it is hard enough as it is to deal with the challenges we already have-
-Was this knowledge what sent your people to doom?-he asked, frankly amazed.
-No-she explained with good humor-Have you ever been to the sea?
-Yes-he seemed guarded about that. Too many powerful monsters hid below water...
-We were standing by the shore, and with our machines, we could see what lay in the other side of inmense oceans of darkness-she continued-but we lacked the ships to venture safely towards the stars-
-But you talk about having visited other worlds-he frowned
-That was like using a board to play near the shore, what we needed to travel far and wide was on a whole other level-she thought-the same way a person on Martial Flame cant compare to the power of a Nascent Star-
-Your speed is already on a genius level-he complimented. It was true, she took weeks to do what most people needed years for and at this rate, she would match his current level of Nascent Star in two years and not in 20 as he had. Much of it was due to her inmense knowledge about the universe and its laws as her civilization had been curious, inventive and intelligent. What she explained sometimes, had helped him on his own quest to reach the Immortal Sun level as his comprehension improved too.
On the physical level, weeks after she started training, her body became fit according to her standards and serious training began, the likes that even he found harsh. She went from bending all over and adding weights to her extremities while practicing battle moves to brief sessions of flexibility followed by hours upon hours of hits and lethal moves while under pressure. She had been overjoyed to no end when he had accidentally activated one of his pressuring techniques and smashed her to the ground during one of their fighting bouts together. After that, he became her very own pressure provider and the fact that he needed to concentrate extremely well for long times to hold the level she needed without smashing her to death while at it turned out to be a good excersise for him.
Sometimes, he caught the smiling faces of the Lan couple, Nanny Coco and the servants when they were caught interacting so closely together. The whole manor was living in bliss because the Marshall couple spent all day together for weeks on end. His guards had seen more maidservants be brought in and that meant their opportunities to date had increased a lot over time so they had blessed the new Princess from the bottom of their hearts. Nanny Coco and Lady Fu remained at the top of the pyramid and in the eyes of everyone, the Princess treated them so lovingly and considerate as if they were motherly figures that no one dared to disobey their rule.
Lord Shen was very famous for not taking any maidservants to bed, ever. Years before, he even had a couple women thrown out of the Manor for trying to climb positions that way and after his vow at the wedding ceremony that Lady Mei would be the only woman for him, his status as the ideal husband rose to legendary levels. Back at Lan Manor, Mei sisters were crying in envy everytime the rumors of their happy marriage daily life made their way to them.
Some two months after the wedding, the edicts finally arrived at Lan mansion, describing the punishment due for the offenses done at the wedding ceremony. After much deliberation, the Emperor decided to ban all the unmarried ladies in the Lan mansion for two whole years from attending any official festivities to be held in the Palace on the grounds that their behaviour needed to be polished and made gentler in light of the filial love the Radiant Princess held for her maternal family. The Lord Marshall had also sent an edict, informing the Lan family that starting from the edict issue, the young lords with ambitions to enlist in military affairs would have to do so from the very bottom of the chain of command, as to avoid any feelings of unfairness due to the family connection they now shared. Both edicts were blows disguised as soft and just measures from the Imperial clan to the Lan family aspirations in terms of marriage prospects and political influence. To the public at large, it was a public relationships success because the Imperial family stood as righteous and able to prevent huge conflicts of interest. Internally, the edicts became harsh punishments for the two sisters who had messed up their own prospects but also those of all Lan children. Mei heard both her sisters had been beaten up and sent to nunneries for an entire year and Nanny Coco had sighed, content that finally, some justice had been done to her young lady after so many years of heavy mistreatment.