Chapter 1293: Melissa’s Sacrifice & Suppressed Awakening!

Sienna watched them carefully. "Right now, the child does not need cultivation and only needs a body worthy of the blood already forming inside it. Stronger meridians, denser bones, greater vitality and a spiritual foundation broad enough that when cultivation eventually begins, the body will not become the first thing holding the baby back."

Melissa’s hand unconsciously tightened over her stomach.

"Will my baby be so... strong?"

For the first time, something almost resembling dry amusement touched Sienna’s expression.

"Mother." Melissa looked at Sienna. "This child has not been born yet and Great Immortal god essence is already being refined through your body just to nourish that growth."

Melissa blinked.

Sienna’s gaze returned to her abdomen. "I would be more surprised if the baby were weak even less stronger than they’re already."

Melissa knew that better than almost anyone.

She had watched Phei become stranger day after day and pieces of him awaken one disaster at a time while his powers emerged that even he had not known were sleeping inside him.

Sienna’s hand remained above Melissa’s. "The child won’t begin with the same weakness as Phei started with."

Melissa went still.

"The Great Immortal essence is tempering the body while it’s still being formed. Meridians will grow stronger before they’re ever used. The blood will be richer from the beginning. The soul will receive nourishment before birth, and the physique will develop with far more room for all bloodlines from the father than an ordinary infant could possess."

Melissa’s lips parted: "All of Phei’s powers and Bloodlines?"

"Whatever the child inherits from him." Sienna’s violet eyes deepened. "His already awakened bloodlines, his dormant ones too perhaps and even other powers buried inside him that his own body already carries despite not having fully awakened them yet."

Melissa stared: "Even those?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation, Sienna knew what Melissa meant.

Melissa looked back down at her stomach.

Sienna allowed several breaths before continuing: "And unlike Phei, the child should not need those inherited bloodlines to begin dormant state after birth simply because the body can’t carry them the same way Phei’s case was. The foundation is being formed right now before birth."

A strange warmth moved through Melissa’s chest: "All of them will awaken?"

"All the ones they’ll inherit should have a foundation capable of existing openly from the beginning. Although you know how much Phei holds, the child won’t be able to have them all. Or would."

Melissa breathed slowly; fear appeared beneath the wonder.

Sienna recognized it immediately.

"Is that safe?" Melissa asked.

"It should be safer this way than forcing them awake after birth."

Sienna’s fingers moved gently through the surface of the elixir. "An infant suddenly awakening several powerful bloodlines after the body has already settled would be dangerous. Here, the body is growing around their father’s inheritance. Nothing is being forced out of the child afterward."

Melissa’s expression eased, though only slightly.

"The elixir will help the child adapt naturally and deep foundations will be woven into the body while everything is still developing." A faint smile touched Sienna’s mouth. "Your child will come into the world better prepared for Phei’s powers than Phei was."

Melissa stared at her.

Then laughed quietly. "He’s going to be unbearable when you tell him that."

"He already is as is."

Melissa laughed harder but the laughter lasted only a few breaths before the next stage of tempering began.

The pool brightened as dark-golden essence moved beneath Melissa’s skin in luminous streams, rising from her abdomen toward her heart before spreading outward through her arms, spine and legs.

Her face tightened.

Heat invaded her and impurities began leaving her faster.

Melissa looked upward once.

The cloud had become enormous, her expression turned genuinely offended. "I refuse to believe all of that was inside me."

Sienna gave the floating mass a brief glance. "It was."

"Very helpful, Sienna."

The elixir had then reached her bones and pain travelled through Melissa’s entire body.

She inhaled sharply and gripped the edge of the basin: Unlike Phei’s brutal refinement, her skeleton did not fracture from end to end. The essence entered gradually, washing through bone and marrow while drawing out mortal weakness and old residues buried inside them.

Even that gentler method hurt terribly; heat became pressure, pressure became an ache so deep that Melissa could no longer locate where it began. Sienna remained beside her and the moment Melissa’s breathing lost rhythm, Sienna placed one hand on her shoulder. Power moved from the Nether Goddess carefully and never flooded Melissa or interfered with the refinement itself. Sienna simply wrapped her strength around the places receiving too much at once, dividing stronger currents into finer streams and guiding the essence through without allowing the tempering to become destruction.

Melissa’s shoulders slowly relaxed. "Thank you."

"It will get worse."

Melissa looked at her. "You truly have a gift for encouragement."

"I can stop whenever you ask, mom."

Melissa stared for a breath.

Sienna already knew the answer.

Melissa smiled weakly. "You know I won’t."

"Yes." That single word carried more affection than Sienna’s face revealed.

The tempering never stopped, Melissa’s marrow grew warmer while the blood being produced within it became richer beneath the nourishment, carrying denser vitality into the rest of her body. Her organs strengthened slowly, each washed repeatedly by refined essence until tiny weaknesses left by age, stress, old illness and years of exhaustion began disappearing.

Her lungs deepened, her heart became stronger, the pathways through which her cultivation would move started widening under the pressure.

The elixir found the first restraint and Melissa’s entire body stiffened.

Sienna’s eyes sharpened.

There.

The Great Immortal essence eventually reached something deeper than flesh, marrow or meridians.

Melissa’s body stiffened.

What Melissa had suppressed years ago was far simpler, and far more important.

Her awakening!

At some point in the past, whatever power had been born with her had begun taking its first true step toward the surface; her awakening her full power, the full potential of her dragon bloodline and her core too and her Dragon Heart Scale that had been developing all the past years had reached half-completion but Melissa had stopped it.

Deliberately.

She had not destroyed the awakening or sealed away a developed power. She had simply refused to let that first awakening continue.

At the time, Phei and the others had needed her far more than Melissa needed to discover what she might become. Awakening would have dragged her deeper into the hidden world of cultivation and powers, brought new dangers, demanded training and forced her to divide attention she had already decided belonged to her family.

It was right after his parents had died that her Dragon Heart Scale had half completed and all she needed was to started forming her core and fully awaken her full powers and that formation alone would’ve taken her years!

So she suppressed the beginning.

And because the awakening had never been allowed to finish, no major cultivation base followed it. Her power had remained exactly where she forced it to remain, asleep beneath the surface, untouched and undeveloped through all the years that came afterward:

She had stopped at the Arch-master stage!

The purified Great Immortal essence had finally reached that sleeping place.

Melissa gasped as pain spread through her body as something that had once begun opening after years of silence responded again. Her fingers tightened against the edge of the pool, and instinct immediately made her try to push it back down.

Sienna caught her hand: "Don’t, Mom." Sienna’s violet eyes softened slightly. "We’re grown so well now thanks to your sacrifices mom. Look at us now; we can protect ourselves. So LET go mom!"

Another wave of dark-golden essence moved through Melissa.

This time, she did not suppress what answered it.

Sienna squeezed her hand once: "It’s time you awakened too."

Melissa closed her eyes; after years of refusing that first step, she finally allowed it to continue.

Dark-golden light erupted from the pool; Melissa’s body lifted slightly from the stone beneath the pressure as years of suppressed cultivation rushed through newly opened pathways. Steam burst outward in a violent ring before Sienna raised her free hand and contained the explosion within the chamber.

The walls trembled.

Melissa’s fingers crushed Sienna’s hand; Sienna did not move.

Years of suppressed essence flooded outward but the then something strange happened.