Chapter 1331: The Living Soul Anchor

A/N:Guys you’re going to forgive me on this one, I forgot to set this Chapter and so it wasn’t released in the end, let me giving it to you. Sorry for the rookie-ass mistake. For the reason and mistake I have given you guys seven Chapters today, this is the eighth, it doesn’t count! Again, sorry!

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By the time the car drifted away from the villa, Phei had already realized something rather ridiculous.

He felt good that he did he usually did and better than he’d arrived!

Way, way better!

Something deeper had loosened inside him and some miserable knot he had carried all the way up those hills without admitting how tightly it had wound itself around his chest. He had arrived with guilt of taking a life, confusion, questions he had been avoiding and the unpleasant weight of remembering several people dead because of decisions that had ultimately belonged to him.

He was leaving with none of it.

The transformation felt almost suspiciously sacred considering how completely ridiculous the last twenty-four hours had become. It was like visiting a healer with an incurable disease, expecting a few comforting words before death, then walking back outside completely cured, ten years younger and somehow transformed into an unmatched stallion.

Phei had no idea why the horse had entered the comparison.

But it felt correct.

That was probably enough.

He was even driving.

Melissa had surrendered the wheel without argument, which Phei suspected had less to do with trust and considerably more to do with the woman presently existing inside whatever private heaven pregnancy had constructed around her. Sienna’s car slipped down the winding road with a predatory smoothness beneath his hands, its engine restrained until he pressed the accelerator and felt the entire machine gather itself beneath him.

Phei glanced at the steering wheel and smiled.

The car really did suit Sienna.

It was beautiful, quiet and vaguely threatening even while behaving.

He still had no idea how those delicate hands of hers controlled this thing one-handed with such lazy ease. Then again, Sienna could probably drive a collapsing mountain down a highway without spilling whatever she happened to be drinking, so perhaps the car deserved sympathy rather than admiration.

Beside him, Melissa had settled comfortably into the passenger seat.

She looked different.

There was no physical change anyone else could have noticed yet, no visible swell announcing what existed inside her, but Phei could see something in the way she carried herself now.

Her hand rested openly over her belly instead of drifting there only when she thought no one was watching, fingers spread across the place where their child grew with an unconscious confidence that made his chest warm every time he glanced sideways.

His child.

Phei almost laughed again.

He really had a fucking child.

Apparently that realization intended to ambush him several hundred times before becoming normal.

The morning itself had disappeared wonderfully:

After remarking Melissa, Phei had cooked enough breakfast to feed her properly and then watched her with enough attention that she eventually accused him of attempting to fatten both mother and unborn child before noon. Afterward, nearly three hours had simply vanished between cuddling, making love more, watching television and doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever.

It had been magnificent.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, once Melissa’s renewed Mark had properly settled into her, Phei had begun noticing something else:

A connection.

Calling it a thread felt too weak.

An anchor came closer.

Three distinct presences now existed somewhere within him whenever he turned his awareness toward the Living Soul Mark all connected to that anchor: Sienna, Roxanne and Melissa. Each possessed a different feel, subtle enough that Phei suspected he would eventually recognize any of them without consciously thinking about whose presence he had touched.

Melissa was newest.

Sienna’s connection felt stranger and infinitely deeper because Dual-Nether Souls existed beneath it. Roxanne’s possessed that old familiarity that had probably explained why the System exempted her from being remarked in the first place.

When Phei concentrated upon one of those Marks, there was an odd sensation similar to finding a rope hidden beneath dark water. He could catch it, pull gently, and the woman connected to the other end suddenly became clearer within his awareness.

It was not a map.

This was anchor no divine little coordinate hovering inside his skull telling him that Melissa was seventeen meters northwest and currently considering breakfast leftovers.

But he could feel where the connection leaned.

Near.

Far.

That direction.

That presence.

Almost as though the Mark itself knew how to turn Phei toward the woman carrying it even when his ordinary senses had nothing to follow.

More useful still was danger.

The evolved Mark could warn him when something threatening approached one of his women, but that foresight was not limitless yet. Phei could feel a boundary around the ability, an enormous invisible bubble whose edge felt strangely thin whenever he deliberately pushed against it.

Thin enough to interest him: thin enough to feel temporary but to stop his reach.

Perhaps one day the Mark would evolve again and simply stop respecting distance altogether.

For now, imminent danger could reach him before it reached a Marked woman only while she remained within that present reach. Beyond it, the connection did not give him the same advance warning. If something actually happened to her, however, the Mark would still react.

He would know that something had gone wrong even if the first warning had arrived too late to precede the danger itself.

Useful.

Extremely useful.

Still imperfect.

Which was precisely why the Spiritual Bond Ring had not become obsolete.

The Ring offered something different.

Once bonded, it did not merely tug him toward someone vaguely or warn him through instinct. It gave him her exact location regardless of distance and allowed him to feel her general condition and well-being. If she vanished across continents, realms or whatever absurd places his life eventually dragged them toward, the Ring remained the cleanest answer to one terrifying question.

"Where is she?"

But the Living Soul Mark answered different ones.

"Is she in danger? Is something wrong? Can her soul reach mine?"

Together, the two were considerably more frightening.

And more importantly], in case of a Soul attack, he’ll able to take of it!

Phei liked that.

There was only one irritating weakness remaining in the Mark’s deeper soul connection.

His women needed to be awakened before they could truly make use of what waited on his side of the bond.

The Mark could connect them to his Soul Realm, but an ordinary mortal body and unawakened soul could hardly reach into something as absurd as Phei’s Soul Realm and begin drawing upon Soul Energy simply because the ability technically permitted it.

They needed awakened and cultivation foundations capable of touching those things without collapsing beneath powers normal mortals were never meant to handle.

Phei glanced toward Melissa.

She was still staring through the windshield with a tiny smile, one hand on her belly and the sunlight warming the side of her face.

That problem would eventually solve itself.

Wouldn’t it?

He would make certain it did.

Melissa would awaken:

’So will the others.’

He had already gained the Cosmic Dragon Dual Forbidden Path partly for that purpose, a road through which his women could grow beside him instead of becoming beautiful mortals he spent eternity hiding behind increasingly expensive walls.