Ultimate Villain's Return as a Doctor in the Cultivation World-Chapter 146-A Hidden Powerhouse’ Pain

"We are Nascent Soul Early Stage cultivators," Chen Yun said, from her knees, with the flat dignity of someone maintaining their position against available evidence. "We cleared a Nascent Soul formation construct and exited the First Demon Trial with all primary objectives—"

"You can brief me on that later," he said.

"I will absolutely—"

He reached for his inner robe’s fastening.

Chen Yun stopped talking.

The fastening came undone with the physician’s economy of motion—one gesture, the layers parting—and what the afternoon light revealed was not new information for either woman, but information that Wei Lingyue’s grey eyes received with the specific warmth of something that has become familiar and has opinions about familiarity.

He stood before them on the ship’s deck at Nascent Soul Mid Stage altitude with the shadow sword at his back and his cock out and the cultivation world spread thirty feet below the hull and looked at both of them.

"Well," he said.

Wei Lingyue’s hand found him first.

The deliberate grip of a formation cultivator who applies the same precision to everything—her fingers wrapping around his base, her palm warm, her thumb moving once in the specific arc she had learned—and her mouth followed with the unhurried completeness that was Wei Lingyue’s approach to everything she decided to do fully.

"’Mmhn—’"

Chen Yun’s mouth arrived at the other coordinate—not competing, not hurried, simply the other half of the available geography finding its practitioner—and the dual warmth of them, the specific quality of two Nascent Soul Early Stage cultivators kneeling on a flying ship’s deck with their mouths attending to him, was the quality that no formation trap and no construct and no sealed cave had managed to produce and this did.

"’Mhhm—’" from Wei Lingyue, her grey eyes angled up, catching his.

"’Mmhn—’" from Chen Yun, her tongue moving with the same economy as her swordwork.

The ship flew southeast.

The wind was clean.

Cang’s hand found the back of Chen Yun’s head and the other found Wei Lingyue’s and he held them both and looked at the horizon and the horizon was the specific beautiful indifference of a world that was going to need saving in approximately thirty years and was not yet aware of the current arrangement.

"’Mhhm—’"

"’Mmhn—’"

He looked at the sky.

The shadow sword pulsed once, contentedly.

[Evil Points: +203 (Airborne — dual service — altitude above inhabited zone — formation cultivation world backdrop — general excellence of arrangement)]

’The System,’ he thought, ’has developed geographic preferences.’

The air trembled.

Not the ship’s formation wake—something else, something from above and to the left, the specific atmospheric displacement of a cultivator moving at Nascent Soul Peak speed who had not been there three seconds ago and was now very much present at approximately forty feet of altitude beside the ship’s starboard rail.

An old woman.

Not old the way mortals are old—old the way Nascent Soul Peak Stage cultivators are old, which was: the face had the particular quality of having decided it was done changing, the hair was white not from age but from the specific pigmentation loss that very high cultivation stages sometimes produced, the frame was small and precise, and the qi output from her meridians at idle was the specific output of someone who could flatten a mountain if the mountain had done something to deserve it.

She had materialized with the intention of a cultivator who had sensed a qi signature matching her own stage in the Trial mountain region and had come to investigate because cultivators of that stage in unexpected locations are either threats or opportunities and she was old enough to want to know which before the relevant party became aware of her.

She looked at the ship.

She looked at the main deck.

Her eyes—sharp, cultivator-sharp, the eyes of someone who had been reading situations for approximately three hundred years—processed what they were seeing with the flat efficiency of a person for whom processing unexpected situations was a professional competency.

Two women, on their knees, on a flying ship’s main deck.

One with a crown. One with a demon sword in her hand even at this activity, because sword cultivators are sword cultivators. Both mouths occupied. Both Nascent Soul Early Stage—she read this without effort, the stage assessment as automatic as breathing.

One man standing.

She read his stage—

Nascent Soul Mid Stage.

She held this reading for two seconds, running it again because the first pass had seemed imprecise.

Nascent Soul Mid Stage. Confirmed.

She looked at his face. Young—she estimated twenty-five, maybe less, the bone structure of someone who had not finished settling into the face they were going to have, which at Nascent Soul Mid Stage was ’completely wrong.’ Twenty-five at Nascent Soul Mid Stage was not a thing the cultivation world had a category for. She had reached Nascent Soul Early at age two hundred and twelve and had spent forty years climbing to Peak and was comfortable with the position this put her in.

She did not have a category for twenty-five Nascent Soul Mid.

Her hand went to her forehead.

The man’s eyes moved.

Not toward her—he had not looked at her, his attention was on the two women and the horizon in approximately equal measure—but some peripheral awareness had registered her presence because his qi output, which had been the ambient warmth of an active cultivation state, shifted fractionally. The shift of someone who has noticed something and is deciding whether it requires response.

He did not respond.

He looked at the horizon.

She stared at the deck.

At the specific, comprehensive evidence of what was happening on the deck.

At the two Nascent Soul Early Stage women occupied on their knees.

At his—

She turned away.

Her hand was still at her forehead.

The cultivation world had presented her with many things in three hundred years of operation. She had fought Nascent Soul constructs, negotiated with sect patriarchs, supervised three generations of her family’s cultivation advancement, and had once successfully reasoned with a spirit beast the size of a small mountain.

It had not, until this moment, presented her with this specific arrangement at this specific altitude at this specific cultivation disparity.

She pressed her lips together.

The ship’s formation wake moved her hair.

’He is twenty-five,’ she thought. ’Nascent Soul Mid Stage. Traveling with two Nascent Soul Early Stage women who are clearly—’ She stopped the thought. ’He came from the First Demon Trial. The exit portal registered three simultaneous Nascent Soul signatures, which is why I came to investigate, because that has never happened.’ She paused. ’Three cultivators at that level came out of that Trial in thirty-three hours.’

She looked at the ship again.

The man’s hand was in someone’s hair.

His cock—

She turned away again. Faster this time.

’My daughter,’ she thought, with the specific flat pragmatism of a woman who has been managing family cultivation strategy for three hundred years and has just identified an asset, ’is twenty-two years old, Core Formation Late Stage, and has been stuck at the bottleneck for four years.’

She looked at the ship a third time.

Against her will.

Something from the ship’s direction—the ambient output of a specific combination of herbs and dual cultivation state and whatever the young man’s passive effects were—reached her at forty feet and registered against her own cultivation sense with the specific warmth of something she had not been expecting and would not be discussing with anyone.

She turned.

She vanished.