Three days later, Chen Rui left the Shadow Empire. But instead of returning to Dark Moon, he entered another star point.
The Land of Floating Specters.
That day in the Palace of Wisdom, things between him and Veronica had not actually gone as far as one might imagine.
That naturally belonged to the process of union, but it was only the most intimate step among them.
True soul union involved many stages—for instance, holding hands and sensing and merging one another's spiritual power. Such union required genuinely casting aside all distracting thoughts, and the sensations gained were several times stronger than ordinary contact. The effects of certain forms of spiritual cultivation were likewise multiplied.
When they had been at Light Holy Mountain, Ben Hong had helped Chen Rui comprehend the Origin of Creation through soul union for precisely this reason. At the time, both had harbored ulterior motives, but the convergence of their hearts during soul union could not be faked. Even so, Ben Hong's soul union with Chen Rui had only been at the initial level, nowhere near that most intimate degree.
His soul fusion with Veronica, on the other hand, had been wholehearted and without reservation, utterly unlike the wary calculations they had each made when he was with Ben Hong.
That bone-deep feeling had been even more intense.
Ben Hong had indeed been right. Veronica's soul was extraordinarily special. Even the initial stages of fusion, like hugging and holding hands, produced cultivation effects far beyond imagination. Not only were the soul and spirit benefiting, but even the power of faith was gradually becoming more refined, something that had never happened before.
The initial results were not yet obvious, but as Veronica's command of soul-union power improved and the two of them merged further, the benefits brought by