Yet cultivators' opportunities and transformations far surpassed those of ordinary people. After the Feathered Immortal Convention, Xiao Hua and Fairy Hongxia had gone their separate ways, each undertaking her own trials. What happened in Cold Ice Valley had come too suddenly; even Xiao Hua and Fairy Hongxia found it inconceivable. But the warming of emotions required no conditions. That time in Cold Ice Valley had greatly shortened the pace at which their relationship progressed. Xiao Hua found this perfectly normal, but to Fairy Hongxia, it inevitably felt somewhat rushed. After all, as the Confucian cultivators put it, female cultivators could not abstain from love. What female cultivators needed was love, not lust! In love, Fairy Hongxia and Xue Xue had given equally much. Xue Xue had, in truth, given her life for Xiao Hua. As for Fairy Hongxia, as she herself had said, if faced with the same choice, she would choose as Xue Xue had. But love in a female cultivator's eyes differed from that in a male cultivator's. A female cultivator's love was piled up with time, forged through tender care, and watered by every little drop! What Xiao Hua and Fairy Hongxia lacked were precisely these seemingly ordinary foundations!
Although Xiao Hua had later spent a period of time training alongside Fairy Hongxia and had experienced life and death with her, compared to a cultivator's lifespan, that experience had truly been too brief—brief enough to carve itself into their bones, yet still leave them wanting more. It was precisely that lingering incompleteness that had left Fairy Hongxia brooding day and night while Xiao Hua was gone, until longing became a disaster! Yet the Xiao Hua she missed... was the Xiao Hua of the past, the Xiao Hua whose strength was close to hers, the Xiao Hua who