Immortal Ice Empress: Path to Vengeance

With explosions still happening occasionally in the mountains around her cave, Mira spent the next few days gorging on as many Heavenly Jade Pear's she could stomach. She ate as many as possible, hoping to forcefully bring her Wind affinity up to the Middle-Stage Heaven Grade, knowing full well that doing this might bring future problems.

While she built all the rest of her affinities on the foundation of her own comprehension of the elements, Wind was the only one she didn't do that for. That won't cause her affinity to be weaker than the others, but it will make it harder to progress in the future if she doesn't deal with this issue.

However, Mira didn't bother thinking about the consequences as she didn't have the luxury. She either absorbed as many of these fruits as she could or lost her Wind affinity forever.

The choice was obvious.

On the 4th day of Mira's seclusion, the raging tempest around her calmed down until it was nothing more than a slight breeze.

Mira opened her eyes, and a genuine smile appeared on her face for the first time in a while. The feeling of her Body, Qi, Soul, and Affinities all living together in harmony filled her very existence, sending shivers so pleasurable down her spine that she almost moaned.

'Mmm... I had no idea equalizing all my cultivation centers felt so good!' Mira thought as she basked in the feeling of power and balance. The sensation wasn't physical, as she had long gotten used to the strength of her body, but it was more existential, like everything was where it was supposed to be.

It almost felt like she's lived her entire life with all her joints dislocated without realizing it, but today, they all fell back into their sockets, realigning her body to what it was supposed to be.

She felt like she had entered a state of being that was always within her, yet she never bothered to pursue it due to her ignorant arrogance.

Mira shook her head at her previous self's naivety, 'To think that I thought I could get by with just my ice affinity.'

She could hardly believe that she'd spent the last few years not trying to equalize her elements. Maybe if it was before, when she had just started her cultivation journey, and her ice element was the only strong and useful affinity in her arsenal, she could have gotten by while only using it.

However, after she had evolved into a higher being after breaking through to the Core Formation Realm, that was no longer possible.

Of course, she could still only use her ice affinity, but why? Doing so would be equivalent to fighting with her hands tied behind her back and one of her eyes closed. She'd only be limiting herself if she did something so foolish!

Luckily, she went through the Hell of Weakness to show her this before it was too late.

After a few minutes, Mira calmed down from this euphoric sensation, a thoughtful expression replacing her smile.

'I didn't know that eating so many of those fruits could help make the Qi in my Core denser. I thought it'd take me much longer to reach this result.'

"Normally, it should've," The Guardian answered, "The Heavenly Jade Pears aren't meant to increase the density of your Qi, but you have to remember that they are Heaven-Grade fruits. The Qi inside them is both abundant and dense; just one of these could help someone in the Soul Transformation Realm improve, much less you! Yet, in a few days, you ate multiple generations worth...."

Mira didn't need any more explanation to understand what he was trying to say. By eating so many Heavenly Jade Pears, she forcefully overloaded her Core with Qi. Thus, there were only two ways the situation could end; either her Core exploded, or she used the excess Qi to refine it.

Since Mira's Core is much tougher than normal, her only real option is the latter. So, that's what she did, and it turned out that by doing so, she could squeeze out whatever potential she still had left in the Core Formation Realm.

'Soon....' Mira clenched her fists, her eyes glowing blood red, 'Soon, I'll break through into the Nascent Soul Realm.'

"Mhmm. Not quite," The Guardian's amused chuckle entered her mind.

'What do you mean by-' Mira tried to ask but was interrupted by a searing pain in her mind.

"Ugh!" The pain was so severe and so sudden that she couldn't help but grunt, something she hadn't done in... Who knows how long??

Suddenly, the pain became worse, causing her to hold her head in both hands!

"Argh!!" She grunted again, "W-What's... going on?!" Somehow, she managed to yell out, but before anyone could answer, a wave of emotions came over her, and not just any ordinary feelings, but a millennia's worth of suppressed emotions and desires.

"ARRRRRGGGHHH!" Mira screamed in pain, her crimson eyes turning an even deeper shade of red, and drops of blood leaked down her cheeks. Her hair flailed around wildly, and her Qi rampaged around her, destroying everything in sight.

If someone were to see her right now, they would think she was no different than a demon straight out of hell!

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*

Mira slammed her fists into the ground, creating a spider web of cracks around her, obliterating the cave she was in and everything around it.

"GET DOWN HERE, YOU SADISTIC SON OF A BITCH!" She looked up to the sky and roared, with more and more blood leaking from her eyes.

"COME DOWN HERE SO I CAN WIPE OUT YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE BLOODLINE!" Mira raised her fists and began throwing punches at the sky.

*BOOM!**BOOM!**BOOM!**BOOM!*

Each attack caused countless sonic booms, alerting all nearby entities of her presence, but she was too out of her mind to care.

However, while rage and anger clouded most of her mind, there was a myriad of emotions leaking out of her eyes besides those two.

Sadness, happiness, despair, love, lust, fear, and everything in between took up the rest of her thoughts.

It was like all the emotions she hadn't expressed over the last millennia had suddenly come forward in full force, and she didn't know how to control them. No, she couldn't control them even if she tried. Not right now, anyways.

"Congratulations on reaching the last Hell of Weakness trial. I don't know if you can understand what's going on, but this trial is here to help you overcome your greatest weakness: your emotions." The Guardian's voice entered her mind, but even with her enhanced brain, she was hardly rational enough to understand his words.

"You've lived as an apathetic, unfeeling machine for most of your life. All the heartache, all the pain, the despair, you tried to close your heart to all of it. However, as you are a living being, it is impossible for you not to feel anything when the people you love the most in this world betray you. Even gods who have lived for millions of years can't completely separate themselves from their emotions. Rather, it's these emotions that keep them sane over the passage of time."

The Guardian realized he was getting a bit off track and continued, "Anyways, you are not a god, nor a machine that sees the world as nothing more than ones and zeros. You were born as a human, a special one, but a human nonetheless."

"As a being capable of intelligent thought, how could you live your life feeling nothing? Did you truly feel nothing when your family was slaughtered before your eyes? When your loved ones betrayed you, were you indifferent to the situation? How did you feel when you hoped and strived for a brighter future, only to have those dreams crushed by another?"

"The answer to these questions is obvious: of course, you were hurt. However, you hid that pain deep in your soul, hoping it would rot away there. You never dared to confront it as you were afraid. Afraid that you would give in to that man's temptation."

"Unfortunately, that's not how emotions work. Even if you lived for another ten thousand, one hundred thousand, or a million years, you'd never forget those feelings. They will sit there, simmering in your heart, until one day, you can't contain them anymore."

"This has already gone long past the point of being a heart demon. If you don't unpack these emotions now, then forget about being a weakness; you might just turn into a murder-crazed monster who lives solely for your desires."

"Deal with the resentment deep inside you and learn how to properly understand and control your emotions, rather than suppressing them. Only then will you pass the Hell of Weakness." The Guardian explained, but whether Mira understood a word he said was a different story.

And just like he expected, she seemed to have turned a deaf ear to his words and rushed out of the cave like some crazed beast, looking for anything that could help her vent.

'Sigh... Whatever. I'm sure a bit of rationality will enter her mind within a few days.' The Guardian shrugged, but worry shone in his eyes as he watched Mira run around the mountains like a maniac.

'Hopefully...'