God Of Crafting

Chapter 202: The one thing Claire could never have learned before

"Now, you finally look like a clan-born cultivator!"

After an extensive period of measuring, fixing, adjusting, and affixing, Claire finally stepped back away from me, only to drop her fists down onto her hips before puffing her chest out with a smile of achievement all over her satisfied face.

"I don't really feel like one, though," I admitted, looking down at my open hands as opposed to raising my head and staring at my reflection in the huge, door-sized mirror.

This wasn't just a random remark or an excuse for something. This was the legitimate state of my head on the topic.

I've already felt like nothing more than a wannabe when it came to crafting, even with all the finished products I had to my name to back my reputation and ability up.

On the other hand, however, when it came to cultivation...

Wasn't I just riding the "marry rich and abuse the endless resources the marriage provides" plan to skip all the trouble associated with cultivation?

'I thought I could kill this feeling once I backed my cultivation not with the clan's resources but my own devices... only to have them all seized by the clan so that the government can properly inspect them before approving the whole project.'

"You will have to work to get rid of this feeling, then," Claire stated while crossing her arms over her chest. "In here, you are one of the relatively strongest cultivators by your rank alone. And with how your ideas allowed me... no, how they allowed us to perfect the cultivation path thus far, you are even stronger than your peers of the same rank!"

That I already knew about. Still, hearing words of such high praise from the mouth of the girl I adored was still something I wouldn't want to miss.

"But once we enter the spiritual world, things will change drastically. Over there," Claire suddenly looked away, as if unable to bear direct eye contact at the moment, "we are going to be literally weaker than any random child we meet on the street. As it turns out," she sighed before dropping her shoulders a bit, "over in that part of the world, people tend to reach the peak of the mortal realm before hitting their middle teens, only to break beyond that level before reaching adulthood."

I squinted my eyes but opted to hold myself back from just grabbing Claire in a bear hug now that she appeared so defenseless, so vulnerable and unsure.

I didn't pull her into a hug, not because I didn't want to. In fact, I could hardly resist the desire to do so.

I didn't do it because this feeling of inferiority she was dealing with right now... she had to find a way to handle it on her own because, between the two of us, she was the one who never had to experience it.

'If I comfort her now, then how will she be able to deal with pressure over in the spiritual world?' I thought, gritting my teeth before turning my eyes down, unable to look at Claire in her mentally miserable state anymore, not when I barred myself from intervening. .net

"Why are you making such a pained face?"

Before I could even notice, rather than waiting for me to grab her into a hug, Claire approached me herself, only to gently curl her right hand into a loose, open fist before using the edge of her forefinger to gently lift my head by probing my chin up.

Seeing the intuitive confusion rising in my eyes, Claire only widened her smile before reaching out and wrapping her hands around my arm as she pushed her chest against my side.

"I mean, I don't really mind acting all submissive... but I do believe a bit of practice wouldn't hurt before the real run," she stated with a grin.

I, however, couldn't really smile.

Not because her words and the idea behind them failed to make my shivers tremble.

It was because, as far as I could see, in a moment of doubt, she defaulted to seduction. She defaulted to floating her charms before my eyes and outright pressing them against my arm so that my mind would get preoccupied with something else...

'Wait, what if...' I squinted my eyes as a sudden idea appeared in my mind. 'What if it's not her changing the topic for her own sake, but she's doing so hoping I will stop worrying about the future so much?'

Curious, I looked down and off to the side, right into Claire's face.

Her eyes, however... the very moment she noticed my curious stare, her eyes skirted away as she quickly averted them only for her cheeks to cover with a faint hue of a blush.

"Well, I'm more than happy to give this... practice run a go later on," I admitted, opting to just stay honest with myself, "but when I asked for you to let me do the talking... I really meant it. And I hope you won't interfere even if I say some words about myself that you would instinctively want to slap me for."

Even though I still couldn't get over how it was nothing but freak circumstance that brought the two of us together, with how our cultivation, our emotions, even our minds were intertwined within this mangled web of thoughts, dual cultivation, shared Qi flow, and all the other tiny and hard-to-understand crap, I would have to be obnoxiously looking away from the truth not to realize just how deep her affection for me was.

Whether it was warranted, justified... earned? That was an entirely different topic I had no desire to crack open anytime soon, not with how much stuff we had going on at the moment.

Nevertheless, the depth of her affection was something I was fully aware of. Fully aware of how her affection was on a level that only my affection for her could even match. And with that in mind...

I could easily picture her going ballistic upon hearing me disregard and disrespect the entirety of my own being just to smother some young master's ass with spit of false praise.

"That's settled, then," Claire, unaware of my latent thoughts, smiled as she wrapped herself all over my arm even harder. "And right in the nick of time, at that," she then added as she angled her head to take a quick look at the display of the small, elegant clock wrapped around my wrist.

Following the path of her eyes, I took a look at the screen, only for my face to twist in an ugly grimace.

After two weeks of rest with only an occasional duty forcing us to stop resting and generally lazing around, it was finally the time to get the show on the road. And while our departure for the spiritual world was still only due for tomorrow...

The briefing with the officers of the special bureau, established the very moment the chief of staff confirmed the possibilities behind my devices, was neither something we could afford to miss nor something we were going to enjoy.

It was simply a duty that our situation warranted, with how we were going right into the lion's den right as its emissaries went out of their way to investigate the disaster we were secretly involved in... Not to say, the root cause behind most of what happened and what both the special bureau and the local police desperately tried to cover up!