Careful to not wake the sleeping Five, Blood River rose with the sun that morning. A sudden urge overwhelmed him, and without bothering to dress, he stepped off the nest of blankets and into the cold water. Resisting the urge to shiver, he walked out into the center of the pond, where the water level was not quite waist high, and then he kneeled, submerging himself to the neck.

He closed his eyes, but he did not begin the circulation of his breathing technique, instead breathing naturally, feeling his buoyancy in the water without actually allowing himself to float. Much of that feeling of fullness had disappeared throughout the night, but so too had the sense of a barrier between him and the next step in his physique cultivation.

Thinking of nothing, submerged in the pond where his journey in cultivation began, the last lock unlocked. Energy surged throughout his body, a flow of searing heat that purified the impure and tempered the raw. The surrounding water heated around him, the liquid in contact with the surface of his flesh bubbling with the excess energy he was releasing.

After a few minutes, the rush of power ended. He had pierced the barrier to the third-grade Earth Realm, and gravity's shackles were once again lighter than ever before. He opened his eyes and stood up in the water, droplets coursing off his bare skin and back into the pond, the faint mist above the water already clearing.

Behind him, a voice laughed. "A girl could get used to this, you know," Five remarked, "having a good view of a full moon and a sunrise all at once first thing in the morning."

River stood in place, not wanting to turn for fear of exposing the flushing of his face. "Enjoying the view then, I take it?" he called over his back, trying to sound confident.

Five laughed some more. "Well, you're certainly a healthy man, River. This view would almost be perfect if you didn't have that long hair covering your back, you know."

The water splashed as he turned around and saw Five laying there on the blankets chest first, her chin propped up on her arms as she gazed at him with those clear blue eyes of hers.

She smiled at him. "That's a good view too, although now I can tell for sure that you're a natural brunette," she quipped, giggling.

Heat again rushed to River's face even as he reached down in the water and splashed it at her, eliciting a squeal from Five that he found gratifying. He leapt from the water to the bank, and the two began to tussle, one thing leading to another.

A couple of hours later, the two laid on the blankets, side by side, staring up idly at the blue sky together, his blood red hair and her golden blonde hair mixing underneath them. At their sides, they held hands, their fingers intertwined.

"So, what are you going to do now?" Five asked.

"Shouldn't that be a 'we' now, Celia?" River replied, "I've expelled all my ghosts. All that remains now is the Dragon's Den itself."

"So then you're pretty much at my disposal then?"

River chuckled. "I guess you could put it that way."

Five smiled. "That's what I like to hear." She sat up, letting go of his hand, and thumped his abdomen with a loud slap. "C'mon, it's time to get ready to return to civilization here, River."

River rose, groaning a bit with the exertion. "I guess."

"Well, you'll have to be a bit more enthusiastic than just guessing. I'm going to need a change of clothes, after all," she replied, gesturing to the pile where their previous garments lay, torn apart from their frenzy of the previous night.

"Ah, yeah," he replied rather dumbly. He snatched the storage pouch from the pile and mentally sifted through the contents, finding a tunic and shorts around Five's size with a little effort. He pulled those out and handed them over while also picking out a pair of red breeches for himself.

"Um, could you be a dear and get me that one package I had you throw in?" Five mentioned as she pulled on the clothing he provided.

"Sure." A brown sack holding some kind of box inside materialized, and he passed it over to her before he slipped his legs into the new pair of pants he had procured. These, blessedly, were a good fit.

Five pulled a small lacquered box out of the sack, unlatching it. "Um... I need to consult with the others for a while. Maybe you should go for a walk and stretch out a bit? I mean, this isn't at all meant to offend, but you're a very distracting kind of man."

"Of course," River nodded. The two could be said to be on very intimate terms right now, but her means of communication with the Dragonslayers was indeed still a secret she held closely. He had no interest in straining her loyalties over something like that, given he had secrets of his own that he kept even closer.

He turned to walk the grasslands, catching a glimpse of Five placing her hand inside the box on a white plate as he did so. With an effort, he didn't turn back around to watch, instead strolling away leisurely, feeling the dirt and grass on his bare feet.

"I'm rather surprised you can still walk at all after all that, my young friend," Mister Black chimed in rather acidly.

"Good morning to you too, Mister Black," River replied, not letting the ghost overshadow his current afterglow.

"Well you've gotten cheery," Mister Black remarked, more jovial this time.

"I have a couple of things to ask about if you have a moment, Mister Black," River moved to change the subject.

"Time is something I have a lot of right now, my young friend. What is it?"

"Do you recognize what she's doing there?" River didn't look back, but that didn't mean he wasn't still curious.

Mister Black chuckled. "Of course. It's a medium-distance transmission jade that she's using. It's a rather pricey one for a backwater like this, too. That type relays to a home node somewhere in this region and lets her communicate mentally with others having a jade keyed to the same node. The main flaw of this particular type is that it can only be keyed for use by a single individual; in this case, only she can use that specific jade. If you got your hands on it, it'd be worthless."

"Fancy," River remarked. There was a vast sea of knowledge he lacked on the tools of cultivators out in the wider world, and this was just another droplet Mister Black decided to parcel out for him. "I have another question, then, about my cultivation."

"I saw that you worked your way through the bottleneck to the third-grade Earth Realm. Congratulations are in order there too, of course."

"Yes, yes, of course," River responded absently. "What I'm concerned with right now is about a change in my breathing technique."

"Oh? Is there a problem with the Passion Sublimation Technique that you're running into?" Mister Black seemed concerned at the request.

"Not with the technique itself," River replied, "but with its effects. Before, I had every reason to want to suppress all those things. Now..." he trailed off, finding a way to put his thoughts into words.

"Now," Mister Black jumped in, "you have something--someone who makes you want to discard all of your passions no longer."

"Yes."

"Well, the good news," Mister Black began to lecture, "is that you are looking to change your breathing technique this early. This means you can do so with minimal backlash."

"And the bad news?" River asked.

"There isn't bad news," Mister Black chuckled, "because there's a perfect technique for your situation anyway, so there's only better news. We'll convert Passion Sublimation into Passion Amplification now. Now that you've been at this a while and you've resolved your inner demons, you ought to be able to handle it."

River heaved a sigh of relief. The thought of having to choose between what he had achieved in cultivation and what he had with Celia could have torn him into pieces.

"Here, let me just rummage around there in your head and impart the method right now while you have a few more minutes..." Mister Black muttered as he openly meddled in his student's consciousness.

The technique popped into River's mind all at once. The Passion Amplification Technique was in itself a derivative art from the Passion Sublimation Technique. Where sublimation drew in emotional energy, amplification let it out explosively. The black hole inverted back to a supernova that only needed to appear when in battle.

"Thank you, Mister Black," River showed his appreciation, stuffing the knot of suspicion further back in his mind for now as this new technique was a reminder that there were still plenty of benefits to gain in maintaining a cordial relationship.

He continued walking while he mentally checked that he knew the ins and outs of the technique. An interesting effect of cultivating both arts was that, at least during this level, he could use them in a complementary manner; this meant that for now, he could keep the black hole of Passion Sublimation and, in a pinch, use it for fuel an outburst with Passion Amplification.

Five finally showed up and flagged him down, hopping up to peck him on the cheek with a kiss.

"So, what's the news, Celia?" River asked.

Five took a deep breath. "Well, River... it looks like things are coming to a head faster than anybody anticipated. For one thing, we can't go back to Aureate Hill right now."

"Oh?"

"The Balar already made their move to suppress the Dragon's Den and Aureate Hill is going to be the price," she recounted, somewhat flatly as they turned together and walked arm-in-arm back to their impromptu camp.

"Oh." River responded, feeling a bit numb. "I'm sorry. This is all my fault, isn't it?"

Five shook her head. "It isn't... well, it is, but it's for the best in the end. Sometimes to overthrow a tyrant you have to make sacrifices. The people should be okay -- there's little profit to be had in wholesale extermination, and the Balar are all about the profit -- but it's definitely escalated things."

"How so?" River was clueless about the functioning of the rebellion and figured now was a good time to try and catch up to speed.

"A lot of the villages -- clan villages like Flowing Water used to be -- have sat on the fence or only given lip service about wanting to overthrow Brave Dragon," she explained. "The combination of the razing of Flowing Water and the capture of Aureate Hill will change a lot of minds on that count. In a very real way, you've more or less started a war on your own, my dear."

"Not exactly what I was intending, but I guess it'll have to do?" River allowed a mask of flippancy to hide his uncertainty at Five's reaction to events.

Five laughed. "What's done is done. The important thing is there's a breakthrough." She then sighed. "Of course, this means our little vacation here must come to an end. We need to regroup."

"Oh, so I get to meet your grandfather the master Dragonslayer then?" River quipped.

"That you do." Five smiled.

The pair returned to camp and River gathered the blankets back into the storage pouch. He then pulled out some shoes as well as his warrior's red fur cloak and finished dressing.

Five whistled as he put the cloak on. "That's quite the ensemble you have there, darling."

River shrugged. "It looks like I'm not in hiding anymore, and I'm rather partial to this myself."

"Oh, I can get rather partial to it myself," Five grinned naughtily. "It certainly shows off all the right things."

River sighed, beginning to understand the kind of woman he was now inextricably entangled with.

Beside the flirting pair, unseen, the dark immortal specter saw that the strings it had pulled resulted in an exquisite dance, and it approved. All was going according to plan.