Immortal Ice Empress: Path to Vengeance

Mira informed Maria and Celaine that she planned on not leaving her room until she broke through to the Peak of the Foundation Realm. They both understood her and decided to focus on doing their own things. For example, Maria can still try and learn more about alchemy while Celaine… Well, she was just going to consolidate her gains during her time in the Secret Realm. Her saber skills have advanced rapidly over the last 3 years and she's barely had any time to meditate on them so she might as well do it now.

As for the matter of leaving the Sect and making it in time to advance to the Core Formation Realm and take part in the Entrance Exam of the Main Sect? The three of them aren't worried about this in the slightest. Having Elenei with them can literally save them months of travel, even if they are going to separate. So it'll actually be quicker for Maria and Celaine if they just wait for Mira to finish her business before they leave.

Mira stopped paying attention to everything around her and immediately started focusing on her emotions. Even while sitting here doing nothing Mira can feel a myriad of emotions trying to take over.

Sometimes she'll feel rage at the fact Rhydian hasn't woken up yet. Other times she'll feel happy that she can take a break and stay here for a while. Occasionally she'll feel lazy while a part of her mind keeps telling her that she's done enough and it's time to just relax a little. Then a feeling of cold indifference will wash over these emotions, suppressing them until they are no more. However, they aren't totally gone and after a few minutes they'll reappear and a similar cycle will continue.

What's weird is that Mira knows that she doesn't actually feel any of these things. For example, why would she feel angry at Rhydian for sleeping, which is basically her form of cultivating? The truth is, she doesn't. Sure, she might feel a bit of annoyance that Rhydian won't wake up even if she threw her across the room, but that's it.

Most of what she's feeling right now is simply her emotions and personality going haywire for no rhyme or reason.

If it were other people, this type of thing might drive someone crazy! I mean, who in their right mind would want to live without even being able to control their emotions. A good example of this is pregnant women! Their hormones go all out of whack and they start doing, wanting, or saying crazy shit that they don't actually want or believe! Sure, such a thing might not happen for long, but it can definitely drive not only the person themself but the people around them crazy.

However, what a pregnant woman has to go through is nothing in comparison to what Mira is going through. The current Mira might feel many different emotions in the span of just a few minutes while this process repeats itself over and over again all day every day. Lucky for her, she's experienced this before and is an expert at controlling her emotions, or else this could get very out of hand.

Mira's only goal during her meditation session is to essentially make all of her emotions submit to her usual cold, indifferent, and apathetic self.

Imagine this, all emotions like rage, hatred, sadness, happiness, laziness, love, pride, fear, depression, shame, embarrassment, etc. All of these emotions are surrounding a main overarching larger emotion of cold indifferent apathy. Each of these is linked to the overarching emotion by a small string making them something akin to subordinate emotions.

So when Mira feels anything other than indifference, these other emotions will send a ping notifying Mira that she feels something like fear, embarrassment, rage, etc. But even though Mira gets this ping of fear or embarrassment, such a thing will never overtake her normal indifferent emotion.

Even though Mira would love to just eradicate everything like fear, happiness, love, pride, anger, etc., there isn't really a point in doing so. In fact, doing such a thing will only hurt her or perhaps kill her.

How good would her instincts be if not for fear? Fear can help her stay careful of dangerous enemies and it can help alert her of dangerous attacks. Having pride is almost like a form of self-acknowledgment. Mira takes pride in her knowledge and experience which in doing so allows her to determine her worth and capabilities. She can take pride and acknowledge what she knows which will help her understand what she doesn't know or what she can do to better herself.

All of these things are incredibly useful if used correctly and being able to keep a cool head in all situations is the best way to utilize these emotions. That's why Mira prefers being apathetic and indifferent on almost every occasion because it allows her to keep a level head at all times.

However, now instead of these emotions surrounding and tied to her overarching indifference, they are now all jumbled up together, each one trying to take over and become the Main Emotion.

What Mira's trying to do during her meditation is unscramble these emotions while plucking each one of them out of the Main emotion slot, turning them back into subordinate emotions.

Yes, it's a huge pain in the ass to do so because emotions aren't just fucking cabbages or flowers that one can just pick up and put wherever they want. No, they are pretty much the foundation of a living entity. Babies, adults, animals, and even plants can feel things, especially in a cultivation world. Hell, sometimes even robots have feelings or they can at least be programmed to. If something doesn't have any emotions then Mira would say that such a person can no longer be considered living.

Some might disagree with Mira and others might say that she's being a hypocrite because Mira rarely feels anything, but that's simply not true.

Mira wants revenge! She wants to kill those who have wronged her! She wants to get stronger! She wants to be free! Sure, she might not care for human life, but at least she cares about her own!

Anyways, that's why doing this is a huge pain in the ass because Mira is basically rearranging the foundation of her very being.

Another reason why it's anything but easy is because, if she focuses on one emotion for too long then slowly that will be the only thing she feels until it's subordinated again.

Like right now, Mira is plucking away her rage and in doing so she can feel her veins popping, her teeth gritting, her eyes turning bloodshot, and an oppressive need for slaughter. Such a feeling will only get worse until she unscrambles and subordinates it.

Luckily for Mira, although her emotions were raging her mental capacity is very high and she can restrain herself from doing something crazy.

Mira continued separating and subordinating her emotions for the weeks to come until she was left with her usual cold indifferent self…