Chapter 384: Paranoid Father |
Later that same day, after the whole debacle with Song Song seeing my pregnant wife and leaving immediately when she realized there was no good food, I finished reassuring Fu Yating and helped her prepare the ingredients to cook what she called actual edible food.
She initially didn’t want me in the kitchen at all, but after some back and forth she agreed to let me stay as long as I handled the ingredient preparation.
Afterward, Fu Yating lay down on the couch to rest, dozing off every now and then.
With nothing else to do, I left behind a few countermeasures around the house and set off toward the library.
Sadly, having a kid didn’t give me any kind of boost or mythical dad strength.
Maybe I had to wait until the baby was actually born for that.
Even though I was worried about Fu Yating, I still kept up with my research and cultivation.
As I landed on the stony ground in front of the library pagoda, my boots crunched against the thin layer of snow that had frozen overnight.
Taking a deep breath, the cold winter air filled my lungs as I stared at the deep blue sky, a thousand thoughts racing through my head.
What if everything went wrong, no matter how hard I tried?
Wait… what if it was a girl, and one day she ended up marrying some cultivator?
Fuck.
All male cultivators were scumbags with their mistresses and multiple wives. Just thinking about it made me angry. My child wasn’t even born yet, and it might not even be a daughter.
I had to take another deep breath until it felt like my ears might pop before my emotions stabilized.
Now I finally understood part of that fatherly anger people talked about, when dads had to meet the boy their daughter brought home.
Was my daughter going to do that someday, too? Bring home some scumbag young master? Or some “heaven’s chosen” protagonist who accidentally had a harem of women falling into his lap?
The thought alone pissed me off.
I forced myself to stop thinking about it as I walked toward the library.
Wait until the child was actually born before jumping to conclusions like that.
For all I knew, I might not even have a daughter.
I wiped the snow from my boots against the grass as I stepped inside the Spring Array surrounding the library.
Today, the library was closed. Even though people rarely visited the place for books anyway, it being closed was still unprecedented. Despite that, the doors opened automatically for me without me even having to push them.
Jiang Yeming stood behind the counter where I usually worked when I actually bothered doing my job, which wasn’t that often.
But she wasn’t alone. Wu Yan was there with her, talking and smiling.
Thinking about daughters again, Wu Yan was almost like one to me. Just imagining her being mistreated by some arrogant young master, or some heaven’s chosen main-character type, made my blood boil.
I already wanted to beat these imaginary boys into a pulp for not treating her properly.
“Exactly. Everyday sect uniforms from every sect are so restrictive,” Jiang Yeming explained.
I arrived in the middle of the conversation with no context, but I understood the gist. It was a boring subject, and Wu Yan was too polite to say so. She simply listened and nodded along.
I was honestly worried about how she would get through life with that attitude. Wu Yan needed more of a backbone.
Jiang Yeming, on the other hand, was talking about ideas far ahead of their time, discussing uniforms and practicality as if she were redesigning the entire cultivation world.
“Anyway,” I interrupted, “Jiang Yeming, did you prepare everything for today?”
Wu Yan being here was not a coincidence. This was going to be a life-changing day for her.
After a great deal of observation, research, and deduction regarding extreme physiques, we had discovered that it was very unlikely Wu Yan would naturally recover her cultivation.
Or at least, it would take an absurdly long time. Failing to break through to Core Formation had wrecked her body, even for someone like Wu Yan, whose recovery ability was remarkable.
She could still form new spirit roots. But they came without an ounce of Qi in them. It was like building an engine with no fuel.
That fuel should have been the initial Qi everyone possessed.
But Wu Yan had only her vitality Qi left, the energy representing her lifespan. Even if she managed to learn how to use it after extensive training, doing so would drastically shorten her life.
So, with the surprisingly cooperative assistance of Jiang Yeming, I had come up with two possible solutions.
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The first plan was to find a heavenly treasure capable of restoring someone’s cultivation talent. Even the Blazing Sun Sect possessed only a few such treasures. Two of them were owned by people like Muchen and other powerful, influential elders.
Getting them to willingly part with something like that would be about as difficult as pulling a lion’s teeth without provoking it.
Nor did I possess anything of equal value to trade.
As for Song Song confronting those elders directly… aside from Muchen, who was a Level 6 Array Conjurer and a Tier 6 Alchemist, she probably had a good chance of defeating the others. But those people were still far too high-level for us to risk angering them.
That was where the second plan came in. I would simply jumpstart Wu Yan’s roots.
“You don’t have to worry,” Jiang Yeming reassured me. “I’ll stand guard and point out anything if something goes wrong during the process.”
I was confident in my sensory abilities and Qi control. But Jiang Yeming possessed techniques from the future. She could even sense spatial fluctuations that Core Formation cultivators couldn’t detect at all.
Who knew what else she might be capable of sensing? So her help was necessary here.
After some minor preparations, Wu Yan already knew what to do. She sat down in the middle of the library while Jiang Yeming closed the front entrance and stood guard by the door, leaning against it with her arms folded.
Wu Yan removed her upper robe, exposing her bare back to me.
It really was strange seeing her like this. It was easy to tell she wasn’t a normal human.
There were no imperfections on her skin. It was like looking at the back of a very realistic game character. No moles, no uneven tones, not even the faint sun marks that most people carried around their necks.
Nothing.
I placed my hands against her soft back, feeling the warmth of her skin.
“Get ready,” I warned.
Wu Yan nodded.
My Qi gently prickled against her skin before slipping inside her body. Wu Yan had felt my Qi countless times before, and even if she were still a cultivator, her Qi would instinctively not resist mine.
Sensing the inside of her body, everything was beautiful and symmetrical.
There were no imperfections.
It was as if an artist had drawn every detail with deliberate care.
Wu Yan let out a soft groan.
After injecting the first thread of Qi, I immediately withdrew my hands and stepped back, watching her carefully.
Extreme Physiques were truly cheats that had simply been calibrated badly.
Why?
Because after that single thread of Qi, there was no longer any need for more. It had already served its purpose as the spark to restart the engine that was Wu Yan’s spiritual roots.
The experiment had succeeded. Some could even say it had gone perfectly. There was no backlash for now. No instability. Nothing wrong.
“Her strength seems a bit lacking,” Jiang Yeming commented from the side. “She can barely be considered a weak, newly formed Qi Gathering cultivator.”
“Yes,” I replied. “But she doesn’t need more.”
“True,” Jiang Yeming agreed easily. “She really knows how to make people envy her. It won’t be long before she returns to her peak state.”
“This time she needs to slow down and properly comprehend everything,” I said, directing the words toward Jiang Yeming but also as a reminder to Wu Yan. “She should focus on Qi control as well.”
Then I paused, curious about something else.
“Also, Wu Yan, do you still feel your Foundation Element?” I asked, genuinely interested in that detail.
An element was deeply intertwined with a cultivator. Even the Blood Step Immortal always chose blood as his element, and the bodies he possessed had to have it too. Though in his case, that was likely because his immortal-grade reincarnation technique was incomplete.
“Yes,” Wu Yan replied. “I can still feel it intertwined with my Qi. My Foundation Techniques are still there as well.”
Her sense of wonder slowly faded as the reality of her restored cultivation settled in. She then reached back to cover herself again.
That was interesting.
Jiang Yeming, for example, seemed capable of changing her element entirely. Yet when someone’s cultivation was destroyed, it proved that most cultivators were deeply bound to their element.
Jiang Yeming herself was also an excellent test case for the opposite question.
What happened if someone changed their element? Did it prevent them from reaching certain stages? Or did it simply reshape their path?
Even though I wasn’t completely certain Jiang Yeming had changed her element after returning to the past, I was fairly confident about it.
There was also another possibility. Maybe she hadn’t traveled back in time at all. Maybe only her memories had been sent back. Or perhaps a divination technique from the present had given her the illusion of time travel.
Her situation didn’t change either way. She still possessed knowledge and experience from the future.
But for my experiment regarding elemental change, the distinction mattered a great deal.
Overall, it was fascinating that her techniques had remained ingrained in her body even after her cultivation was destroyed.
“Could you choose a new element if you forced it?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” Wu Yan said, understanding what I meant immediately. “But that’s likely only possible because of what my current element represents.”
Ah.
Right.
Her element was Change.
It could do many things.
“Alright,” I said. “Don’t try anything foolish like changing it just to satisfy curiosity.”
“Literally no one was curious about that…” Jiang Yeming murmured under her breath, fully aware that all of us could hear her.
She paused. “Wait… were you?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I was just warning her.”
Admitting that my first thought after healing Wu Yan had been to test whether she could change her element would have been a little embarrassing.
It would make it seem like I didn’t care about her.
Jiang Yeming narrowed her eyes suspiciously. But she didn’t say anything.
…
Time slipped past our fingers like water as I returned to my usual schedule. I had Wu Yan keep a closer eye on Fu Yating. My wife found it easier to accept help from someone naturally caring like Wu Yan than from me, who had suddenly started acting like that only after the pregnancy.
Either way, things were good.
Though there was still that lingering sense of anxiety at the back of my mind whenever I thought about becoming a father.
Aside from the war, which had cooled down somewhat, everything in my life was going well.
Wu Yan had recovered.
Song Song was safe, for now.
And my wife was pregnant.
In a strange way, I was… content.
