She looked like a person, eventually. Her skin morphed and changed until it settled down and chose to look like mine. She had big bright brown eyes and baby fuzz at the top of her head. The only strange thing about her were those horns. Small little nubs that would be barely noticeable if she had a full head of hair.

I watched her for a few moments, but a few moments were an eternity for my mind and I couldn’t help but think. Why? Why was she here?

This was clearly Tai Jey’s child. Nothing else could be so powerful at merely the fifth stage, but why was she wandering around as an egg? And why was she an egg to begin with?

Tai Jey may have tamed beasts but he wasn’t a beast himself. He was the tamer. It was said that he existed way back during the first days when the multiverse was young and men numbered few. It was said that it was his tribe who had first tamed wolves and cattle. That he had been there as a child when the first wolf was tamed and the first cow was killed.

He was the Tamer. The man that controlled beasts. I looked back at the baby again. She sat there, naked, happily napping without concern. Her bloodline reeked of power. Tai Jey was there, of course, his blood coursing within her, but there was also something else. Something far more powerful.

I sent my senses towards her qi, feeling at her nature.

I flinched as soon as I felt it.

“By the Dao,” I mumbled as my face fell into shock.

She was half Beast, the great Primodial’s blood ran in her veins.

“By the Dao!” I yelled again, almost waking the child with my exclamation.

Tai Jey had mated with Beast. That alone was worthy of wonder. Tai Jey, the man that tamed beasts, the man who considered anything non-human to be a tool in his path forward, had mated with a beast. It was like a normal man choosing to fuck a cow. It didn’t make sense. The Tamer was known for his disposition against any and all non-human life. He wouldn’t even negotiate with them, much less fuck one of the strongest non-humans in existence.

I looked down at the child again. Female. I had noticed that even before she had taken form. She was a female. Yin energy had flowed through her being, and permiated her, even before she had settled into flesh. That was unnatural. They had been trying to make a female.

But why? The egg had been with Kin Jey, so maybe it was a reparation of some sort. Maybe there had been a trade between Tai Jey and the Beast and he had gotten something in return for this child made between them. But if that had been the case, then why did Kin Jey have it? If this was the result of a valuable trade, why was it just being carried around by some ninth-rank nobody?

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I looked back down at the child.

A female. A beast. A tameable beast.

“By the Dao,” I sighed in realization.

This girl wasn’t just a child. She was an investment.

Cultivators took some time to grow, but this one would easily catch up to Kin Jey's rank within a million years of her birth. Kin Jey wasn’t special, at least not in terms of status, but his bloodline was pure. Maybe that was why he was chosen, or maybe there was another reason, either way, Kin Jey had been given this egg and he was probably told to tame it as soon as it hatched, tying the two together for the rest of their existence.

Tai Jey had created his whole sect from the ground up, building and catering the bloodlines of every beast to his own liking. He was like a dog breeder, constantly doing tests on each of his pets, making sure they were in the best condition possible. That was why his sect was so successful. Pedigree and power, his bloodlines had it all.

But what if his control extended to beasts as well?

What if he had wanted to sire a whole bloodline of beasts, mixed with bloodlines of his own? She had been breeding stock, and Kin Jey had been the bull. If Kin Jey had raised this girl, and then eventually had children with her, they would create a new bloodline in the Divine Beast Emporium, one that contained the power of a primordial.

“But why Kin Jey?” I muttered.

“Hey Wriendler, you still have some of that Kin Jey guy left?” I asked the floating sword.

Wriendler let out a bout of maddening noises.

“The one with the blue armor. Big ego, doing all that talking?”

The sword floated in thought for a moment. Then it opened its mouth, widening its fleshy jaws, and puked out the tip of a finger. The piece of flesh bounced onto the ground and landed a few feet away from me.

I brought it over and studied its qi. The man was dead and eaten. Even if Kin Jey’s soul had somehow managed to escape his body, it would have been trapped in that artificial realm and burned within the fires of the void.

But some of his qi was there, and I pulled it out, carefully. Most of it was corrupted with Wriendler’s qi, but there was a spec of uncorrupted qi. It was small, hell it could barely nourish a butterfly but it was there. I pulled it out, carefully making sure to not infect it with my own qi, and put in an empty spirit stone.

I’d have to look into it later.

“Gauntlet!” I yelled, summoning the big rock golem to my side.

“Look after the girl for a while. I gotta go out and run some errands.”

Gauntlet looked at the girl, then back to me, and nodded.

I snatched Wriendler as I walked out of the dimension and back into Ah-Marin. If this girl was what I thought she was, then the Divine Beast Emporium was definitely looking for me. Which meant an awful amount of trouble for me.