The little girl stared at me, eyes viciously accusing and angry.

“Gah!” She said while pointing.

“I had stuff to do.”

“Gah!” She said again.

“I was busy.”

“Gah gah boo, me bfppp!”

I sighed. It had been a month since she was born, and it had been one hell of a month. She was up and angry at me when I’d gotten back and there were a lot of baby gibberish accusations thrown my way.

It was weird. Apparently, a fifth-ranking child came out with the intelligence of a grown man. She could understand me by reading my aura and I could do the same to her. Her words, no matter how meaningless, were means of delivering tone and emotion and that’s just what the child did.

“I’m sorry!” I said in a tired tone, but the baby was having none of it.

“ARRRGHGHHG!” She screamed.

Today, she was mad. I’d promised to take her down to the village for some of the merchants that would be arriving today but had gotten caught up reading through the information I’d received from Lynoria.

“We can see them tomorrow,” I replied to the angry little woman.

“Da!” She said, then she turned around and farted.

I sighed.

She was a strange creature. The half-beast part didn’t manifest itself physically, but that was probably due to Tai Jey’s own preferences. But it was there emotionally. The child was absolutely feral, ripping into everything she could. She attempted to eat me when she first saw me and then she attempted to eat Wriendler.

I’d kept her out of the village for now, but she had heard bits and snippets and she was curious.

“Gauntlet, grab her!” I yelled before she could crawl out of my sight. And the big stone man swung down to grab the human chihuahua.

She fought him, angrily kicking and screaming. She was at the fifth rank too, which gave her terrifying strength. That and her bloodline made her a human nuke. A human baby nuke.

That was why I hadn’t let her go down to the village.

But Chin had treked up here to talk to me about it and she had heard about the whole thing from him. She hadn’t tried to eat Chin, but that made sense, Chin was good with animals, I was not.

I took the kid by her left leg and put Wriendler by her mouth. She bit the poor bastard, keeping her mouth occupied as I took her outside.

“Is it ready?” I asked Xi Lu and she nodded as she backed away several paces.

Then I threw the dam baby into the pit. She snarled and growled but Wriendler bound her tightly and pushed her into the depths. Enchanted water consumed her as she struggled to get out, but alas, it was useless.

“This is mistreatment,” Chin said from a distance.

“She hasn’t bathed in over a week,” I replied. “This is a necessary evil.”

A small hand reached out from the water, only to get dragged back in by a brown tentacle.

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“She’s not even scrubbing,” Chin noted.

“The water is enchanted. She’ll be clean whether she likes it or not.”

“Is there really no other way?” Xi Lu asked.

I shook my head, staring sadly into the hole. As funny as this whole thing was, there was a sad part to it all. The girl’s beast nature was taking over rather quickly, and if I couldn’t figure out how to hold it at bay, then it would define her.

The way to curve this behavior would be to find a proper punishment, something to push the instinct away. But I wasn’t gonna beat the kid, that seemed insane, even for someone like me.

I couldn’t use pain, so I looked through other methods of change, diving into the information I’d gotten from the Eternal Tome. I had an idea going for now but it would take a while to go into effect.

“Can she breathe?” Chin asked.

"Eh'" I shrugged.

Chin gave me a dirty look.

“She’s at the fifth realm. She doesn’t need to breathe."

Chin's scowl lessened but didn't fade completely.

A tentacle poked out of the water and waved. That was the sign. I pulled out a large grey towel and held it open and ready.

“Fire!” I yelled.

Wriendler hurled the baby in my direction at Mach speed and I caught her like football. She immediately tried to escape, squirming and turning with enough force to topple mountains, but I held on.

“Nope,” I said, wrapping her tightly within the cloth.

She screamed in gibberish, but I held firm, bundling her up like a well-wrapped Christmas gift. I put an array seal on the cloth, one that could fend off an eighth-rank attack, just in case she got angry.

By the time I was finished, I had one frowning and clean baby tightly bundled up in a bunch of enchanted cloth.

“Gah!”

“No. It’s nap time.”

“Gah do!”

“Yes, you do.”

“Gah! Gah do!”

I sighed and carried the bundled newborn in my arms.

“Honored Master,” Xi Lu spoke. “Lin Tai says that the preparations are finished.”

I nodded and started on my way.

“What preparations?” Chin asked.

“Baby stuff, wanna see?”

Chin shrugged and came along.

“Why are you up here anyways?” I asked him as we walked. “Shouldn’t you be haggling all the merchants coming through the valley”

“Ah Medin’s got all that covered,” he replied. “She loves haggling. Haggled my dowery from fifteen stones to fifty that woman.”

I nodded. Chin’s wife was a hell of a haggler.

“And the crops?” I asked.

“All planted, all growing. The boys can do the maintenance for now.”

Now that raised an eyebrow.

“What?” I asked.

“What?” Chin replied.

“You? Not farming? Leaving it to other people?”

Chin shrugged and turned away, but even Xi Lu looked at him with wonder.

“Why?” I asked.

“Medin… she insists… Well…”

In the few decades that I had known this man, this was the first time I had heard him stutter.

“She said that I should ask you to teach me.”

“Teach you… cultivation?”

Chin let out a sad sigh.

“I was complaining about how… unhelpful you are and just how helpful you could be if you put your mind to it and… Well… I suppose she got a bit tired of that. Told me if I thought cultivators were such a waste of strength that I should go be a cultivator myself instead of complaining at home all day.”

“Wise old Medin Chin strikes again then,” I muttered.

Chin gave a sigh of resignation.

If there was anyone who could hassle Chin into doing something other than farming, it was his wife. The lady had a way with words, but how could she not? I still remember how she had talked him into dedicating a full month to his wedding, pulling him aside from any form of work for that whole time.

“I’ll just tell her you said no and-”

“Why?” I asked.

“Wha- what do you mean why? I’m an old man, that’s why. Old men don’t cultivate, everybody knows that.”

“Nah,” I said with a smile. “We can give it a try tomorrow night. A couple of hours of meditation and stuff, see where that gets ya.”

Chin frowned.

“With all due respect Mister Bill-”

“Or I can tell Medin you said no?”

Chin sentence died and he continued walking, murmuring something about having fallen in love and married a demon.