‘I can’t do it!’

Stop being a baby.’

‘I’m five!’

‘And I’m one. You’re not building the best argument for yourself here.’

If you’re wondering who I’m talking to, I’m willing to divulge that information. But you’re now allowed to judge me.

Ah, what do I care? So it’s Qin Ling. The blue-eyed little girl that came to visit me with her ‘idiot’ mother. Please note, I am only following the Goddess when I say that. I am a baby and so I am very impressionable.

I’m currently doing something with her that I am sure her mother would beat me to within an inch of my life if she found out.

We are dual cultivating-ish.

As I am sure your mind is undoubtedly in the gutter, I shall add that some context is needed here.

Okay, so I am formally one year old. Now in that time, I have reached the cauldron-forging realm (we’ll go into detail on that much later) with two cauldrons forged so far.

However, after entering this realm, I realised that due to the lockdown implemented by my parents; I have zero experience talking with people who are not my parents, and who are not a Goddess.

You can see why I came to the conclusion that this couldn’t possibly be good for me.

So I spread my spiritual sense, which didn’t get very far admittedly, and I discovered I was able to see people all mental-like and even hear them if I focused really hard. I saw a lot of kids being arrogant and stuff and only one caught my eye.

Which one you ask?

You are right if you thought that one was Qin Ling. Why did she catch my eye you ask?

Well, I clearly remember saying that I was going to run an experiment on and with her.

As you can see, I am a baby of my word.

So I watched her as she returned home, and as soon as she was alone I revealed myself.

I am very aware that if I were to say I did this in my old world, I would be condemned for the rest of my days.

Gotta love the loose justice of cultivation novels.

Anyway, when I say ‘revealed myself’ I don’t mean in the context of inappropriate nudity, it was more in the context of me speaking to her telepathically.

You might better know it as spiritual transmission.

On another note, you ever wonder how cultivators just put ‘spiritual’ at the start of everything and it sounds xianxia-ish or wuxia-ish? This… This right here is the simplicity I live for people.

Anywho, after I revealed myself, I told her who I was, and what I do, and proceeded to tell her what I wanted to do to her.

I thought it would have been harder, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to trick a six or seven-year-old.

A few months later and here I am trying to get her to grasp a cultivation technique I kinda thought of on-the-spot back then.

I was practising creating cultivation techniques, and she was the perfect guinea pig for me. Her body was unusually cold for some reason and I had a few theories on why that was, but I’m not gonna get into that for now.

The good thing was, through trial and error, I was able to fashion a rudimentary cultivation technique that was perfect for her… maybe… in a way… kinda.

‘I can’t do it!’ she cried in her mind.

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I can’t tell you how many times, she cried out ‘out loud,’ causing her mother to break down the door with a sword in hand to cut down whoever was in her daughter’s room.

Ha, joke’s on her, I’m in my own room. I’m like an introvert that found the best game hack ever.

In any case, Qin Ling finally learned to express herself in her mind.

The only downside was that I could more aptly see what she was feeling. Wrap your brain around that for a minute.

‘Calm down.’ This is why I don’t like dealing with kids, I swear. ‘Just run your spiritual qi through the major meridians that comprise the Great Path just like I told you. Then make sure that after every revolution of the Great Path, you run the spiritual qi through the minor meridians I outlined for you and voila, you’re practising the technique I created. The acupuncture points for the minor meridians you need to run it through after the first circulation are the yong guan, ran gu, tai xi, —’

‘There are too many to remember!’

‘Your last two brain cells are competing for second place, aren’t they? Okay, then how about this? You simply absorb spiritual energy and I will tell you what path you need to have it go down during the circulation. That sound easy enough?’

‘Okay,’

And just like that, I was somehow teaching the cultivator’s equivalent of a remedial class. I guess it kinda made sense. I saw nothing even remotely similar to a school in this place, which I’m pretty sure is child abuse.

Then again, in cultivation worlds like these, I should be thankful we’re not having death matches on the daily.

Whoosh…

A gentle gust picked around Qin Ling while the ambient spiritual energy swirled around her.

I watched very closely as she drew in the spiritual energy and her body took an ethereal glow of sorts. Is this how I looked when I was cultivating?

Man, I must have looked like one of those glow-in-the-dark baby dolls.

“Left,’ I said in Qin Ling’s mind and watched as the stream of spiritual energy entered the channel I wanted it to go down in.

‘Good, now go straight and take the next left followed by a right.’

Far be it from me to call out the mind-boggling profundities of cultivation and its accompanying techniques to be akin to directing a driver who says they know where they’re going but in reality don’t know crap.

Once we completed several revolutions, I stopped directing her and watched her start to do it by herself just like clockwork.

Now I didn’t want to toot my own horn or anything, but I was pretty impressed with this technique I just spawned out of nowhere.

It was tailored exactly to how much opened major meridians she had opened and the distance between them.

Not only that, I took advantage of the cold aura her body possessed by incorporating some of the yin meridians into the cultivation technique, which complimented it nicely.

Don’t get me wrong, there was a bunch of patching up to do before this thing was anywhere near done, but it wasn’t bad for a few months' worth of fumbling around in the dark.

The best thing was, the better I made it, the better and more prepared I would be when the time came to create a technique for myself.

I couldn’t fudge this up. I am the MC of my own life and since I decided to b*tch slap logic; I had to go even further and make common sense my gimp.

Don’t ask me where I learnt that word. The internet took me to some weird places.

‘I did it! Long Di did you see me!?’

Qin Ling’s voice interrupted my inner monologuing and I could see that she was reaching the peak of the Vessel Qi Gathering realm.

‘Not bad.’

That must not have been what she wanted to hear, since her head lowered in disappointment. It speaks volumes of the kind of parenting of one’s child when they can be downcast by the words of a one-year-old baby.

‘I won’t give up!’ she said soon after like the protagonist of every anime containing the phrase, ‘with the power of friendship!’

I just told her that’s the spirit and ended it there. I don’t think I’d be able to survive if she said something along the lines of ‘believe in the heart of the cards.’

There’s only one cheater in this world and it’s gonna be me.

I retracted my spiritual sense and came back to myself.

A wave of fatigue immediately befell me and I wanted to take a nap all of a sudden.

Personally, I couldn’t wait until I reached the core formation realm. At that time, my mind sea would open up and I’d have access to spiritual force.

I’d be able to move things with my mind! This was practically telekinesis!

Once again, isekai and cultivation are the perfect combinations!

Regardless, I needed to focus on my own cultivation. Father made it clear that I had to go all out on forging my cauldrons and I was beginning to wonder if I broke em.

Oh well, I’m sure it’ll sort itself out, eventually. I’ll just check in on Qin Ling from time to time and do what I need to do until I can leave this place.

“Yawns…”

Curse this childish baby body, I’m gonna go to sleep now.