‘Now we’re cookin’!’ Alex was ecstatic the moment he regained consciousness.

He felt rich Qi seeping in through every pore of his tiny fetus’s body and was certain he had successfully verified his theory – now he knew for sure a person was capable of manipulating their future reincarnations by properly focusing at the time of death. This knowledge granted Alex unlimited ways to begin his next lives, but for some reason he felt he would learn much more groundbreaking things in the current one.

With such expectations Alex lost his usual foul mood and even thoughts of Nabia became rarer and settled somewhere in the corner of his mind, allowing him to at least partially get back to his former self.

After quickly going through the routine check like he did every time, Alex realized this incarnation brought a nice bonus – his next mother was a proper Qi master and a skillful one at that! He immediately noticed she knew she was pregnant since he was ‘wrapped’ in a nice protective layer of Qi even though most women at this stage might not even have a clue they were expecting. In addition, his mother was very active – he felt she was constantly on the move and sometimes even fought. Than meant she was not some highborn lady, chilling in a palace, but a real Qi cultivator.

As usual, Alex’s first waking moments were short, but he knew how to properly use them and spent most of the time going through different meditation techniques. Soon he noticed, how his mother, similar to him, was diligently meditating and how sometimes she couldn’t hold back her curiosity and was ‘checking’ on him by gently guiding thin streams of Qi though his tiny body. He knew she didn’t mean any harm, but it did feel ticklish and was disturbing his concentration.

Thus, on one occasion, Alex gathered his puny Qi reserves and performed experiment – he entered his mother’s mind and cheerfully greeted her making her almost pee herself from shock. While the first reaction was amusing, what came next confused Alex greatly. His mother became furious, shouted something that very much sounded like curses and even slapped her own belly. She clearly knew it was him talking to her, but for some reason she was not happy at all.

A minute later she regained her calm and carefully checked on his condition, obviously concerned her earlier outburst might have caused harm to the baby. Alex patiently bared through the procedure, pondering about the implications, but since he had been a girl once, he, better than anyone, knew how moody they could be, therefore didn’t dwell on this too much. In addition, the amount of Qi he had to use was substantial and felt too ‘expensive’ to repeat the simple prank right away.

But the rich Qi of the current world allowed Alex to grow his reserves quickly. Therefore during the next days he did ‘probe’ his mother’s mind a couple of times when she was checking on him during her meditation, but every time she became angry again, although didn’t slap him, or rather – her belly, anymore.

Alex had to agree that if one ignored the mother-child part, they had a really strong mental connection and understood each other’s moods well. In fact, he became curious how she looked like and whether she was another incarnation of Demy – the mother from previous lives he was most found of. Unfortunately for now he had to hold back his curiosity and wait for several more months until he could meet her.

“Aaarrrggghhh!” Daiyu half-screamed, half-hissed through her teeth trying to push her fourth child out of her.

Alex also would’ve shouted something if he wasn’t the one going through the annoying process himself, so the only thing he could do was to send another ‘just don’t forget to name me ‘Alex’!’ to her mind, but it was met by a row of loud curses from the new mother.

“Shut up, you, little idiot! Stupid son of a … you, damned bastard!” She hissed through clenched teeth, startling her own mother who was currently receiving Alex.

This was not the first grandson Jia helped to bring to the world, but for some reason her daughter acted weird this time. Jia knew that accomplished cultivator like Daiyu was not in pain, but apparently the huge head that was already visible made the birth process unusually difficult.

A couple minutes later an uncharacteristically large newborn was lying in Jia’s arms and the new grandmother was still in shock from his enormous size.

“You have done well!” She finally said with a sigh, “Your fourth son will be even bigger than your husband! We’ll name him …”

“Alex! His name is Alex!” Daiyu quickly interrupted her mother before her damned newborn son could do anything stupid.

Only she knew the reason for the inconvenience and it had to stay that way.

“What a weird name … ‘Alex’.” Jia slowly said while passing Alex to his new mother, “Are you sure?”

“Ye, I’m sure.” Daiyu nodded, “I’ll deal with Fang, don’t worry. He named our firstborn, I’ll name the last one.”

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“The last one?” Jia immediately became upset, “Why? Do you intend to rob me by not giving birth to more grandchildren?”

“Exactly! Go play with the ones you already have if you want to – I’m not going through this hassle ever again!” Daiyu said while carefully observing her youngest child who stared back at her with similarly curious eyes.

“Sigh … With you like this Fang might take another wife … a younger one …” Jia was still upset.

“No problem! If he wants, he can make more children with his finger after I cut off his thing!” Daiyu waved her off, “Now go, I’m tired! And … thanks, mom ...”

The last part she said in a barely audible voice, but Jia didn’t mind – she knew her daughter well. Therefore only patted her leg, cleaned up the room a bit and left while the newborn and the new mother were already deep asleep.

Few minutes later the news of the latest addition to the Long family began to spread along with the strange name of the baby – Alex Long. His father, Fang Long, was annoyed with it at first, but then shrugged and went on with the daily duties. The heir – the oldest son, Hongbing Long, was already maturing in to a promising, strong young man and if Daiyu couldn’t give a birth to a daughter – it was her own fault, but she could ‘have’ their youngest son as a consolation prize if she wished so.

The first following days were perfect. Diayu mostly meditated and Alex gladly joined her – at least during the time he was awake. She did try to feed him some sort of weird food that reeked of blood, but he instantly refused it and demanded her tit. For a moment she did become angry at him for directly entering her mind again, but then complied and continued to meditate in peace while pretending to ignore the child who didn’t hold back one bit and feasted to his fullest.

Alex hoped to spend the next several weeks if not months this way, but apparently his mother, being a Qi master, was already completely recovered from giving the birth. She tucked him in a primitive linen sling that she threw over her shoulder, said goodbye to the rest and quickly left.

Alex’s sight was not developed enough to discern anything that went on and all he saw were blurry figures of his relatives who for some reason sounded surprised. Only when Daiyu departed and he realized she was already jumping from rock to rock climbing a tall mountain range, Alex understood they had left their home.

Holding back his curiosity, Alex decided to properly learn the local language first and ask for the reasons later. He had an inkling his mother would prefer that as well since she disliked him speaking through her consciousness. While he felt her deep affection and love towards him, she behaved strangely. In addition, she didn’t seem like someone who had children before even though he was certain the other day he was introduced to his three older siblings, therefore her being clumsy with him and shy during the meals didn’t make sense.

One after another the questions were answered during the next months. Alex didn’t have any expectations regarding where they were going or if they would ever return, thus he wasn’t worried, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that he was the reason for this hasty trip.

Turns out that while the Qi cultivation was not only common, but a necessity in this world, there were no cultivators who practiced mind techniques. In fact, Daiyu had heard legends of such people existing once upon a time, but all of them were exterminated several thousand years ago by the Immortal Gate sect – the strongest and the most feared power in the world and afterwards all mind techniques were declared illegal.

One could not describe Daiyu’s shock when she realized her own child was born already capable of wielding forbidden skills, but despite that she immediately decided to go in to exile in order to protect him. Alex didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she told him about it, but the realization that there was someone in the world who was ready to give up their life for him unconditionally made him understand there was something more to the human relationships than he understood despite living through so many lives.

He fell deep in thoughts and it lasted several days, and Daiyu already suspected she scared the child out of his wits, when Alex decided to give her all he could in return to her sacrifice. He couldn’t speak fluently yet, but to the best of his abilities he explained the reincarnation principles and the fact that by chance he retained the memories from his previous lives.

What caught him unprepared was Daiyu’s excitement after hearing this information and she even urged him to teach her details. Unfortunately both of them had to arm themselves with patience since Alex couldn’t communicate freely yet, but his mother refused to allow him to speak through her mind in order to not let it to become his habit.

Daiyu’s attitude regarding mind techniques made Alex weary about actually using them. While minds without the protection of soul brands were easy to intrude or even manipulate, the cultivators of this world were anything but weak. Thus, after weighing the pros and cons, he decided to restrain himself in this regard as much as possible.

The mother – son pair returned home only after a year of absence. During this time both of them emptied their respective knowledge reserves to each other with the only exception being Alex’s mind techniques which Daiyu forbade him to ever mention.

She came back the same way she left – a tall and strong woman with ample bosom, black hair and eyes, dressed in a dark leather armor, except this time instead of carrying her child who was already walking along side her, she carried a couple of rank four snow-striped leopard cubs. A couple of techniques Alex taught her combined with the ones she already knew allowed her to find and catch ones of the rarest beasts in the eastern region – the part of the continent they were currently returning from.

Normally Alex would’ve insisted on leaving the beasts be, but in order to safely return they had to bring a ‘significant’ gift to the head of the Long family, Jiao Long, who was, in fact, already heading towards the gate as soon as the news of them returning spread like a wildfire. It was expected since, as Alex learned during the past months, Daiyu was the stable keeper of the Long family and her running off was a huge deal.

For an ancient aristocratic family like Long, the stable keeper was not a position comparable to some stableboy or a groom. Stable keeper was the one who supervised the taming of the ranked beasts and further oversaw their stay in the family, and previously in some aspects Daiyu even outranked her husband who worked as the head of the law enforcement branch.

Alex noticed the fury all over Jiao Long’s face as he, dressed in a fancy dark blue robe, approached them with large strides, but the next second the middle aged man froze in his steps, eyes widening in shock. A moment later he was already at their side and with trembling hands grabbed one of the cubs from Daiyu.

‘No wonder we looked for these poor beasts for almost a month.’ Alex inwardly grinned, ‘Mother was right – this man has a peculiar hobby.’