“Al … al … al …” The newborn in Demy’s arms kept making weird sounds.

‘For the love of god! One of these days, I mean – lives, I’ll manage to say my name directly after the birth!’ Alex swore to himself.

His new mother, covered in perspiration was currently lying on a bed in a spacious room and held him in her hands.

“Your sainthood … saint Wazir, hello ... what is he trying to say?” Demy turned towards the man who just entered the room a minute ago after the midwife reported the birth of a healthy baby.

Wazir was an old man, with a gray hair and kind expression, dressed in dark robes. The most distinct feature was the strange third eye located between his eyebrows slightly above the nose bridge.

“Demy, it’s too dangerous to probe the thoughts of a newborn, even for me.” He said, “But my duty is to examine his affinity with the empire because of the special circumstances of his father, you know.”

Demy nodded while lovingly planting a kiss on the baby’s forehead and passing him over to the old man.

He was just born and his vision was blurry, but Alex guessed he was just held by his mother. But now a man took him in his arms. The man’s figure was hazy, but he seemed to be elderly, so not the father – probably the head of the family or something similar, therefore Alex immediately did his best to leave a good first impression. He shut up, postponing the effort to teach the mother his real name, and smiled as adorably as he could.

What he didn’t see was how the third eye on the man’s forehead slowly opened as he said, “Sovereign Cirius.”

Once again during the months of pregnancy Alex did his best to learn the local language. Unfortunately, even though his mother spoke quite often, he could understand a fifth of all conversations at best. Now, when the old man said these foreign words, Alex felt warm streams of Qi flowing from man’s palms directly in to his body and washing all over it.

‘Yes! I don’t care if it is some kind of a religious baptism, but this world’s Qi practitioners are way more advanced!’ Alex inwardly screamed in joy.

While in his mother’s belly Alex already felt she was using Qi in her daily activities and now he confirmed it – his experiment was a success! Well, in the worst case scenario it could have been a nice coincidence. Of course, he would verify that during the next incarnation, but now he wished he could hug the man in delight.

Wazir, on the other hand, slightly widened his eyes in surprise. For a split second the new mother’s face showed signs of worry that she immediately managed to mask and luckily the old man didn’t notice it.

“Empire of Armenidia.” He said again and this time even his third eye widened in shock.

After he said these words, the baby closed his eyes and put palms together as if he was praying, but continued to smile. From Alex’s point of view it was obvious the old man was either saying something important or reciting a prayer, thus he went along and pretended to be a devotee from the start. One could never know, maybe this country was a theocracy, just like the Holy empire.

“This is quite amazing.” After a brief pause Wazir said, “Since my arrival here, I’ve never seen a child so devoted to the empire right after the birth. Only few in the capital had shoved such potential ... sigh … unfortunately it looks like there is no way for him to become a saint, but his fundamentals are strong. Of course, it’s no wonder considering who his father was and the fact that you practice Qi as well.”

Demy heaved sigh of relief and said, “So, that means …”

“Yes, you can keep him.” The old man interrupted and passed Alex back to her. On his way out he said, “Of course, I’ll check on him periodically to see if he is still … fine.”

“Thank you, saint Wazir!” And before the old man left the room, she quickly added, “Your sainthood, may I ask something?”

He glanced back and said, “Speak quickly!”

“Since I just gave birth, it may be a bit hard for me to work, my shop …” Demy explained, but the man interrupted her.

“The empire loves it’s subjects and considering the circumstances, you’ll be exempt from paying taxes for the next year. Take care!” Wazir said and the door shut behind him.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Phew …” The new mother sighed in relief again and hugged Alex tightly.

“You did well!” She whispered and kissed his forehead, “I wish your father was here … he would be so proud!”

During the next weeks Alex slowly pieced the picture together. Practicing Qi allowed him to see clearly already after couple of weeks and it obviously made things easier. But the general situation was not as good as he imagined at first.

They lived in Haldenburg, a relatively large city located in the far north-east of the continent right at the delta of the river Melbe. His mother, Demy, was a pharmacist and owned a herb shop, also their home. His father, Phil, died in a battle half a year ago when Armenidian empire expanded its territories invading a number of smaller northern kingdoms at the same time.

Although young, because of his talents and hard work, Phil was a very strong warrior and was able to become one of the leading figures in defending Haldenburg. Unfortunately he died in the end. In the final battle it took the joined strength of three saints to take him down, two of which he managed to send to their next lives, but the third one was heavily injured.

In fact, Alex met the third one, saint Wazir, right after his birth. Out of respect to Alex’s father’s accomplishments he made an exception and didn’t exterminate his family, but let the soon-to-become mother Demy have their child while still monitoring them.

At first Alex thought this was simply moronic, especially considering the events during his past life, but soon he was proven wrong. Turns out the Qi practitioners in this world not only cultivated their physical abilities. Some of them with a very rare inborn talent could train their psychic powers to manipulate minds of the other beings.

While the simplest way to utilize it was to control animals, there were those who could read the thoughts and memories of other people. The most talented ones had one distinct feature – they naturally grew a third eye called ‘trikuta’ on their foreheads and eventually became ‘saints’. Of course, in this case ‘becoming a saint’ only showed their social standing and not a combination of character traits.

In fact, according to Demy, most of them were ruthless and evil people, but her opinion was obviously based on the fact that a bunch of saints ganged up on her husband and killed him. Be as it may, saint Wazir despite his amicable appearance did kill Alex’s father and would not hesitate to kill him as well if he showed the slightest hate towards the old man or the empire.

Even if leaving his adversary’s family alive was a Wazir’s whim, Alex didn’t intend to waste this opportunity. His initial perspectives were not that great, but it was not all bad. Not only he was eager to learn techniques of this world, Demy began to teach him from the day he was born.

The complexity of her teachings baffled Alex to no end since no one should teach how to practice Qi to a newborn. Even trying to have a few days old child call them ‘mama’ or ‘papa’ would be insane, but Demy patiently continued to read to Alex, for some reason expecting him to understand what she said.

She only had one, thin book and it was obvious she knew the contents from the top of her head, but almost as if it was a ritual she kept turning pages and read every line in a soft, quiet voice. Soon Alex understood it was his father’s legacy she was teaching to him.

According to Demy, Phil was some kind of a prodigy who unfortunately fell short of becoming a saint himself. But that didn’t slow down the man one bit. Not only he became incredibly capable physically, he also developed a set of techniques to battle saints.

What set saints apart from the regular Qi practitioners were not their physical abilities. In fact, many Qi warriors were stronger than saints, but only physically. The moment saint unleashed their mental powers, everyone became a headless chicken.

That is, almost everyone. Phil studied saint’s techniques for several years and came up with a way to fight them. He knew sooner or later Armenidian empire would invade north, thus he had to prepare.

But to Alex his father’s ‘techniques’ seemed simply unrealistic. The first part was actually alright. Phil taught how to trick saint’s mind reading and for Alex it was somewhat similar to tricking polygraph in his first life. While they were already incredibly inaccurate, one had to either distort the polygraph reading by concentrating on a particular incident in their lives, experiencing some sort of strong emotions or directly affect themselves physically in order to feel actual pain.

The techniques of the saints worked a bit differently than machines. They sent a person into a trance and after stimulating different emotional states watched their thoughts like pictures. According to Phil, Alex would feel himself being in a hazy dream, but he had to stay vigilant at the different sounds he would hear or things he would see.

Saints could approach a person in various ways – they could create illusions of people or animals, or call out names in person’s head like the voice of a god. Alex’s father’s idea was – at the first sign of ‘anything’, he had to focus on something harmless in the animal world. No matter what was called out or showed to him, he had to ‘see’ bunnies, butterflies or goldfishes. Not only would this throw the saints off, it would make him seem weak minded as well.

The technique was not that hard, at least at the first glance. Of course, Alex would have to see how it worked in practice later, but to not take any chances, he decided to practice the Qi flows according to his father’s teachings – the old man was a prodigy after all. In addition, this seemingly primitive technique already saved Demy who hated the empire and all its saints to her bones and despite her strong emotions, Wazir, the saint currently ruling over Haldenburg city, took her as a simpleton thus allowing her to live.

Unfortunately the next part of Phil’s techniques was anything but simple.

In short he described the techniques saints used in battles, basically taking over the minds of their opponents or inflicting the illusion of unbearable physical pain. Then he focused on techniques he developed to counter those.

While Alex could understand the concept of training himself to a state of being capable of ignoring the physical pain, the part where he had to learn to rely on his smell ignoring the rest of the senses seemed unrealistic. From his father’s words in a fight with a saint he would see hallucinations, feel immense pain, have illusion of being unable to move or maybe even all of that together. But by focusing on the smell he would be able to disperse the hallucinations or even if he couldn’t, he would discern the location of his opponent and unexpectedly kill them.

It was hard to believe Phil fought three such people at the same time and killed two. Even more – he almost won the battle! That alone showed the effectiveness of his techniques and the prowess of the man. Alex, of course, was more interested in the actual techniques of the saints, but he had to leave them for a later date.

Now he had to learn how to properly cheat saint Wazir when he’ll come in a couple of months to check on him again. Demy was not certain if he would try to read Alex’s thoughts this time and didn’t want to risk it. Alex, on the other hand, was not against learning new things and to a great joy to his mother, obediently complied.