Brown hair was so boring. And human ears were too tiny and weak for my liking. I didn’t even get to keep the jewel on my head visible. So while I blended very well as a human now, you can imagine I was quite annoyed.

Worst part was, I couldn’t even take it out on Li like I used to. He didn’t deserve it anymore.

The twins were thankfully fairly docile, as human children went. I spent our time on the road alternating between growing plants, keeping them fed, cleaned, and entertained, putting them to sleep, then repeating. Some rare nights, I even had enough time and energy left over to try my hand at the simpler medicines I was learning to make. Pain relievers, fever reducers, powders that fought off infections. Medicines to prevent pregnancy. Medicines to end pregnancy. I avoided poisons and cultivation aids for now, since the former would require more control and skill to safely handle and the latter would take extremely rare and expensive substances that I simply couldn’t afford.

Li, meanwhile, drove the trader’s wagon we now called home without a word. He wasn’t quite as deeply affected as he’d been before, but what he’d seen had stolen a lot of the passion he’d previously shown. Still, I could sense his thoughts and emotions under his exterior quiet, and knew that he was coming to terms in his own way.

Still waters run deep, after all, and Li’s nature was now very deeply water-aligned.

It took months to reach the ocean, and we were both quite taken by the beauty of it. We’d wander the fishing villages on the border between the Tortoise King and Dragon King’s lands, selling medicines and buying new materials where we found them. We would sometimes settle for a while in a quiet place or two, and Li took up pottery when he could, the focus and quiet clearly soothing him.

All the while, we cultivated. Chang and Chen were taught the basics as soon as they could talk, and I helped Li further enhance his mind and body. Part of why I’d chosen the coastline was for the easy access to water qi, and Li took the power into himself every chance he got.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I meditated on my plants and medicines in the meantime, and worked to develop not only my body enhancement, but my qi projection as well. It slowed my cultivation speed, but made the end results stronger. And power was the end goal, regardless of the time taken.

So when I finally broke through to Expert, it was like I was an ancient tree in a small pot. Millennia could’ve been packed into my being, yet I was still the same rabbit in size and shape. Actually a bit smaller, in my true form. Time and growth were the domains of earth and wood, and instead of letting them grow wild and uninhibited, I concentrated those ages.

The potential was staggering. But that Li reached the Expert stage later that same day was the real surprise.

Of course, I suppose having a couple more children from the fall of the monastery to that breakthrough slowed me down a little. Like I’d said, life still needed to be lived. Li proved an excellent father, and had actually started trying to act like his old self before I’d finally realized he missed our old dynamic.

So I still act like a spoiled pet around him sometimes. But he receives far fewer beatdowns, and the ones he does get are all from sparring. Plus he’s learned to give as good as he gets, and his defense is getting almost impossible for me to penetrate. I keep trying though, finding it useful practice for cracking the defenses that gave the Tortoise King his moniker.

We also started picking up each other’s element, even more once we hit the Expert stage. Water, wood, and earth had a very strong synergy, so we quickly found ourselves reaching a point where we’d mastered all three. From there, I relayed Mistress Fu’s experiences on cultivating the Gold element, its relations to all metals and to the energy contained in lightning, and we did what we could to contemplate fire in our own time. Our kids grew, the twins developing to the Novice stage by age ten, their younger siblings all initiates. I was pregnant again, but could use the more advanced forms of cultivation I’d learned to push further than I previously had as we returned to that small village north of the monastery. There, we met up with Kaoru and Zhong, their own cultivation advanced to the Expert level, and with the dozen kids I’d hoped to see in tow. We quickly fell into old rhythms making fun of each others’ bellies when there was work to be done, and regaled each other with tales of our time apart and new insights on our cultivations.

And that was the night I broke through to the Master rank.