It would be a lie if she didn't state how outrageous the prices of the café were, but at the same time, they had also eaten enough pastries to fill a sultanzade's chamber and were also of the quality of imperial cuisine, so Aloe wasn't that mad.

A good exchange, one could say.

Xochipilli ended up falling asleep by the end, so she grabbed him and carried him in one hand without waking him up. With her Nurture, such casual feats of strength were just that: casual. Even without donning potency, she could most likely carry all the customers at the café without breaking a sweat. With the strength stance, lifting things ended up being more about logistics than actual strength as most things didn't enjoy being lifted.

The child woke up once they were arriving at their safe house which Aloe pinned the blame on lunch time. Suddenly, a lot of people came to the streets, flooding what should have been great avenues in Sadina with ease. Xochipilli was a bit ashamed of falling asleep whilst eating, but she didn't blame the boy.

"It's normal, you are just young," she told him.

"But's improper!" He responded back.

Aloe snickered. "I don't know who taught you that falling asleep is improper. Especially at your age."

Xochipilli blushed. "W-well, did you do that when you were my age?"

"If I did that at your age, huh?" Aloe remained pensive for a moment. "I was very busy at your age. I was always home alone and also had my studies. So I had to go to the university, cook, do the laundry from time to time, and then attend some tutoring lessons in the bank. I only had time to sleep during the night."

That wasn't the correct answer. Aloe had lost the intent of the original question as she reminisced the past, and completely forgot about Xochipilli. The child was now more depressed than before.

"But my life was harder than most. I'm by far not the norm," she bowed down and grabbed the child by his cheeks. "So don't try to compare yourself to me and brighten up that face."

He didn't.

"Come on," Aloe drew a smile on his face forcefully. "Hmm. So it seems you don't want to learn my vital arts then, eh…"

That sent the boy into a delicious panic. "No, no, no! I want!" He smiled. "See! I'm smiling!"

Aloe giggled at the child's response and at how easy he was to manipulate. Then she ruffled his hair.

"Let's get home before doing that." It felt wrong calling the slaver's house 'home', but by all means and purposes, home to her was always where she slept. That meant that most of her 'homes' had been hostile places rather than places of rest.

Xochipilli was quick to remove his clothing once they arrived. She didn't allow the boy to go around the room naked – though she doubted the shy child would have done so in the first place – so she gave him one of the slaver's oversized shirts to wear as pajamas. Aloe knew that some people enjoyed nakedness, especially in the privacy of their homes, but she always preferred to be clothed at all times.

Her latest… tendencies had only arisen because she had lost all her clothing and fabrics. Now she knew that it was because of the passage of time that they all had passed on to a better life.

And besides, she really loved her dress. She also had no need to undress to keep it clean as her body didn't sweat or produce any nasty substances like body oils.

"So," Xochipilli sat cross-legged on the sofa, "when am I going to learn these vital arts?"

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Aloe couldn't help but be amused by how fast the child switched between his adoration and normal child behavior.

"Now," the vegetable woman revealed and produced a seed from her hand. "This is a black seed. Not a remarkable plant, just used from some seasoning. But it holds a secret inside."

"A secret?" He arched his back forward.

"Indeed," she nodded. "This seed can evolve into a plant that produces water out of nowhere."

"Really?" His eyes opened like plates.

"Really." Xochipilli was so adorable that she had to fight against her most primeval of urges to not pounce on the child and toy with his round and youthful cheeks. "Here."

She placed the seed in his hand and produced another one for herself.

"The first thing I want you to do is sense the seed's vitality. Can you do that?"

Xochipilli took a deep breath and stayed silent for a moment. As it would seem, even if he was capable of seeing the vitality of cultivators or pills, the vitality of a seed was still a bit difficult as it worked on lower magnitudes. This was quite amusing to Aloe as this was the first time she detected vitality, with a seed, and even her attempt that almost killed her and seared her glutes was even harder as she had done it with a grass seed instead of a black seed.

Whilst she was pondering if to give him a seed with more vitality to try like a Cottonpull, he finally opened his eyes.

"I feel it," he said with a pant as if the endeavor had drained him. Which she guessed it did, he was using for the first time a sense he didn't possess until a few hours ago.

"Good job," she ruffled his hair, and he inclined his head slightly forward as he accepted the gesture. A smile formed on his lips, and it propagated to her. "Alright, now that you have that kernel of vitality located, I want you to think really hard about how you would like to evolve this seed."

"Evolve it?" Xochipilli squinted and tilted his head to the side in confusion.

"Okay, how do I explain this…" Aloe scratched her scalp and toyed with her vine hair. "The vital arts that the cultivators use and you've seen in the pill shop is called Nurture. This whole magical discipline is about reinforcing the body. But it's not my vital art."

"You have one of your own?" His eyes sparkled in adoration.

"Quite," she puffed her chest proudly as she boasted. "Instead of reinforcing one's body, you… change that of the others. This is a bit of a misnomer, though. With Evolution, my vital art, you can change a specimen. This specimen needs to be young, not young as you are, but something like a fetus or a seed. Like the one in your hand." Xochipilli gave another look at the black seed he was holding. "Whilst we can't ever be sure what an untested seed will evolve into, the same species of seed will always result in the same evolution. The black seed, in this case, will turn into a Flourishing Spring, a flower that can produce water. Do you remember the water you drank this morning when you woke up? It came from that flower."

"Can I see it?" The boy asked with the eyes of a child asking their parents for a specific gift on their birthday.

Aloe couldn't go against those eyes; she had better chances against the whole cultivator world. "Of course."

Currently, she didn't have a Flourishing Spring on her body as it would have messed with her dress, especially because she couldn't control the random spurts of water that it made from time to time. For a plant that didn't have the alignment of Chaos, it was quite uncontrollable.

That being said, it wasn't a problem at all. Aloe simply evolved the seed on her hand and pushed hundreds of Haya with her flowing stance technique, Forced Growth. The Flourishing Spring seed quickly took hold in her hand and it exploded in growth until it reached maturity in a handful of seconds.

"Woah!" Xochipilli's jaw fell to the ground.

I guess this is his first time seeing one of my plants growing in real-time. Or rather, this fast, the Cottonpull she used to cover herself with when she came out of the chasm came to her mind. Aloe covered her mouth with her free hand, but that didn't stop the giggle coming out of her lips from the child's reaction.

"Could I do that?" He pointed at the grown Flourishing Spring.

"Definitely," she admitted. "But it will take you a lot of time. You will need way more vitality than the pill maker we met had. And even if my method of obtaining vitality is way faster than hers, we are looking at the very minimum at a date of five years in the future at the earliest."

That deflated the child a bit considering she just told him to wait half his current lifetime.

"Don't be sad, this is nothing more than a party trick," Aloe explained to him. "I've just wasted as much vitality as the woman had in her whole reserves in a handful of seconds. Surely you can do better than that, can you?"

Those seemed to be the right words as the fire in the boy's red eyes rekindled. Though truth be told, this expense was trivial to her. Even if she wasn't donning recovery at the moment, she had already recovered those hundred of Haya she had expended whilst they talked.

"Well, shall we try evolving the seed now?" She gave Xochipilli a smile. They had just started with the practice and there were many more steps to take in the path of the vital arts.