“What are you three up to?” She asked as she neared her sons.

All three very ‘casually’ put away something. She saw one son put the mysterious “it” in their inner rob and the other put it in their sleeve. They’d done it in the most natural way, and not at all like they were hiding anything.

‘Who did you think you’re fooling?’ she thought with narrowed eyes.

“We were just discussing security.” Yan Li explained, his face so devoid of deceit, it was inversely suspicious.

She gave them each a searching stare. The twins kept their faces neutral but Lu Shao couldn’t quite meet her eyes. This immediately put her motherly instincts on high alert but she knew how things worked in this family. Rather than go the direct route, she decided to catch them off guard.

“Why do you three look so tired?”

Yan Li and Lu Shao looked like they hadn’t slept well, while Shi Ji looked like he hadn’t slept at all. He had enormous bags under his eyes and that squinting expression people get when they’re suffering from a headache.

“We didn’t get much sleep last night.” Lu Shao spoke up, only to get promptly elbowed by Shi Ji. The younger man glared at his older brother, rubbing his side.

“What? Why?”

“Because yo—”

Before Lu Shao could get very far, Shi Ji had clamped his mouth shut with his hand. Lu Shao glared at his older brother, struggling to get free.

“Mother, I’m surprised the Old Man isn’t with you.” Shi Ji commented, as if he wasn’t blatantly shutting his younger brother up right in front of her. Were these three really grown men?

“Uhm… he’s sleeping…” Mei Hua was glancing at the two. “Seriously, what are you three hiding?”

“As Yan Li said, we were just talking about security.” He looked threateningly at Lu Shao. “Right, Little Brother?”

Lu Shao just rolled his eyes and snorted. When Yan Li reached out and casually flicked the back of his head, Lu Shao’s eyes watered. Even a ‘casual flick’ from Yan Li was incredibly painful. He quickly nodded. With that, Shi Ji let him go.

While wiping his lips with disgust, Lu Shao muttered bitterly, “And you said you’d complain no matter what.”

“Ha ha ha. What could this Little Brother be on about?” Shi Ji laughed stiffly, slapping Lu Shao on the back harder than necessary. “Truthfully, Mother, we did drink last night. Other than Yan Li, we got extremely drunk. I don’t remember much, hn. Lu Shao thinks he remembers, but he doesn’t. He’s got the worst alcohol tolerance out of the three of us. Isn’t that right Lil’ Bro?”

Lu Shao’s face was filled with resentment but he nodded. He was the most honest out of Mei’s sons, and always had been. This quality of his reminded everyone of Mei Hua so he tended to get doted on, though between the brothers it just made him an easy target for bullying. With an aching head, back and side, he was feeling extremely bullied in that moment.

Mei Hua disliked hearing her sons had gotten dead drunk but since they were adults she knew it would be unreasonable to complain. As to everything else said, she didn’t believe a word of it. Oh yes, it was probably mostly true, but the major thing was being lied about. In this way, they were like carbon copies of Jin when he was younger. This annoyed her even further.

Before anyone could react, she reached out and grabbed Shi Ji’s wrist and pushed up his sleeve and shook it. Her intention was to find whatever it was he was hiding, but instead she found something else entirely.

“What… what is this?!” She cried out in shock.

Strange designs covered her son’s pale skin. Mei Hua pulled his sleeve up further but the designs didn’t end. She immediately licked her thumb and tried to rub the strange designs off. When it didn’t work, she realized what she was seeing: tattoos.

Shi Ji was caught between nostalgia and laughter. The way she’d tried to rub off his tattoos had taken him back to being a child with a smudge on his face. But at the same time, it was extremely amusing to see her try to rub his tattoos off like they were dirt.

“These are—”

He barely got the words out of his mouth when she reached out and stripped his upper rob off him. This move was incredibly smooth and well practiced, to the point he didn’t realize what she’d done until after she’d done it.

He gaped at her in astonishment while she looked at him in dumbfounded amazement. For a moment no one said anything.

Besides being surprised at suddenly getting stripped without any warning at all, Shi Ji wondered exactly where had she learned such a specific skill. It wasn’t natural or easy to strip a man of several layers of clothing that fast. How or why would she need to—

The moment his thought process got that far, it came to an immediate halt and started backing up.

No, no, that was definitely something he didn’t want to be thinking about! Especially after last night! His headache from earlier immediately intensified.

When he cried out “MOTHER!” in embarrassment, the Mother in question exclaimed at the same time, “THERE’S MORE!” The two brothers on either side who’d been observing roared with laughter at their reactions.

Circles with geometric shapes of all kinds inside them were etched into his skin in black ink. Some circles also had shapes; mountains, flowers, dragons, and birds, in them as well. They wavered between beautiful and disturbing in design.

Words, some Mei Hua recognized, most she didn’t, traveled along the curves and edges of the shapes. Between these circles something like vines linked them all together. And even the vines had tiny characters in them if she looked closely.

“Why is there more?!” She demanded, caught somewhere between shock and anger. Her eyes narrowed, settling for anger. “What on earth were you thinking?! Don’t we have brushes? Don’t we have ink? Scrolls to write on?! Why do this to your skin!”

Shi Ji was trying to reclothe himself, but his Mother had an iron grip on his clothes. “Mother, it’s part of my job.”

“Eh? Job? Job? What job requires you to do this to yourself?! Take me to your boss and I promise I won’t beat him to death!”

Hearing this, Yan Li and Lu Shao laughed even harder.

Mei Hua frowned fiercely at them. “Why are you two laughing?”

“Mother, he works for the Department of Research,” Lu Shao explained gleefully, ready to get his revenge for earlier, “he’s the Head of the Department. He IS the boss!”

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

“You—!” Mei Hua smacked Shi Ji on his exposed shoulder for lying. “What on earth are you doing to yourself?!”

Shi Ji took his smacking even though it stung. She’d finally let go of his clothes! He hastily sorted his robes out while explaining, “Early on it was just me… I did all the researching myself. I did all the experimenting myself.”

“More like you experimented ON yourself.” Yan Li added to the fire.

“…see if I ever help you again with anything…” Shi Ji muttered sourly.

“What on earth were you researching that you needed to cover yourself in tattoos for?!”

“Arrays.”

Mei Hua’s brow furrowed as she hesitated.

“Those are… they are a kind of qi based spell right?”

“En. The people who kidnapped you used them. The reason they captured you so easily, the reason they vanished so fast and it took us so long to find you, was all because of their arrays. They even tattooed suicide arrays on their bodies in case they got captured. I wanted to understand how they worked to stop them, and in the process I began making my own and trying out various array systems to see which was better and how to improve them.”

“So you got curious and then got fascinated?!” She asked, still furious and smacked him again. “If they killed themselves, would you have imitated that too?”

“Obviously not!”

“Oh, oh, ‘obviously not’ you say? But they tattooed arrays on themselves to die so you did that too, just to test it? To see how it worked? HAH!” She lamented loudly, “No wonder you’re the only one who kept his promise, what girl wants to date a painting! How did all my sons get so stupid while I was away!”

Lu Shao sulked slightly at being called stupid but Yan Li shrugged it off. He wasn’t an intellectual, so being called stupid never bothered him. After all, fists got the message across just as well as a sound argument.

Shi Ji on the other hand, felt like he was being unjustly slandered by his own Mother.

“Mother, don’t say that… my research has been useful. Even your Core World used what I made.”

Mei Hua stopped her ranting. “Core World?”

“Yes the… ah… place that gave you the power to get rid of the poison.”

“Is that what you call it? ‘Core World’?”

Seeing her distracted, Shi Ji eagerly explained, “Originally it was called the Multicore, not the Core World. It was made up of several different cores… ah, I mean cores like the kind you find in Beasties and the like.”

She clutched her hands on her chest. “But a Beastie’s Core is it’s life, if it’s made up of them then—”

“Ah! No, no! We didn’t use a Beastie’s Core. We would never use a person’s core! Of course not! This came from trash we found.”

“Trash?”

“Yes, the refuse of the cultivating world. Total devoid of value. Not worth anything. It can barely even be counted as living or intelligent. Moss on rock is smarter than trash, dead rotting fish are more useful, excrement from animals has—”

“Aya! I get it! No more analogies please!”

“Right. The only value trash have is their core, and only after the Old Man purifies them. That’s why they’re worthless to cultivators.”

“Jin purifies them? Why did he need to do that?”

“Hn, trash cores are extremely powerful but steeped in evil. It’s like looking at a festering black pit. Disgusting.”

“Is it true they smell like rotting bodies?” Lu Shao interrupted curiously, and then added for his Mother’s sake, “I haven’t seen one in its original form. I was never allowed.”

Yan Li said with extreme seriousness. “You were too young at the time and unpurified trash cores are extremely dangerous.”

“Why are they dangerous?” Mei Hua asked uneasily.

“Little Brother, it depends on who’s near trash cores. Fairies and those with fairy blood like us, will find them disgusting because we see their true nature. To humans and beasties, they’re like concentrated balls of temptation.” Shi Ji told Lu Shao and then explained further for his Mother’s sake, “We found out the hard way that the cores give off some kind of intense aura that attracts non-fairy folk. To them trash cores smell or look like whatever they desire most. And if humans or beasties touch these cores, it drives them mad. That’s why the Old Man started purifying them, to stop that from happening.”

“So that’s how it is…” Lu Shao nodded, not the least bit perturbed and just happy to have his question answered. He was too young to be involved with the development of the Core World and so had been left ignorant of a lot.

Mei Hua, however, blanched, “Th—that kind of thing was used to make my world?”

“Don’t worry Mother. Do you really think the Old Man would let something that vile near you? Do you think your sons would allow it?” Shi Ji raised an eyebrow, somewhat arrogant in his expression. “The Old Man purified them, like I said. Not to mention Doctor Zufu and myself, we even had Master Guanyu examine them. I know the Sect Leader made a fool of himself on your first meeting, but he’s actually really skilled with medicine. He couldn’t even tell the cores came from trash originally. So they were quite safe to use on you.”

“…oh, I see. I see.” She patted her chest, relieved. “You said multi… so it was made up of more than one core? Why did you change the name?”

“That, ah…” Shi Ji let out a really long sigh. “The Multicore was super experimental. We combined a lot of different arts, plus things that only the Old Man can do, to make it. Originally it was designed specifically to deal with the poison and restore your spirit, and only that. But who knew? When we fused it to your soul, many of the spells we imbued in it were overwritten and we lost control.” He pointed at his Mother, “For lack of a better term, you became the Multicore’s Master. Your will became its will. And apparently your will created a world, a world only the Old Man could get into… well, initially. So we renamed it to Core World to properly reflect the change.”

Mei Hua’s face was blank as she tried to process everything he said. “This… this Core World is fused into me?”

“En. The poison knew when we were trying to purge it from your system. Every time we tried—every time—it would accelerate and start to kill you. The only way to contain it was within your spirit. But then it would slowly, painfully rot your soul, followed by your body. We were stuck with a slow or quick death with how things were going. We fused the Multicore to your spirit so that the poison wouldn’t view it as a threat, but as another part of you.”

“I don’t understand. How can a poison ‘know’ something?”

Yan Li scowled. “Because the poison maker used diluted Devil’s blood to make it.”

“It wasn’t until the Lotus Valley Sect arrived that we even figured out that was the ‘secret ingredient’,” Shi Ji said with an ugly expression. “We had no experience at all with Devils, so how would we know? It turns out Devil’s blood is semi-intelligent, but only in the sense that it’s extremely malicious. No wonder anyone who makes a blood contract with a Devil ends up warped beyond recognition! Just a bit of diluted blood put into poison took almost twenty years to purge, imagine coming into direct contact with the stuff?” He shuddered.

Mei Hua was silent for a moment and then sighed. There was so much she didn’t know, so much that happened and she hadn’t the chance to—

“MeiMei, there you are!”

Ye ran up to them with a cheerful expression, holding a large rolled up piece of paper in one hand.

“I heard you were up and thought we should talk about the wedding plans.” He paused, noticing Shi Ji’s disheveled appearance. Usually Shi Ji was meticulous about how he looked. “What happened to you? Forget how to dress yourself?”

“….Uncle…”

“I heard you guys raided all the good wine from the kitchens last night.” Ye ignored Shi Ji’s hurt tone and clucked his tongue in disapproval at the three of them. “You think you’re going to be forgiven for that? That wine was going to be used for the wedding. The Dao fairies are furious. At the last moment they’ve got to find a replacement for the best wine in the country. I’d eat out for the next month if I were you. Otherwise it’s cold soup for the lot of you: morning, lunch, and dinner.”

All of Ye’s nephews groaned at the news.

“Well, what do you expect?” Ye’s eyes suddenly glinted nastily, “And what were you doing drinking that much to begin with?”

The young men all stiffened. They’d been very specifically trying to get away from that subject. Now that their black-bellied Uncle had arrived, they’d be forced into admitting the real cause. Rather than deal with that, they made a hasty escape.

Yan Li said quickly, “I just remembered Jia Ying wanted to discuss something with me before lunch,” and promptly ran off before Ye could even blink.

“I should go apologize to the Dao fairies. It was my idea to take the wine.” Lu Shao followed up and ran away as Ye opened his mouth.

This left only Shi Ji. Ye stared at him with a raised eyebrow, Shi Ji stared back in a slight panic.

“…I will go… do… do… er… work!” He then turned to leave, only to have Ye grab the back of his still lose upper rob.

“Hoho, nice try! What work do you have to do? Don’t think I don’t know you told everyone to relax until after the wedding!”

Shi Ji cursed the lack of sleep and slight hangover he was experiencing for his slow reaction time. He should have just fled the scene without saying a word, like a proper criminal!

Since he couldn’t escape he simply sighed and asked in an appeasing way, “Uncle, what were you going to talk to Mother about concerning the wedding? How about I stay and help?”

Ye squinted at him and then laughed. When he saw them all stagger in during the wee hours of the morning, coupled with the odd feeling rippling through the mountains earlier in the night, he more or less knew what had happened. He’d already started calculating how to use it to his advantage.

“This is why I like you best,” Ye grinned at his remaining nephew, “You aren’t as fast as the other two and know how to properly bargain when caught.”

“…that doesn’t sound like a compliment Uncle.”

“Eh? Who said I was complimenting you?”