“Daddy,” Yin’er said as Jin Shu stood up from his nightly cultivation.

“Hm?” he responded, wiping himself down with a damp cloth as he changed out of his clothes.

“How do you cultivate?” she asked, floating up to perch on his shoulder. Her claws lightly poked into his bare skin, but he didn’t flinch. After cultivating the Body Inscribing Art, his tolerance for pain had greatly increased.

“Do you mean how I cultivate, or how you cultivate?” he asked, pointing first to himself, then to her.

She tilted her head, her golden eyes gleaming. “Both?”

“Hmm…” Jin Shu pondered her question as he slipped into bed. Yin’er fluttered off his shoulder, landing on his chest. She nestled there, her luminous eyes fixed on him, reflecting the candlelight like twin golden jewels.

“Well,” he began, “humans cultivate by drawing the ambient qi of the world into their bodies. For us, most of that qi is stored in the lower dantian, here in the pelvic region, especially in the early stages. Spirit beasts, on the other hand, store their qi in the upper dantian—or what cultivators call the core. That’s where all of their qi is concentrated, and they don’t use their other dantians.”

“What are cultivation realms?” she asked, her voice growing drowsy.

“The realms of cultivation represent stages of power,” Jin Shu explained. “The higher the realm, the stronger you are—and the closer you get to immortality, or so they say.”

“What...yawn...different realms?” Her question was interrupted by a wide yawn, but Jin Shu understood her meaning.

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“There are nine realms,” he said softly. “They are: Body, Qi, Core, Spirit, Adept, Master, Grandmaster, Sage, and Saint. Each realm is divided into nine stages, from the 1st to the 9th. Beyond the Saint realm, it’s said you become an Immortal.”

Jin Shu glanced down and saw that Yin’er had fallen asleep, her soft snores barely audible. He smiled, gently patting her head before resting his own. Soon, he too drifted off to sleep.