Chapter 33: Neo-Master.

I calmly followed behind the kid as he led me to his home, but inside I was anything but calm.

Why did I say yes? I already had an adopted child, Jasmine, and now I just took in another?

I didn't have it in my heart to say no to a kid that just wanted to not be hungry, something that shouldn't even be a concern to anyone in an ideal world, especially not something a child should be worried about.

I looked at the way he walked; there were clear signs of abuse on most of his exposed skin. It would take time to get him back to a healthy state, but I would more than likely speed up that process with Profound Energy.

The more we walked, the more the child seemed to fidget. Something was troubling, so I asked with the softest voice that I could, so as not to spook him, "Is something the matter?"

He stopped in his steps, then slowly turned back to me and held the hem of his broken robe, saying, N-nothing, Master, we're here."

I furrowed my eyebrows once I saw what he considered his house, an old shack, and calling it a shack was an insult to shacks. Just the door seemed held in place with hope and good will; a strong enough wind could shoot it down without much trouble.

He didn't mind though and just opened the door, saying, Please, Master, come in."

I followed, and the inside of the place looked even more dilapidated than the outside; it was a wonder how the place hadn't collapsed.

"Xue, who is this person?" I heard, finally realizing that there was one person laying on the futon in one of the corners of the building—a little girl, a little more plump than the boy, but she still looked like a walking corpse.

This didn't bode well.

"I'm back, Zhu. I was a little careless today and I was almost caught." The boy looked down in shame, it seemed, and in an instant the girl's eyes darted to me with an expression of dread before the boy could even complete his sentence, "but this person saved me and promised to teach me to cultivate!"

Her eyes widened, and her eyes darted alternately between me and the boy. I had no idea where this situation was going; how should I handle this?

What was the child's plan? I told him that I was going to leave, and from his condition, I had assumed that he had been an orphan, which is clearly the case from the building, but I hadn't expected that there was a sister as well.

"Stupid!" She hit him on the head with her non-injured arm and said, "I told you to be careful today; I had a bad feeling!"

I looked at the other arm with my glasses. I could see that it was held still with some sticks and bandages in a rudimentary cast, clearly indicating an injury. The profound veins seemed alright, so I swapped the glasses for x-ray vision.

I wasn't asked, but I may as well call it a professional habit; trusting sticks was never a good idea.

The bone wasn't broken, it seemed, and it wasn't dislocated either, so the injury might have been to the muscle, but I had yet to make my glasses to see muscle tissue and internal organs.

It was a tad more complicated than magical vision and magical x-ray, and by "a tad" I meant "a lot".

She didn't seem to be in any discomfort, so it was probably properly treated at least. They had to have gained street smarts to survive in these conditions.

"I'm sorry, Zhu; I should have listened to you." The kid replied, "But I wouldn't have met Master if I had been more careful! So we can say that I did the right thing!"

She maintained the hard look on her face for a few more seconds, uncomfortably stealing a glance at me. I didn't know what she wanted, but I just turned away, which she seemed to take as a cue to embrace her brother. "I'm so happy you're okay, stupid."

It was a touching moment, and it would have been way better if it weren't for the voice that appeared in my mind. "Check her dantian."

My gaze darted around the room in search of who had spoken, but I just sighed when I remembered that Jasmine could apparently use telepathy, or this world's equivalent of it. "Saying please wouldn't hurt you, Jasmine."

Yes, it would; check her now." She replied, and I could practically hear the smirk on her face as I had to do my best to not show any expression to not be taken as a weirdo by the two children.

They probably already thought that anyway; by this world's standards, I was indeed a weirdo, but I didn't need to fuel those thoughts.

I mentally sighed as I did another scan of the girl's Profound Vein Network, or PVN for short (I had to figure out a better name eventually) and saw that it was unusual.

By now, my glasses were more accurate than my earlier generations of Energy Resonance Imaging machines, so even if they were far behind the newer machines, it was more than enough for a brief scan.

What I saw seemed as far from the norm as I could imagine.

Her channels seemed to alternate between different states, and so did the energy that naturally flowed through them, even if her cultivation was nonexistent.

It was continuously changing in speed, trajectory, density, and even color; it seemed like a chaotic storm in the shape of a girl.

"What is this?" I asked the early teen in my mind, or hand, or dimension, or whatever she was.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She replied, practically brimming with happiness at the chance to finally teach me something that I couldn't figure out on my own.

That was assuming that I couldn't figure it out, but this was so outside of my normal field of study that I didn't have the slightest idea about what I was looking at.

Until this point, the only profound energy of a different color that I'd seen was my own, in a normal case being sky blue that went darker as the energy grew denser; my own was a dark shade of red, but this girl was basically an RGB LED light.

I mentally sighed and immediately began to bargain: "I will give you double ice cream for a week."

"Deal, but I actually want a little something extra." She replied.

"You've already said deal..." I mumbled in my mind, but shrugged and continued, "Anyway, what's this extra?"

"I want you to take her with you as well; a talent like this shouldn't be left unattended in a lower realm like this." She replied, showcasing her signature superiority complex reserved for whenever she talked about 'this lower realm,' as she called it.

"Meh, I've already gotten a new kid; a second one won't hurt, especially if I can study more about profound energy. I see this as a win-win; I didn't imagine I would become a father of three so suddenly."

"Good disciple… wait, three?" She replied.

"Yeah, you, as my eldest, and these two, as your new siblings, want to come out and say hi to your little brother and sister?" I teased, smirking mentally.

"You're not my father!" She protested, but I wasn't about to let go of an opportunity to annoy her.

She lived basically rent-free in my hand; this was the least that I should be allowed to do.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm your big brother then. Anyway, what about the girl?"

Silence.

"You're not my big brother either." She replied, her voice seeming genuinely angry. I might have actually struck a painful note for once.

I added brother to the list of no-no words for her.

Sorry, Jasmine, I might have gone too far." I apologized sincerely; the fact that I basically saw her as a little sister by now didn't mean that she had to see me as her family as well. It stung, but I couldn't do anything about it. "The girl?"

She sighed, seemingly taking a second to recompose herself: "She had a rare constitution, and by rare I mean incredibly so; it isn't a fighting constitution unfortunately, but it might as well be so much more."

"A constitution?"

"You don't know what a—" I cut her short without waiting for her to finish her words: "You're my master there; you never told me, so how can I know?"

"Right," she replied, clearly irritated by my interruption, "it's too much to say in a short time, but it's basically an innate ability for a cultivator."

"Yes, you're right; we can talk about this later, so I should take the girl with me as well." I replied, making sure that I got that detail right.

"Trust me, you won't regret it." She said it with certainty in her voice.

That was a good enough reason for me.

I snapped out of my mental conversation just as the older child, apparently called Xue from what I could hear, finished telling the story to the younger sister, Zhu.

"So you want to leave me?" She asked.

I was about to interject, to say that I could take them both under my wing if she was fine with it, but I hesitated; this was a chance.

I had no idea what I wanted to hear him say, but I would know the moment I heard it.

I had wanted someone to teach since I came into this world; that might have clouded my judgment, or it might have been Fate, Destiny, the heavens, or whatever else this world had.

In either case, it was a chance to see what this kid was made of; it wasn't too late to change my mind and just offer his spot to the girl, not that the spots were limited in the first place.

My Magical Red Cross would always accept volunteers.

"I-I… I hadn't thought about it." His face drained of color as immense worry and guilt seemed to assault his soul. "I'm so sorry, sister; I was so happy that I forgot to think about you."

He held his sister's hand in his as I looked at the scene. I was somewhat thankful that he was only dumb and not someone who was willing to abandon his sister.

After all, dumbness was an illness that could be cured; cruelty wasn't. These children had evidently never received any decent education, so it wasn't even their fault.

I couldn't see any signs of an adult in their lives beyond the probably person that gave them food from time to time.

And if there was an adult close to them, they were doing a terrible job.

Xue opened and closed his mouth, looking like a fish out of water, but he seemed to finally regain his bearing.

He rose to his feet and turned to me, just to get on the ground again in a kowtow, saying, "Master, pardon this stupid disciple; I hadn't thought through what your offer really meant."

"I see, then what is your plan?" I asked, as if I hadn't already made up my mind to take them both in. I could hear him fumble through the more complicated words; it was endearing but sad that a child felt the need to speak in a formal manner to someone else.

Children were meant to be carefree, not to fight for survival.

Please, Master, allow my sister to come with us. I will do my best to repay your generosity." He shouted, almost causing the walls of the shack to wobble from the loud sound.

"And what if I say no?" I replied, Did Jasmine infect me with the 'I-need-to-act-mysterious virus' of this world?

But it was fun; I couldn't deny it. Seeing him struggle to come to a conclusion was character development happening right before my eyes.

He steeled his features and finally replied, "If you were to say no, I would say sorry for having wasted your time and generosity."

His hands trembled in regret as he handed back the bag of coins that I had given him, and I smiled.

It seemed like I was right; not everyone was an awful person here, just misguided. "In that case, there is nothing I can do, right?"

His expression paled, but I continued, "I would have never thought that I would take in two children today."

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hello, it's me, the horn

yes i made the kid dumb on purpose, i never implied that he would abandon the sister, so i'm making it clear, he's dumb

sorry for the lack of chapters recently, i'm feeling awful recently, and i'm replaying DS3, so there is that.

Pansexual love to you all.

ps. leave them stones.