Chapter 36: Meal.

After the talk with Jasmine and feeling my determination burning ever brighter, I returned to the camp, where the two kids weren't doing anything in particular, only chatting.

Not a phone in sight—how delightful—only nice and old human interactions.

I missed memes.

I clapped, "Hey kids, listen up."

They slowly turned to face me, their expressions clearly fearing that I could continue with another extremely well-justified rant about stranger danger, but they were in the clear.

For now.

"Now I'll teach you how to cultivate, so that while you gradually get stronger, our journey will go by faster. Is that alright?"

"Yes Teacher!" The boy responded with clear excitement and happiness in his eyes, followed by the same words by the girl, but her words had a different delivery.

They were more serious, and I liked that.

"Okay, now come closer for a second." They looked puzzled for a second, but soon enough they followed my words, allowing me to put a hand on both of their heads at the same time for efficiency's sake.

Ugh, how did I do it again? Intent, was it? So I shouted mentally at the thing in my hand with as much mental emphasis as I could possibly imbue in my own thoughts, "Do the thing, you green fucker!"

It did the thing; how it understood which "thing" I was talking about... Thinking about it was a mystery, but magic was pretty much as much of a reply as I needed at the moment; this thing was nifty.

A few seconds later, the green thing finished doing its thing, and I was free to do my thing.

I need to learn to be precise.

I grabbed one of their shoulders with one hand each and said with a calm, fatherly tone that I imitated from my own father from the day of my graduation, "Did you feel change? I've unlocked your potential; now you can cultivate it. Congratulations, children."

"R-really?" The girl muttered tentatively, looking at me with incredulity.

"Thank you, Teacher!" The boy wasted no time, though, and immediately bowed to me, only to be interrupted by my hand.

"I would rather you look me in the eyes when you speak to me, Xue." I said briefly with a calm smile, I understood anybody else; it was their culture and everything, but there was no way I would raise my own children to revere me like a king.

I wanted them to stand straight in the face of the challenges that this violent world would bring them, not to bend at the first difficult thing or powerful enemy. I had no idea if this small detail would bring this specific aim of mine to fruition, but it surely won't work against it.

"Okay, teacher." The kid calmed down slightly, but I could still see the emotions of gratitude in his eyes.

"Teacher, what should we do now?" The girl asked, still unbelieving of what had just happened, if maybe she knew a bit about what I had done. That was good; it meant that I wouldn't have to start from scratch with teaching her.

"Now, you need to focus on the world around you, get in synchrony with it, feel it with your mind, feel the energy flowing through it, and focus on that energy." After all, that's how I began—the exact moment Jasmine jammed that cursed blood drop into my body, and I felt as if my body was on fire.

I had to act, or my mind would have collapsed from the pain, and that energy was exactly my ticket to ending that anguish, so I took it and ordered it to act as I commanded it to.

But apparently the process wouldn't be as easy for them, as even after a few minutes they still hadn't made that first step, so I watched the both of them as they sat cross-legged on the ground in front of me.

My smile twitched as the step that I thought would last a few seconds stretched to ten minutes. I thought that maybe I should have sat down long ago, but anytime I thought that I should let them be, the thought that they may succeed a second later plagued me.

So I waited.

And waited.

Okay, this was clearly going to take a while, so I left to slap some more runes in place, just for a "I've done it!" To resound in my ears a few seconds later.

I cursed the God of this world that instant; I did it pretty often during the average day, but this was a specifically nasty curse.

I inhaled, then exhaled slowly, then moved back to camp with a speed that made me invisible to the non-cultivator's eye with an ease that boggled minds.

To this day, I still don't know what my maximum speed is since I've never needed to use it beyond the fourth level of that movement technique.

I reappeared in front of the girl with a curious expression. Jasmine had said that something might happen once she started cultivating: "Hey, can you feel it now?"

Yes, Teacher, I did as you said; look!" She said with a smile on her face that her previous non-belief evaporated to nothingness as she closed her eyes and called the energy to herself, willing it to enter her veins to join her energy pool.

"Oh, pretty good," I replied with a smile, and I ruffled her hair the moment she opened her eyes again. "Let's leave your brother to concentrate; you must be tired; want to eat something?"

She looked down, then back at me a moment later, saying, Yes, Teacher, it would be great."

I smiled and ignored her weird reaction, taking a stand next to the fire a bit further away, taking out a self-heating pan, a few eggs, and a substitute for olive oil.

I needed to find extra virgin olive oil; it was a must for my cuisine, but this would have to do for now, even if I hated it from a moral standpoint, my ancestors raging in protest at the inferior oil being the only thing that I could use.

"Teacher, can I ask you something?" She mumbled with uncertainty as I calmly and expertly broke the eggs to reveal the sweet proteins in them.

"Sure, go ahead." I replied, but my full concentration remained on the food.

"This may be rude, but why did you take me and my brother with you?" She asked, her voice sincere; it told me that this question couldn't wait anymore.

And why would it? I didn't have it; it wasn't a difficult thing to answer; it was her full right to know, "Not rude at all, kid; your brother asked for me to do it, so I said yes." The bottom of the eggs was starting to become white, so it was time to scramble.

"That's it?" She replied, looking at me weirdly.

"Yeah," I replied, "Do I need more? And do you want any salt on the eggs? Pepper?"

"I don't know, I just felt like it was weird for someone powerful like you to take someone like the two of us in." She mumbled, but I didn't hear anything about how she wanted the eggs, so I just sprinkled a bit of salt, the way I liked it.

"Your brother didn't like the lives the two of you lived, so he asked for a way out. What kind of man would I be if I refused that kind of request?"

I summoned two plates, kept them levitating with runes, and poured a third of the eggs on both of them. "A selfish man, that's what I would be."

"But it wasn't the first time we've asked for help!" She shouted, "We went to the sects, all of them, and they said we have no talent to be cultivators! So why would you accept us?"

"Fork or chopsticks?" I replied while giving her the plate.

The girl looked at me, speechless.

I gave her both.

"As for your question, I said it to your brother already, but I'm not a cultivator; I'm a Doctor who just so happens to be a cultivator, and for your talents, I already took care of that." I ruffled her head, then sat down to enjoy my head. "So don't worry, kid, I'm on your side now."

She sat down wordlessly and used the fork to eat the eggs, and her eyes widened in wonder. "They're fantastic!"

"Oh, I know, I'm the egg king." I replied smugly, finally finding someone who openly enjoyed my food. Jasmine was too stuck up to admit that she loved my 'mortal' food.

I needed to find some Divine eggs, cook them with Heavenly Olive Oil, and sprinkle them with Supreme Salt from the Sea of Stars to satisfy her palate, apparently.

The girl chuckled for the first time since I'd met her and replied, "I thought you were a doctor!"

"A man can be more than one thing at the same time, you know?" I said it back as I pointed my fork at her.

She was about to reply again, but the conversation was interrupted by a happy-sounding shout, "Finally!"

I saw the other kid jump up in happiness, a tear flowing down his eye, something which he hastily wiped away before we could see it, but I saw it: "Good job kid, come here and get some food."

"I did it, Teacher!" He shouted as he looked me right in the eyes, just like I taught him.

"I heard; now get something to eat," I replied with a chuckle, but shortly after continued with my words, "so? What can you feel now?"

Zhu was the first to say, "It's strange; I can feel so much more—" "Oh my god, this is so good!"

Silence.

"Well, I'm happy you appreciate my cooking." I chuckled as the boy all but died of embarrassment.

"Anyway, what were you saying, Zhu?" He replied, uncleanly changing the subject.

I definitely made the right choice; this was fun. Was that how my parents felt when they were embarrassing me?

I finally understand them now.

"I was saying, it's as if a new world opened up to my senses."

"Yeah, what she said—can I have some more?" He said this as he showed me the empty plate.

"I'll make a full launch in a bit; in the meantime, train to absorb the energy in your bodies now, get used to it, and try to do it while doing your other stuff."

"Other stuff?" The girl asked confusedly.

"Yeah," I replied while standing up, "You don't want to waste your life while sitting and cultivating, right?"

"But..." she mumbled, "Isn't that what people normally do?"

"Only because everyone does it doesn't mean that you should do it too." I replied, very tempted to just take out the good ol' argument about jumping down bridges, but I wasn't that far down the parent rabbit hole.

I needed to be more original with my parents argument and not just fall back on the classics.

"So you cultivate while doing other things?" Xue asked with curiosity.

Yeah, I do; I just do it in a different way." I said I didn't have any idea if they actually could do it outside of that dumb pose, but if there was one thing I knew, it was that this world's energy obeyed people; intent was Profound Energy's king. If it could heat up my eggs with a thought, then it could enter their bodies while they were moving about.

And if it didn't work, then I'd just make the runes for them; it wasn't that important, but what was important was to learn more about Profound energy. I would give them a week to see before giving them the automatic cultivation runes, but teaching them how to make them was a different matter.

They needed to grow up more and mature; I needed to see what kind of people they would become; they needed to be good people for me to teach them my greatest discovery in this world.

"But don't worry about that now; who wants a full lunch?"

-----------------------------

leave them stones, i love you bye