Cultivation Nerd (xianxia)

Three years passed much faster than I would like to admit.

Time has a strange habit. Ignore it, and the day is gone. Watch it, and every minute stretches into an hour.

Even my kids, who had only been two-year-old toddlers, were now five-year-old troublemakers. Well, Liu Ma was the one always getting up to no good, while Liu Sha was a bit shy and not someone I had to worry about much. However, that might be because he was better at hiding it.

I floated high above what used to be the Misty Mountains.

Well, people still called them that. But the place had changed.

Buildings now crowned the mountain peaks, their stone walls rising above the sea of haze like islands in the clouds. Long bridges stretched from peak to peak, suspended in midair by intricate arrays that shimmered faintly beneath the sunlight. Looking down from above, the bridges vanished into the rolling clouds before emerging again at another mountain, giving the impression that one could walk across the sky itself.

Lower down, entire districts were built along the mountainsides and at their roots, connected by winding roads that climbed the cliffs like ribbons.

It looked so damn cool, and really had that immortal cultivator sect feeling.

Though I couldn't make them the way I wanted. Because making the mountains themselves float was still far too expensive. Even with the entire Song Clan fortune at my disposal, the cost would have been absurd.

We didn't have steady revenue sources yet. So I had to be careful from now on. We had already spent more than a quarter of the Song Clan's wealth. That fortune had been accumulated over nearly twenty millennia. It was very big, but not infinite.

However, I still haven't given up on my flying mountains.

With my hands behind my back, I smiled and looked over the growing settlement while my robes fluttered in the mountain wind.

I was twenty-nine years old now. Every day brought me closer to the age I had been in my previous life. It was a strange thing to think about. Song Song was in her thirties now, too. Even if she hadn't changed much mentally during these past three years, everyone around me was growing older.

Just as I was beginning to lose myself in those thoughts like some old man, I sensed a ripple in space beside me.

The frog monster in human form stepped out. Ni Shi wore his usual grin, one eye looking east while the other stared west.

“You will not believe what I just saw,” he said.

For some reason, the thousand-year-old monster was an incredibly gossipy person. I never expected that. My view of Nascent Soul Cultivators has been tainted.

He had the heart of a teenage girl... Or perhaps that of a nosy neighbor who had never learned the meaning of minding their own business.

“Your son, Liu Ma, finally got someone to accept his marriage proposal!” he declared, as though announcing a world-shaking event.

“What? Did Wu Yan finally get tired of his constant pestering and agree?” I asked.

Liu Ma had somehow developed the habit of proposing marriage to both Wu Yan and Ye An whenever he saw them. Apparently, he liked talented women cultivators.

Who exactly did he inherit that trait from? I had absolutely no idea. As for who had put such ridiculous ideas into his head... It was probably Song Song.

She was the female equivalent of the "cool" uncle. The children adored her. Her actual niece not so much.

“No,” Ni Shi replied with an excited grin. “Song Gu did.”

The old toad really reminded me of people who watched trashy television dramas and got excited over every little piece of staged gossip.

Song Gu was the same age as my kids and was Song San's daughter. Technically, she was also Song Song's niece, but they weren't close enough to really act like family. Since she had no one else to look after her, I raised Song Gu alongside my children and did my best for her.

“But that's not even the best part,” Ni Shi chuckled, unable to hide the amusement on his face. “When she agreed, Liu Ma celebrated by saying he had finally gotten his first wife. The moment she heard those last words, she picked up a rock and threw it at him.”

Okay. It was just kids being kids.

I sighed and floated down to street level. As my feet touched the ground, that was the only sound around.

From above, the place looked like a flourishing city, with a mixture of civilian and cultivator architecture. In reality, the builders had long since left after receiving their wages, and the streets were mostly empty.

But that didn't matter for now.

I floated an inch above the ground and headed toward one of the many forests and walking paths surrounding the settlement.

I heard a young girl and boy arguing before I even got close.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Ni Shi leaned over with a grin to listen, despite being a Nascent Soul beast whose hearing was more than sharp enough to spy on them from miles away.

“What is wrong with being my first wife?” Liu Ma asked with a frown.

My children had inherited my appearance, though with Fu Yating's features mixed in, they had both turned out to be good-looking. Song Gu, on the other hand, had deep green hair, a slightly pudgy face, and mismatched eyes, one green and the other purple.

“Why would I be one of your many wives?” Song Gu shot back, drawing her arm behind her with a rock ready to throw while Liu Ma hid behind a tree.

Liu Sha was there as well, sitting on the damp ground with a book in his hands. It was a cookbook filled with colorful illustrations. He liked helping his mother prepare meals.

He was a sweet kid.

“Why not? You already agreed. You can't take it back now,” Liu Ma shrugged, as though the matter had already been settled.

Song Gu pouted. Still clutching the rock, she marched over to the quietly reading Liu Sha and poked him with her foot.

“Hey, you. Marry me,” she declared.

“No,” Liu Sha replied without even looking up from his book. “You and my brother are both loud, irksome, and will get along just fine. So stop bothering me. You're both annoying.”

Song Gu frowned. Before she could even decide how to react, Liu Ma was already there to pile on.

“Ha! Nobody likes you, so now you have no choice but to marry me!” he declared triumphantly.

Where did they even get all these ideas about marriage? At their age, I was playing with crayons and sniffing glue.

This probably had something to do with the adults around them. Maybe they had overheard the married members of our group teasing certain people in our squad who were already over thirty and still single.

As for which married squad member that was...

I stepped onto the ground, crushing the summer leaves beneath my foot and making enough noise for all the children to notice me.

Liu Ma's villain-like smile immediately slipped off his face. He straightened his back, turned toward me, and put on a serious expression. Liu Sha also stood up and set his book aside, while Song Gu blushed and stared at the ground, unable to meet my gaze.

Song Gu wasn't like her father. She was generally a shy girl. But she had been raised alongside my sons, and the three of them shared more of a sibling relationship, so she was much bolder around them.

“Greetings, Father!” Liu Ma said, saluting me.

I had taught him quite a bit from my previous life, so he sometimes pulled things like this.

“What did I hear about marriage?” I asked, staring straight at him.

Even though they were only five years old, I still had to instill some discipline. The last thing I wanted was for my children to grow up into annoying young masters.

In my previous life, a child being a brat wasn't a big deal. Here, however, young children and teenagers could gain real power. So I had to be stricter with them all.

“I heard it from Aunt Song. She said that if I wanted talented children, I should marry a talented wife,” he explained.

I had taught him quite a lot despite his age. But he wasn't the sort of super genius who could come up with an excuse like that on the spot. He had probably prepared it beforehand in case I caught him.

He really took after his mother.

As for blaming Song Song for everything...

Liu Ma had a habit of claiming somebody else had "taught" him things whenever he wanted to avoid responsibility. For now, it was just the instinct of a child trying to avoid getting his bottom spanked.

But I could already see how that habit might develop into something much worse later.

I walked over and gently smacked the top of his head.

“Good excuse, but none of you have even had your talent tested yet. So how would you know whether she'll become a talented cultivator?” I reprimanded him.

Liu Ma rubbed the top of his head and looked at me with watery eyes.

“She has green hair and weird eyes. I've never seen anyone like that before, so she's clearly a freak. And freaks are talented,” he said without missing a beat.

Damn. He really took after his mother when she was younger. Why couldn't he be more like Liu Sha? Look, he probably had plenty of stupid thoughts too. He just had the good sense not to say them out loud. The perfect kid.

I crouched down, grabbed Liu Ma by the ankle, and lifted him until he was hanging upside down. Despite the crocodile tears from earlier, he was now grinning at me, clearly trying to win back my affection.

“She isn't a freak. Her father had the same colored hair, you brat,” I told him.

This wasn't the first time I'd had to discipline him over things like this. Kids without iPads were troublesome. They found all sorts of ways to get into mischief.

“Also, you'd be lucky to find even one wife willing to put up with you. So stop thinking such silly things, or one day you might drink poisoned soup and never wake up again,” I warned him.

Judging by the look on his face, my words went in one ear and out the other.

I had groundbreaking experiments waiting for me and couldn't spend all day disciplining him or keeping an eye on the children.

“So apologize to Song Gu for saying such mean things,” I said before setting him back on his feet.

Liu Ma nodded and, with an exaggerated look of sincerity, apologized.

Even as a child, Song Gu had been tricked by Liu Ma enough times to learn from her mistakes.

Well, it wasn't as though Song Gu was a little angel either. Whenever Liu Ma temporarily lost his position as the little menace of the group, she would happily take over and act like a tiny tyrant. It had already happened a few months ago, when Liu Ma came down with a cold.

I glanced toward the tree Ni Shi was hiding behind and gave him a subtle signal to keep an eye on the children.

Sure, kids would be kids. But I didn't want them taking things too far.

After a few more long-winded lectures that I was certain none of the three little brats had actually listened to, I headed toward one of the towers standing at the center of the mountains and buildings we had constructed here.

It was a crimson tower whose height was nothing particularly impressive, only around seven stories tall.

I had wanted something closer to a skyscraper. But this world's construction techniques weren't there yet, and the taller a building got, the harder it was to protect. All kinds of crazy cultivators wandered around.

As I stepped inside, the familiar scent of parchment mingled with the nostalgic aroma of tea. That alone almost pulled me back to a time when life had been much simpler.

For now, though, I pushed those thoughts aside.

Endless rows of books lined wooden shelves, creating the familiar quiet order one would expect from a library. Yet none of the shelves touched the ground. They floated freely through the air, drifting between the aisles.

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