AIR Chapter 176

Chapter 176

Nai was a menace. She kept running everywhere and once she got outside, I felt some level of pity for the rest of the world. 

She ran through mud, but eventually she got her sea legs and learned to run at the fifth rank. She practically invented a movement technique. I had to dress her in clothes strong enough to withstand her findish little legs. 

She ran through a rock, a tree, and a vegetable stand. I paid the stand guy off handsomely, but Nai wouldn’t stop running. 

I had to lift her up and even then, her little feet flapped up a dust storm. 

“Calm down Nai.”

She kept flapping her legs, delirious on a runner’s high. 

“Nai,” I shouted. 

She looked at me as if in wonder as to how she hadn’t left my grasp yet, then she looked around as if wondering why the surroundings hadn’t changed. Then she looked down and frowned. 

“Augou!” She yelled. 

“No.”

Slowly, her little legs stopped running and she gave up. 

“You can’t just go running everywhere, you know.”

Nai let out a babble of rebuttals, but I just shook my head and pointed to the left of me. 

She looked and saw the tree, the rock, the torn up field, and a bit of wood left behind from that vegetable stall next to a lone cabbage. 

Nai frowned with acceptance. 

I set her down on her feet and she stood still for a few seconds, then she walked. 

She was still a baby. Barely a few months old and here she was walking. Honestly, it looked a little weird. Her head was too big. If she were a regular baby, she wouldn’t be able to sit up by herself, much less take a stroll. 

Then she started running, again. Not too fast this time, but anyone under the fourth rank certainly wouldn’t catch her. And this time, she dodged every obstacle in her way, running over hills and through valleys and circling the edge of the town and then turning back around. 

Until--

“Oh boy,” I whispered. 

Nai was back in front of me in an instant, eyes filled with tears and on the verge of crying. 

She was fine, and there had been no real object of value harmed in her little jog. 

But her whole left leg was covered black in day-old manure. Apparently she hadn’t noticed the cow pie and had tried to step on it with too much force. I couldn’t blame her. It did resemble a small dirt hill. 

I waved my hand and cleaned her up. Then I got on one knee and wiped away her still frozen tears. 

“Come on now Nai, you have to be careful okay? It isn’t just about hurting others, but also about hurting yourself, understand? Every step forward comes with risks. Sometimes its cow pies, other times it might be a sleeping skunk. I know you’re excited but you have to watch where you step, alright?”

I wiped away warm tears while she nodded. 

“Alright, go on now.”

Nai ran one more time. This time it was at the pace of a fast horse, and I could see her senses spreading out ahead of her eyes and exploring every inch of the ground before her feet touched it. 

It would be much more tedious this way, but it was a good thing. I watched as she avoided almost everything. She was like a tiger or a wolf, her steps not making a single sound and her eyes always focused on the spots ahead of her. 

“Good job,” I said with my divine senses. “Now try to keep yourself hidden. See if you can manage to be stealthy, alright?”

Nai nodded and almost disappeared from vision. I could see her easily enough, but anyone beneath the fifth rank would have trouble even spotting her shadow. She leaped from branch to branch, from shadow to shadow. She kept herself absolutely hidden and endeavored to be nothing but silent. 

She was like a beast. Most spirit beasts would develop their own techniques as they aged, it was instinctive to them. 

It was also the reason she hadn’t started walking earlier. Her beast instincts told her to stay on all fours all the time, but she had gotten past them, seemingly through pride.

A bit of her biological father’s influence. 

I always wondered how they would interact. She had already tamed some of the small critters in the forest, and the actual divine beasts knew that she was somehow special. I guess this was another one of her traits, instinctive techniques. 

I stuck my hands out and caught Nai as she leaped out of a tree, her hands aiming for the back of my neck. 

“Waowww!” She giggled. 

“Almost had me,” I laughed. “But any good cultivator watches their blindspot, you know.”

She grabbed my shirt and climbed up to the top of my head. She was still too small for my shoulders, so instead she would grab either side of hair and sit on my head. 

“Alright, time to head home! Do you want to eat at Chin’s or go home?”

“Ghee!”

Chin’s!

“Chin’s it is then. You just want to show everyone you can walk now, don’t you.”

“Ab pfffft!”

I will use this time of celebration to leverage as many sweets as I can from Medin’s kitchen. She won’t be able to refuse. 

“What about Rin?”

“Haa thoouu!”

I think you should keep her at bay while I go for the kitchen.

“And what’s in it for me?”

“Chook!”

Cookies of course.

“I could always make cookies myself.”

Nai blew a raspberry and stuck out her tongue at that. 

Medin makes them better.

The funny thing was that I made them better, or at the very least, I made them identical. I could recreate those cookies with less effort than it took to breathe. But Nai never liked those cookies. Nai always preferred Medin’s food to mine, even Rin Wi, the immortal chef was only second place. 

We walked to Chin’s house for dinner. It was crowded as usual, but there was at least twice the amount of food then there were people. And while I was only dropping Nai off for dinner, Medin still sent me off with a pack of food. 

She should know by now that I didn’t need to eat as a cultivator, particularly since she cultivated herself. 

But I don’t think that matters. 

I chewed on some bread and drank down a bowl of soup sitting silently on a hill and staring at the night sky. 

The village was growing. The people were growing in numbers and soon, very soon, I would have to act again. 

I could feel a small group of immortals heading this way. They were still far off, but I knew at least one of them. 

I’d let them get here. 

It would do some of the people here some good to be pushed to their limits. 

I set up illusions for the immortals. It was an illusory teleporting array. 

They would enter it and be trapped in an illusion where they would cause pain and slaughter innocent people on their way here, and then, when they had traveled enough, it would teleport them to me.

I set up a few people within that illusion. I left a reminder as well. 

“I hope you learn your lesson Tai Lui, before its too late.”