Cultivation Nerd: Chapter 213 (Patreon)

Chapter 213 - The Experiment

"What's with that look?" my mother frowned. "You can't take her out to play; it's freezing outside. What if she catches a cold?"

What? Where did she even come up with that?

I was so caught up in the discovery that Wu Yan had so many spirit root branches, I almost missed what my mother said. Her frown and the glint in her eyes made it clear there was no room for argument.

"I'm not taking her out to play," I reassured her.

"No training for her either," my mother insisted. "Every winter, you went out to train and always caught a cold. Even when I forbade you, you'd sneak out anyway. But I won't let my little girl out of sight just for you to do the same with her."

Ah, now it made sense why she looked worried.

Liu Feng wasn't stupid, but he'd been obsessed with his grandfather's stories when he was younger. He even trained under a waterfall when he was barely a one-star Body Tempering Cultivator. Even though he never told his mother, he still caught a cold, and she assumed it was from training outside—never knowing just how reckless her son had been.

Of course, I wasn't going to tell her that now. Even if it happened over a decade ago, I'd still get chewed out.

My mother turned to Wu Yan and embraced her. "You won't be like Liu Feng, will you? At least I have one child who'll finally listen to me."

Hey, Liu Feng wasn't that bad of a kid! And she was already treating Wu Yan like her own daughter.

Wu Yan, who had never really known maternal affection, returned the hug with an excited shiver. She looked so happy, so I wasn't about to ruin the moment.

Despite how she acted, I knew my mother cared about me too. I'd scared her to death more than once when I was younger, and I wasn't petty enough to be jealous over something like this.

"In my defense, all my bad habits were grandpa's fault," I said, throwing the old man under the bus.

"Is that so?" My mother narrowed her eyes at me, still holding Wu Yan tight. Wu Yan was practically melting into the hug. "And what do you blame about your recent bad behavior?"

"My upbringing," I grinned. "Also, what bad behavior?"

"Your cousins may be tight-lipped, but they can't keep all the rumors from reaching me," she said with a shake of her head.

Now that she had a well-behaved kid like Wu Yan around, she wasn't afraid to point out my flaws. It must've made her realize just how unruly I had been. Like every parent, she was suffering from child comparison syndrome.

I knew what rumors she was referring to, but I wasn't about to discuss them with her. It was easier to accept the gossip and move on than to explain the truth.

"Anyway," I shrugged. "I need to examine Wu Yan for something."

That was true, and conveniently, it helped dodge the questions I knew were coming.

My mother eyed me as if trying to read my thoughts. She looked ready to ask why I needed to examine Wu Yan or if something was wrong. But there must have been something in my expression that made her drop it.

She was my mother, and I loved her dearly, but even she knew when not to pry. I'd accepted Liu Feng's memories as my own and considered her my mother, but there were limits to everything.

With a sigh, she reluctantly let Wu Yan go, though curiosity was still in her eyes. But Wu Yan's condition needed to stay as private as possible.

I took Wu Yan's soft hand. "I hope my mother wasn't smothering you too much. She can be a bit overwhelming."

Wu Yan shook her head, making a few hand gestures to show it was no big deal. It was odd she wasn't using her telepathic communication lately. Still, it seemed she preferred this way of interacting—at least for simpler things. And, as far as I knew, she only communicated like this with me.

We walked into one of the guest rooms, where there was a bed she could comfortably lie on.

"You can relax, this is the same as always," I told her. "Though honestly, this is nothing compared to the examination being done atop a giant turtle's shell."

The guest room was minimalistic, with two bunk beds in opposite corners. It looked more like a room in an inn, trying to fit as many people as possible, rather than a guest room in a large house. I had no idea why it was like this—maybe the place had once been an inn, and my parents never bothered changing the layout of unused rooms.

As she lay down on the lower bed of one bunk, I placed my hand on her shoulder and gently ran Qi through her body to check her vitals. This time I was prepared for the sight of so many spiritual roots. It was still stunning, but it was like staring into a bright light—blinding, almost impossible to see anything else around it. I couldn't tell if the sheer number of spirit root branches was affecting her body in a negative way.

I was curious how fast someone with this talent could cultivate. Though I didn't stand to gain anything from it, it was just pure curiosity.

A part of me wanted to set aside my concerns and test it out thoroughly. But that would probably result in Wu Yan getting seriously injured, and I wasn't about to let that happen. She was a good kid.

"How did you get so many spiritual root branches?" I asked.

In response, the skin on her neck bubbled up like boiling water, parting to reveal crooked teeth and a rather unsettling mouth. “I… made…”

Her voice was slow and strange, almost like a wolf's growl, but it was understandable.

This was a surprise. It seemed like she had learned to speak during her time with my mother, and the increased Qi now available to her probably helped too.

"Waiting… to grow… no happen. So… I made," she continued, the tongue in her throat-mouth twisting oddly as she spoke.

What I gathered was that she had followed my advice and waited for her spiritual roots to manifest naturally. But when they didn't, she morphed her body like she always did and somehow created as many spiritual roots as she could handle.

"So you just grew them? You can do that?" I asked, astonished.

That was an incredibly overpowered ability.

She nodded. "I decided to try… and it worked."

This time, her words were clearer, as she seemed to be getting the hang of controlling the mouth on her neck.

"I remember… you teaching me. You explained… roots, and how more was better…" She paused, and the mouth on her neck shifted again, growing larger, stretching from ear to ear, filled with sharp, jagged teeth. "I made as many as I could… only stopped when it felt like I was going to burst, like water thrown into boiling oil. Speaking feels uncomfortable… controlling mouth is hard. Nodding easier."

Her voice still had that growling tone, but her words were clearer. Speaking with a second mouth must have been challenging, considering most people learned to speak instinctively.

"You should've consulted with me first," I said, frowning. "This is extremely dangerous."

The large mouth formed again as she replied, "I wanted to bring you joy."

"Hurting yourself just to make someone happy is never the answer," I said as I ran my Qi through her body, trying to focus past the overwhelming brightness of her spiritual roots. It was tough to see anything else around them.

"Are you mad at me?" she asked. The wolfish growl in her voice made it hard to detect any emotion, but her words hinted at sadness.

"No, of course not," I reassured her. "Why would I be mad? I'm just relieved you're okay, and we can both learn from this. But don't ever do this again—at least not so quickly or recklessly. You must test things out before putting your life on the line."

That was when I noticed something odd—tiny amounts of Qi were entering her body, like a thin stream of water veering off from a river, almost imperceptible at first.

Was she cultivating?

"Are you cultivating?" I asked.

She shook her head.

Was her body naturally absorbing Qi? It wasn't like Ye An's situation, where she absorbed Yin Qi, but it was similar. Wu Yan's body was drawing in normal Qi, likely due to the sheer number of spiritual root branches.

"Fascinating, but not good. Your body can't handle Qi yet," I explained. "You need to develop some musculature. If you can't manage, just make yourself taller. And don't transform into a man—you've been a girl for too long now. It's better to stick to familiar grounds. I'm unsure if your transformations affect your internal Yin or Yang Qi, but we must be cautious."

Generally, once cultivators reached the Qi Gathering stage, there wasn't much difference between genders. I wasn't an expert in this area—many things were kept secret and passed down by word of mouth—but there had to be a reason why certain techniques increased a female's cultivation speed as long as they remained virgins and why those techniques didn't work on men. With that in mind, it was best to play it safe.

As I watched her body shift and change, a strange thought came to mind. Song Song had once told me about the workings of the technique that boosted a woman's cultivation speed as long as she kept her chastity. How would a technique like that affect Wu Yan? Could switching between male and female create a male version of that technique?

But I quickly dismissed the idea. Wu Yan wasn't struggling with cultivation speed; if anything, she was progressing too fast. Experimenting like that could be harmful to her.

"Careful—don't rush it, or you might pull a muscle," I warned her.

Though her ability to morph her body seemed second nature to her, I still wanted her to be cautious. But from how she used it, it was as natural as breathing.

Wu Yan shifted into a taller posture, just above average height for this region, though not quite as tall as me. Physically, she looked older.

Now that her body was prepared, she was ready for cultivation.

How fast could her cultivation speed be if she gathered as much Qi as she could for a full minute? Extreme Physiques were ridiculous talent.

“Can you lower the number of your spiritual root branches?” I asked.

She nodded, and with my Qi still inside her, I sensed the blinding light dim slightly. She now had 198 spiritual root branches.

“Can you go below a hundred?” I inquired.

She looked at me, tilting her head in confusion. It took me a moment to realize I hadn’t taught her much about numbers yet. In the wilderness, I’d focused more on honing her morphing abilities and basic survival skills.

“A hundred is ten tens,” I explained. “Understand?”

She nodded again. A strange energy radiated from her as her body shifted. The blinding lights dimmed further, and I finally got a clearer read on her physical condition.

Ninety-eight spiritual root branches.

It took her only a dozen seconds to make these alterations after I explained. Her body morphed and stabilized, with her skin bubbling occasionally, but she soon returned to her usual appearance.

Was this even an Extreme Physique anymore? Wu Yan could manipulate her spiritual root branches at will—something I had never seen or read about before.

Extreme Physiques were rare and not well-categorized, even among the books in the Song Clan Library. Despite all my research, Wu Yan’s condition didn’t match any known descriptions of an Extreme Physique.

And then there was her telepathy—she herself couldn’t fully explain how it worked, only describing it as some vague “feeling thingy.”

Was I missing something? Had a vital piece of this puzzle slipped through my grasp? Everything seemed fine as far as I could tell.

Perhaps she did have an Extreme Physique… but also something more?

These were just speculations, of course. I felt like a surgeon working in the dark, trying to piece it all together.

“Does it feel unnatural to have fewer than a hundred spiritual root branches?” I asked as I gently withdrew my Qi from her body, careful not to harm her.

She shook her head.

Incredible… Simply incredible. I’d heard many terms describing cultivators—talented, genius, even monstrous. Song Song had once been considered a monstrous genius herself.

But Wu Yan outshone them all. Every other cultivator I’d met paled in comparison. For them, cultivating was a struggle; for Wu Yan, it was like playing a game with cheat codes.

Just a girl I’d found in the middle of nowhere… How many others like her had gone unnoticed? How many had died prematurely or lived out their lives as farmers, never even interacting with Qi?

This was humbling.

Now, the question was whether to let her cultivate. If it were up to me, I’d prefer to learn more about her condition before making any hasty decisions. Typically, cultivation was a marathon, not a race. But with an Extreme Physique, it was definitely a race. A race against death.

I crouched down and gently took her soft, delicate hand.

I couldn’t let her lag behind in cultivation. She had limited time. The early stages wouldn’t be difficult, but in the later stages, where talent wasn’t enough and comprehension became crucial, she could hit a wall due to her limited life experience.

“From now on, you’ll start cultivating slowly,” I told her. “You’ll break through one star each week, and when you become a nine-star Qi Gathering Cultivator, we will have a long talk.”

Nine stars. Beyond that, she’d need to align herself with an element, gaining experience and understanding of it—not just theoretical knowledge, but real-world interaction.

Ironically, Ye An’s Extreme Physique had an advantage here. She had an almost instinctive comprehension of the ice element, allowing her to breeze through the stages of Foundation Establishment.

There was so much to think about…