“Eeeeeee!” Screamed a maid as she entered the library.

“What’s going on?” Asked Myra, however, just as she started speaking a strong odor appeared. “Why does it smell so bad?”

“Y-Y-Young Master, the young master can cultivate? How does he have enough mental strength?! Quickly, we must take him to the King and Queen!” After the maid finished speaking she picked up Ray and took off running, leaving Mya behind in a daze.

The maid was truly in a panic. As a Body Formation cultivator she understood the importance of mental strength more than normal people but she just didn’t know if absorbing a lot of pure energy this early would pose a health risk. Ray, on the other hand, was feeling quite uncomfortable as not only did he not know this would happen but not everyone was going to think he was a genius. The problem is that when the pure energy stones stop being useful then he can move to beast cores, however, after that his lack of talent will be clear. Obviously people will be angry with him for faking being a genius at that point so he wasn’t really sure what to do. Should he pretend to be a baby with cultivation skills but confused about what is happening? Or, should he come clean with his intelligence and explain that his talent is actually at the level of a mortal with no virtually talent for cultivation?

‘Sigh, this is a real mess. Why didn’t that damn cultivation manual say that this nasty black sludge would come out of me when cultivating? I wouldn’t have done it until I could bathe myself if I knew….’ Muttered Ray to himself.

As Ray was thinking the maid slammed the doors of the main hall open. Once the doors opened, Ray’s dad yelled, “Teresa! Why are you spoiling the surprise party?!”

Bowing, maid Teresa said respectfully, “I truly apologize King Tyson but this is important! The young master, h-h-he~”

Before she could finish, an old man in the crowd flew forwards and landed in front of Ray. “Interesting, this child is the two year old the party is for right? He just reached Low Body Foundation…” He said as he rubbed his beard.

At his words everyone became silent and stared at Ray. They were so silent and flabbergasted that you could hear a footstep if anyone moved. Awkwardly standing there, Ray decided to play the role of a dumb baby.

“C-Cultizacion? Wha iz dat?” Said Ray in his best broken english baby speech.

As if it worked, the old man muttered “How high is this kid’s talent?”

Ray was afraid that some of the truth would come out so he decided to change the conversation as best he could, “Twis paty, fo me? Fank you!”

After he said that, the queen ran up and hugged him saying, “Who cares what his talent is? This is my son’s one year birthday. Clearly he is smart and talented because he can somewhat speak and he cultivated but for today I don’t care. We only celebrate year one, five, and twenty for birthdays so you can all either enjoy the party or leave. I’m going to wash him up before coming back.” After that she picked Ray up and ran off to the washroom.

Ray was extremely aggrieved. He can finally speak, read, write, walk, eat something other than breastmilk, and not shit himself. Yet he was about to be bathed by his own half-mother. At the end of the day, it’s weird no matter how you think about it. They are biologically related but he used to be a twenty year old and no twenty year old would tolerate this. Also, his soul is of somebody else so she’s sort off a stranger… Unfortunately, although Ray doesn’t know his mom’s cultivation he knows that it’s much higher than his so he couldn’t even put up a struggle.

Half an hour later, Ray walked back into the hall wearing miniature versions of fantasy prince clothing. As an earthling, he felt these clothes were beyond cringe and he mentally couldn’t handle cosplaying as a baby prince at his own birthday party. So, although most people seemed to enjoy themselves Ray doesn’t have any memories of it as he intentionally wants to forget it. Most of the presents were ‘clothes to make babies cute’ and baby toys. Things that just couldn’t be more useless to him but he put on an ecstatic expression to fake gratefulness since they still bought them for him. But one gift from the old man was something interesting, a bag of enough pure element stones for someone to reach the peak of Body Foundation. It seems he had another gift but switched it out at the last minute.

Once the party ended, the old man, King Tyson, and the Queen sat around while the queen held Ray.

“Dad,” spoke King Tyson, “Is there anything wrong with Ray cultivating this early?”

Thinking for a moment, the only man replied, “Honestly, although I can’t be sure, I think it might be a good thing. It’s easier to strengthen your body if it’s smaller as there's less body to strengthen and if he strengthens it now then as he grows, his body will naturally be strengthened as it grows. However, there is an issue I can see happening…”

“What is that, father-in-law?” Asked the queen.

“Well… It’s unhealthy to open your meridians before 16 years old, right? What if he reaches the peak of Body Foundation and when he’s around five or six and can read he gets impatient and tries forming them early? As someone at Peak Core Foundation I can seal his cultivation when he reaches Meridian Opening but it’s simply not possible to do so beforehand as there isn’t a specific place that the pure energy flows through so what we need is a way to either prevent him from cultivating til 16 or a way to temporarily make cultivating harder to drag it out. If only he was older we could explain this and ask him not to cultivate for now. The most important thing is that we don’t do something that permanently affects him because he’s just a baby so Jay won’t really understand the dangers of too much cultivation too early which means this really isn’t his fault and, as his elders, it’s up to us to solve this.” Muttered the old man as he was thinking of a solution.

Once Ray heard the words ‘make cultivating harder to drag it out’ he started panicking. ‘Oh god! Did I mess up? If they make cultivating take longer than what’s normal for me then I’ll never be able to proceed past meridian opening since the book implies beast cores can’t be used as a main source of cultivation after meridian opening… Fuck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! What can I do? How can I stop this?’ As Ray panicked in his mind, he was on the verge of tears because there just wasn’t much he could do. If they found out about his intelligence at his age they would start questioning him and if it ever got out that he ‘took over’ their dead child's soulless body, that would have soon passed since the soul died, he can’t even imagine what they would do. So, no matter what they want to do, he really doesn’t have a choice and has to go with it. Hopefully it won’t be too harmful since they honestly don’t have bad intentions.

Seeing the look of panic on Ray’s face, the queen said, “How about you two consult the elders while I put him to bed.” Continuing, she rubbed Ray’s head and said, “Don’t worry Jay. You’ve done nothing wrong, you’re just too talented for your own good. Mommy will put you to bed but I hope you had a good birthday!”

After saying that, the queen carried him to his bed before going back and heading to the elder’s with Ray’s grandpa and the king. Ray spent the next few hours in his bed panicking, imagining the worst possible results one after the other until his child body fell asleep from stress.

__________

As Ray woke up the next morning, he became concerned about the future. Typically he wakes up and shortly after Mya takes him to the library where she cultivates. However, today he had been awake for an hour but she had yet to arrive, but, just as he was about to act like a young prince and look for a maid for food the door opened.

Smiling, Mya walked in with a maid and said, “Come on Jay, your sis can’t believe you're so talented. You had a breakthrough quicker than me…” Continuing, she said, “Mom, Dad, and Grandpa want to eat with us today. Let’s go have some breakfast!” Then she held his hand and walked him towards the dining room with the maid behind.

Honestly, this is the first time that he ate with his parents. Since they are rulers of a country, they don’t have as much spare time as they’d like but they at least tried to be good parents by speaking periodically and celebrating birthdays as much as possible. For example, they spent the entire night, putting off their royal duties, finding a solution to help their kid and are now putting off more duties to use said solution.

After sitting down, Ray felt a bit more at ease. The only people there were his grandpa, mom, dad, and Mya, people he’s familiar with. So to him, this means they only have his interests in mind and wish to put him at ease. So, he acted his best like a one year old as breakfast continued before his mom finally spoke.

“Hey Jay. Go ahead and swallow this, it’s good for you,” spoke his mom as she handed him a very small dark black sphere, something small enough for even a one year old to swallow without trouble.

Ray was nervous as to what this was but didn’t really have a choice. His soul is immortal but his body isn’t until he turns twenty so he doesn’t know what will happen if he dies before reaching twenty nore does he know what will happen if he reveals his identity. However, he didn’t really have a choice as a one year old wouldn’t refuse something ‘good’ from his mom as he wouldn’t have the capacity to be skeptical like that. So he swallowed it. The moment he swallowed it he felt the sphere settle down in his gut as a strange energy began to move to his head and caused a stuffy feeling in his head. As the stuffy feeling continued, Ray felt an energy enter his soul. He didn’t know what was happening or how to stop it. He was hoping his indestructible soul would prevent this kind of change but nothing happened, maybe that indestructibility doesn’t prevent change itself, just heals damage?

Ray’s mom walked over and rubbed his head, snapping his attention back, before slowly and patiently saying, “Hey little Jay. You probably won’t understand this but as your mom I feel the need to explain it so nothing is hidden, naturally I’ll reexplain when you’re older. You successfully cultivating at your age just shows how awesome you are but we don’t wish for you to hurt yourself. If you reach Meridian Opening before sixteen years old your ability to cultivate will be ruined and your life shortened… Cultivation can’t be sealed before the Meridian Opening Realm so our only option is to do this. A cultivator can form a soul connection with a single beast throughout their lives, including spirit beasts. There is a spirit beast called a Parasitic Core. Parasitic Core’s are rare, naturally formed spirit beasts which enter a beast's body and survive by absorbing half of the beasts absorbed energy. If a human forms a soul connection with it then it’s absorbed into their dantian and absorbs half of the humans cultivation as they cultivate resulting in it always maintaining the same cultivation level as it’s human partner. Interestingly, if a human forms a soul connection with a spirit beast then that beast will be mutated to have a similar mutation to anything unique about the human soul like an affinity to a certain element. The benefit of this spirit beast is that the absorbed energy forms a solid core body around it that the human can draw from similar to their own core when they form their own core. Basically giving them twice the energy as someone at a similar level. The problems with this beast are fairly severe so nobody uses them as partners anymore. First of all, cultivation becomes twice as hard and lengthy. Also, beasts go through tribulations like humans and since it’s in your body and at your cultivation level you’ll have to go through two tribulations at the same time. Luckily we can help you with a large amount of resources to reach early Core Foundation since we are wealthy and most people that reach early core foundation just stay there and enjoy their long life since tribulations aren’t worth the risk.” Pausing, she smiled and shook her head as she looked at the king and said, “Sigh, I don’t know why I’m saying all this since he won’t understand. Although it’s keeping him from harming himself, I just feel like I have to explain since it’s limiting his future…”

Nodding his head, the king said, “Don’t worry honey. I’m sure he will understand in the future. Besides, we spent so much to quickly find the rarest Parasitic Core, one of the spatial elements, which will give him the chance to use spatial techniques in the future.”

Ray’s face drained of color as a look of complete bewilderment filled his face. He was shocked and confused. Although he understood that they could delay his cultivation with a mixture of this beast and limiting his access to pure energy stones, he was in shock that his already trashy talent will now have half of his future cultivation stolen by some fucking parasite…

Ray ignored the world around him as his thoughts began to race. ‘Well, they’ve ensured to help me reach Early Core Foundation but what the fucking fuck and I supposed to do after that? I can ignore whatever this tribulation bullshit is since I should be twenty by then and won’t be able to physically or mentally die but, what is this dogshit about fifty percent of my future cultivation being taken? My talent is already beyond dogshit but now it’s going to be fifty percent worse or something? After Early Core Foundation, how and I am going to proceed… They are only providing resources to that point but I’ll forever be limited… Wait, can I kill it? I won’t be able to form whatever a soul connection is with another beast but I’ll have my talent back right?” For a moment even his thoughts fell silent before he came to a realization, “Oh shit. Oh dammit. She said it mutates along with any mutations the human host’s soul has? Does that include my soul’s immortality? Can I not even kill this thing? Why does this shit keep happening to me? I started college early and was graduating soon to enjoy my life but then I died or something and had to start over in another world. I have the worst talent. I’m immortal but can still feel pain. I’ll have to see those around me die. I finally found the hope of EVENTUALLY reaching a high cultivation and having friends and a girlfriend at that level so they won’t die of old age but now THIS SHIT happens? TWICE AS HARD TO CULTIVATE? LANG YOU SONOFABITCH! THIS IS YOUR FAULT!!’ Towards the end he was so truly enraged, screaming in his mind, that he fell unconscious, unaware of what was happening to the Parasitic Core or his surroundings. Whether or not Lang is at fault is no longer relevant. While Ray isn’t looking for revenge, he has at least found a target for his unadulterated rage.