“Daddy,” Yin’er said as Jin Shu stood up from his nightly cultivation.

  “Hm?” he responded, wiping himself down with a damp cloth as he ged out of his clothes.

  “How do you cultivate?” she asked, floating up to per his shoulder. Her cws lightly poked into his bare skin, but he didn’t flinch. After cultivating the Body Inscribing Art, his tolerance for pain had greatly increased.

  “Do you mean how I cultivate, or how you cultivate?” he asked, pointing first to himself, then to her.

  She tilted her head, her golden eyes gleaming. “Both?”

  “Hmm…” Jin Shu pondered her question as he slipped into bed. Yin’er fluttered off his shoulder, nding on his chest. She led there, her luminous eyes fixed on him, refleg the dlelight like twin golden jewels.

  “Well,” he began, “humans cultivate by drawing the ambient qi of the world into their bodies. For us, most of that qi is stored in the lower dantian, here in the pelvic region, especially in the early stages. Spirit beasts, oher hand, store their qi in the upper dantian—or what cultivators call the core. That’s where all of their qi is trated, and they don’t use their other dantians.”

  “What are cultivation realms?” she asked, her voice growing drowsy.

  “The realms of cultivation represent stages of power,” Jin Shu expined. “The higher the realm, the stronger you are—and the closer you get to immortality, or so they say.”

  “What...yawn...different realms?” Her question was interrupted by a wide yawn, but Jin Shu uood her meaning.

  “There are nine realms,” he said softly. “They are: Body, Qi, Core, Spirit, Adept, Master, Grandmaster, Sage, and Saint. Each realm is divided into ages, from the 1st to the 9th. Beyond the Saint realm, it’s said you bee an Immortal.”

  Jin Shu gnced down and saw that Yin’er had fallen asleep, her soft snores barely audible. He smiled, gently patting her head before resting his own. Soooo drifted off to sleep.