As the Qi Family basked in the joy of their grandchild's first words, they celebrated they joy with the beggars, guards and everyone in their neighborhood.
The old Qi Couple went ahead and distributed rice cakes, steamed buns and a small malt sugar cube to all the neighbours.
Copper coins were given to beggars until none remained when some were sent to the temple and rest were thrown into wells.
Truthfully, Qi Shou never understood such customs and rituals.
In his eyes, it was a pure waste of resources, but he respected the choice of others and went with the flow.
It wasn't like they lakced food or money.
"For some reason, there's always enough vegetables, meat, firewood, oil, salt, sugar and everything this era has to offer."
Qi Shou often found himself humming in thought regarding these weird events.
For starters, Mingzhu was a talented cultivator, so she ought to have spiritual roots or bones or whatever it was called.
Naturally, Qi Shou remembered the novel's details but this was the real world.
Why would he limit himself?
If all those protagonists could have "dao bone" stolen and transplanted, then who said they couldn't exist in a world?
But his thoughts were sometimes more accurate as he wondered if they descended from some cultivation family.
For as long as his memories went, the Qi and the Qin families had been friendly rivals with a sense of kinship among them.
Maybe they could even be relatives in some past generation.
However, he didn't know how inaccurate yet accurate his guess was.
If only he knew that both Qi and Qin families used to have Sects under them and were one of the few prominent ones across the kingdom...
Alas, sacrificing themselves for their friends, family, and unknowing commoners left them spent and forgotten.
Not because someone orchestrated it, but because someone better, more outstanding than them came into existence.
Shu Yuxian's rise to fame wasn't just a set of coincidences.
It was a meteoric rise planted by destiny or fate itself.
Thus, any and all obstacles standing in its way had long fallen.
Such was the fate of Qi and Qin Families as they were the only remaining descendents and the last one being Qi Qingluo.
But Qi Shou was unaware of all these intricate details.
Maybe one day, he'd figure it all out.
Currently, though, he was busy massaging Qingluo's legs, using a special technique to strengthen the bones as they formed.
It was again a reward from the system.
Sadly, the effect could only be maximized by a cultivator.
"If only it gave me a cultivation manual..." sighed Qi Shou as he lamented the time he spent on honing himself up.
If before, he was a handsome youth, he'd now changed into a handsome hunk with toned muscles and refined features.
Of course, conservative clothes of ancient times covered it quite well and no one except his wife knew of these changes.
Subtly or not, even she'd began exercising and gaining some muscle.
"At least, my regular habit of hitting tbe gym to stay fit paid off," he mused happily.
Although the experience and pain made him dread the gym mostly, he still went and after getting into shape, he'd quit.
Then he'd return overweight before continuing the cycle.
Thanks to that, he learnt a lot and applied it in this life.
With abundant meat and correct exercises, he easily developed muscles.
Unaware, his body's natural cultivation talent played a key role in it.
In this world, a person's looks were personified based off their cultivation talent, strength and various other aspects related to cultivation and their talent.
Technically, there were no stereotypical obese lustful men or brothel women being bad or ugly females being made into antagonists or villains.
The author had wonderfully created a world where stereotypical judgments might even cause one one's life.
If someone was ugly or fat, then they'd most likely chosen to stay that way or had some unspeakable history.
Either way, everytime the readers commented about a potential lustful man, it'd always turned into a pitiful man.
Thus, Qi Shou knew that looks mattered a lot in this world.
If he looked refined but acted unscrupulously behind the scenes, most wouldn't bat an eye at his hypocritical behaviour.
However, some would be blamed even without doing anything.
Such was the burden of stereotypes despite the world being way different from his modern world.
"You brat! What are you even doing?! Watch your mother and learn!"
Mother Qi's steiking voice came from behind Qi Shou, startling him awake from his plethora of thoughts.
But his hands automatically stopped and pulled back as he stood beside his mother and looked at her perform the massage technique he was barely able to keep up with.
He'd 'coincidentally' left the book on the table and returned late, not checking on it for a few days before asking his parents about it and finally finding it back in place.
That was impossible.
How could no one have picked it up or placed it back?
Now, looking at his mother perform the massage almost instinctively on Qingluo made Qi Shou certain of a few things.
His parents, or at least his mother, had read through it and decided to give it a try.
If it was really as nourishing and wonderful as the book claimed, then fine, she'd do it more times when her son or daughters-in-law weren't at home.
What was the harm of using her energy to nourish her granddaughter?
Yet she wasn't ready to risk her son or daughters-in-law from remembering their sealed memories.
However, she miscalculated.
Qi Shou had only left it on a hunch, not even expecting any action.
However, results spoke for themselves.
No matter how reluctant, he'd to admit his mother was pretty amazing at this technique that he could barely perform after being weaved into his brain by the system.
It seemed some things were better learnt from trial and error.
'This confirms it, though. They're probably cultivators...'