"What about Aaron?"
"Ah, we don't know what happened to him ourselves," Mei and Haoran's faces turned sad at the mention of Aaron's name.
"What do you mean? How did you lose him?"
"When we left the sect, we lived in a few places while he wandered around the area for a while. Eventually, we settled inside a forest and I built us a wooden house. I hired a formation master from the branch sect to set the required fourth-rank formations on the house using our savings as payment."
Haoran began the story while Ken listened attentively. He knew his parents had a good stock of Qi stones as two of the strongest elders in the sect other than the branch sect master.
"I accompanied Mei most of the time, but Aaron was bored. He was a child who liked to crawl around and explore the environment. I understood that shutting him while we were not in the mood to educate him was not a good option and placed a few talismans in his clothes so he could explore the surroundings safely even if a beast came. In that area, even third-rank beasts are rare and I did not expect any danger to befall him."
Mei did not blame Haoran for losing their child. She understood his thought process was completely normal, he just did not take into consideration that things might go astray.
"You said you don't know what happened to him, does it mean…?" Ken did not finish his sentence and waited.
"It means that I don't know. One day when he was three years old I let him run around the house and after a while, I suddenly noticed the lack of his presence. I rushed outside and found some footprints, but they led me outside the clearing into the forest, and soon they vanished. I could not track him anymore despite remaining three days outside, leaving Mei unattended the whole time."
Mei clenched her fists in frustration when she thought about how she could do nothing at the time as a mere mortal due to her crippled core.
"I could not protect even my second son after the first was taken from me, I'm a disgrace as a father," Haoran sighed.
"Don't worry Dad, we will find him when we get stronger." Ken tried to encourage his parents but the silence after his words thundered the unspoken words in their minds. 'If he is still alive.'
---------
2 years ago at a wooden house in a clearing:
"Aaron, go play outside, sweetie."
The voice of a tired man spoke to a child who tried to get some attention. Aaron pouted in dissatisfaction, wearing the cute expression of an angry child. He was used to exploring the surroundings of the house on his own, the problem was that he was not allowed into the forest, but already saw every speck of dust in the small clearing.
"I don't want to!" Aaron shouted back at his father.
"I'm sorry Aaron, I can't be with you. Your mother needs us both to be strong for her, can you do that?" Haoran replied in a sour mood. He loved his son, but he never took care of any normal baby before; he had no idea what to do.
"I can," the toddler replied hesitantly and left with a defeated expression. He pushed the door open to leave the house as there was no need to press a handle, an arrangement Haoran saw through for this very reason.
'What can I do?' Aaron thought to himself as he toddled around the clearing, seeing the same sights he had seen many times every day for the past year.
He was bored out of his mind as he fumbled the ring that was under his shirt, held by a lace that was tied around his neck. It was his only remainder from his older brother. The very storage ring that Ken left for him on the day he was taken away by Krone and Norman, and the resources there waited for him to turn old enough to use them.
'I can enter the forest, it will be ok!' The child made a very bad and courageous decision. Following his statement, he picked the nicest-looking part of the forest and wandered inside. Needlessly to say, he did not have a plan as to how to trace the way back home once he got tired.
At first, Aaron was lucky enough not to meet any beast in the proximity of the clearing, mainly thanks to Haoran hunting habits that made them run away from the dangerous house. He happily explored the new lands with a wide grin, unaware of his environment.
But the consequences were not too late to come; when he got hungry and wanted to return to his parents, he turned around and walked again, thinking he was on the right path home. However, he took too many turns during his time in the forest, and he was not even close in his guess.
Aaron, scared and alone, sat down next to a tree and started crying in panic, confused and helpless. To his surprise, his cries were heard, and an old voice reached his ears.
"Child, are you lost?"
Aaron raised his eyes and saw the figure of an old man standing two or three meters away from him.
"Yes. Who are you?" Aaron asked as he tried to contain his sobs.
"I'm Antonio, I live around here. I can help you get home, are you hungry?"
"Yes, thank you!" Aaron smiled and tried to wipe the tears off his face, mainly smearing them. His smile returned to his face and he walked behind the elderly to an unknown place.
They reached a burrow in the ground, making Aaron gape in surprise when it was suddenly revealed. He did not notice it until Antonio pointed at it!
"I don't have much food, but would you like some sweet candy instead?" The old man asked.
"Yes!"
"Here, it's very sweet and tasty."
The baby took the shiny red pill and placed it in his mouth, completely trusting the stranger. After a few seconds, his eyelids turned heavy and he was getting sleepy.
"Grandpa, I'm sleepy," he said with a big yawn.
"You can sleep here, and we will go home after you rest. You had a long day in the forest." The old man said in fake concern and took him to a big bed. Aaron fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, laying defenseless in front of the elder.
"Hmm, maybe this child will finally survive. I think I've made great progress in my Immortal Qi manipulation skills," Antonio mused as he mentally prepared himself for the procedure he was going to do.
'A storage ring on a toddler? Is he the son of some of the strongest cultivators here? Oh well, it doesn't matter, nobody here can pose a threat to me. I will just clean his footprints and traces to avoid the hassle of dealing with the parents and wasting my energy.'
Antonio was quite curious about the contents of the ring, so he took it off the child's neck and pulled the contents out of it. He saw a few boxes of pills and three thick manuals.
'Hmm, pills from the first to the fourth grade, but what are those manuals? There shouldn't be any manuals that long for the first stages.'
The elder took them and started reading. With every page he turned, his eyes turned wider in astonishment, and a smirk crept into his face.
"Haha, is he a potential sect seed? He is, isn't he? Only a potential sect seed can have such a detailed manual that includes his anatomy so precisely, and clearly done by a great healer! I am lucky, this little thing's chances of surviving just increased a hundredfold!"
The elder laughed happily when thinking of the option of success. While a hundredfold was a lot, it meant the chances rose from 0.1% to 10%, but he would still probably die.
"Wait, what is this?"
The elder continued to read the next pages of the manual when he was over with the anatomy description and found detailed instructions to strengthen the body, offering a different way of strengthening almost every limb and organ.
"That's amazing!" The elder read eagerly the whole three manuals, each shedding light on a different stage between the first to the third.
They included vast information about the toddler body, including predictions on how it'd develop in the future based on the process it went through in Aaron's first year, a detailed training manual in case Aaron chose to strengthen himself to the extreme, and a shorter version in case he preferred to take the easier way out and compromise.
'It even includes the times to take each pill, I wonder if those pills really are as effective as this alchemist proclaims,' Antonio thought to himself while he pondered whether to follow the manuals or just go with the usual procedure.
'Oh whatever, this seems like a very comprehensive work. Let's just trust it.'
As an immortal, his mind was sharpened beyond a mortal's realm, and he did not need much time to memorize every single word in the three large books.
'If those manuals are real and you survive, you will be even stronger than I envisioned,' the elder thought excitedly as he channeled the first strand of Immortal Qi into Aaron's body.
Luckily for the child, strengthening children was normally a procedure done to sleeping babies since there was no need for them to be awake and control the Qi themselves like in normal cultivation.
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