"Chiya-kun… Rin, is she…?"
After their lavish dinner, Hoshizuki Kaede quietly approached Minamiya Chiya and asked in a low voice. She had noticed something odd about her younger sister.
Otherwise, how could Rin possibly be so proactive about cleaning up on her own?
"You told me earlier that she needed to start taking the yokai problem in Osaka seriously, right? So just now, I…"
Chiya gave Kaede a brief explanation.
"Ah? So there really was a Hanako at the school?"
Kaede shivered visibly.
"If it scared Rin that badly, then that female ghost must have looked absolutely terrifying…"
That instantly piqued Chiya's interest again, and he pulled out the black sphere.
But before he could say anything, Kaede's face turned pale. She quickly ducked into the kitchen, clearly intending to join her sister at the sink and help wash the dishes.
Even so, after stepping into the kitchen, she still turned back and called out at him in a half-embarrassed, half-indignant tone.
"Chiya-kun is so mean…"
Chiya burst out laughing.
After one full year in this world, this was the first time he truly felt happy.
For the first time, life here actually felt like it had promise.
That old thought of simply living out a quiet life and letting it end there had completely disappeared.
He had made up his mind.
In this world where gods and monsters truly existed, he would climb all the way to the summit.
And after that, he would have dozens upon dozens of beautiful wives.
Still smiling, the handsome young exorcist put away the black sphere and headed upstairs to his room.
He planned to prepare a few defensive tools for the sisters.
Those relic prayer beads he had taken from the demon monk could be refined a little using basic Daoist artifact techniques. They would be slightly inferior to the system's protective talisman, but quantity had its own advantages.
That strand of Buddhist prayer beads had over a dozen beads on it.
Once refined properly, the difference between them and the system-made talisman would not be all that large.
...
An hour later, after finishing the cleanup and washing up, the sisters changed into their sleepwear and came to Minamiya Chiya's room.
There, each of them received an item from his hand, both warm to the touch and faintly glowing.
What Hoshizuki Kaede received was the system-made protective talisman.
What Hoshizuki Rin received was the Buddhist bead bracelet Chiya had re-refined using basic forging methods.
"Just keep these on you at all times," Chiya instructed. "As long as you wear them close to your body, ordinary little ghosts and lesser spirits won't be able to do much to you."
As he spoke, he helped Kaede fasten the talisman around her neck, then adjusted the bracelet onto Rin's wrist.
"Thank you, Chiya-kun."
Kaede's cheeks flushed slightly, and the joy in her eyes was plain to see.
"Thank you."
Rin also thanked him seriously.
After being frightened like that earlier and instinctively relying on him, her feelings toward Chiya had softened a great deal. She no longer carried the same guarded attitude she had before, the one that treated him like a threat who might steal her sister away at any time.
Now that she had truly seen what a malicious spirit looked like, Rin finally understood why Kaede had insisted she take these things seriously.
Forget fighting those monsters.
An ordinary person could be scared half to death just by seeing what they really looked like.
And through all of this, Minamiya Chiya had been helping both of them from beginning to end.
For a moment, Rin's amber eyes flickered uncertainly, as if she were making some sort of decision in her heart.
"These can only protect you temporarily," Chiya continued, explaining the precautions they still needed to follow in daily life. "Under normal circumstances, you should still stick to crowded places, avoid going off alone, and don't wander somewhere unfamiliar by yourselves."
In his mind, once he cleared this Hyakki Yagyo dungeon, the number of demon and ghost incidents in Osaka would probably drop sharply.
At that point, Kaede and Rin would most likely be able to return to a somewhat more normal and peaceful life.
"Only temporary?" Kaede asked, sounding slightly disappointed.
For a brief moment, she suddenly felt the distance between herself and Chiya grow very large, so large that it seemed like they did not belong to the same world at all.
If only she were an exorcist too.
If only she could walk beside him all the time.
"Chiya… can we learn to cultivate like you do?"
The sudden question from Rin made both Chiya and Kaede freeze.
Earlier that day, while the three of them were walking through the school, Chiya had already told the sisters that what he practiced was an ancient cultivation method from China.
And according to him, without talent, an ordinary person could spend their entire life on it without ever achieving anything at all.
At the time, the sisters had not thought too much about it. After all, it sounded impossibly difficult. Before now, they had always been ordinary girls.
How could they suddenly turn out to be cultivation geniuses like Minamiya Chiya?
Now both of them were looking at him with bright, expectant eyes.
And Chiya himself had gone still.
No, he had fully blanked out.
Right then, he suddenly felt a little stupid.
Whether the system's cultivation methods would work for them or not, there was no reason not to try.
If the Hoshizuki sisters could cultivate, that would naturally be a great thing.
And even if they could not, there was nothing to lose.
More importantly, after Rin's question, Chiya found himself becoming unexpectedly confident.
After all, they were both recognized by the system as "favored daughters of heaven," essentially girls with protagonist-tier destiny. If anyone had the qualifications to cultivate, surely it would be them.
After a long pause, Chiya pulled out his current cultivation method from the system.
Basic Spiritual Breathing Technique.
This was the one included in his beginner gift pack.
If he could complete this week's exorcism mission tomorrow, then he would receive a low-grade breathing method, one even better than this starter version.
"If you don't know Chinese, then this is going to be a little difficult."
"I'll teach you how to read it first."
Even though it was system-made, his system was still a little low-budget, which meant self-study was very much required.
"Mm~""Mm~"
The sisters' eyes shone brightly, their hearts pounding with excitement.
Because this was an opportunity.
A chance to break away from the ordinary people they had always been.
"A famous Chinese saying goes…" Chiya suddenly said, deciding to test their level of spoken Chinese. "The wise submit to circumstances."
Rin was the first to try.
"The wise… submit… to circumstances."
Her careful tone and overly serious expression were so earnest that Chiya nearly burst out laughing on the spot.
But he barely held it in.
Then Kaede repeated the exact same phrase, only with even more emphasis and far more expressive intonation.
That was the final blow.
Chiya broke.
He laughed so hard his eyes nearly watered.
It reminded him far too much of the clips he had seen in his previous life, those videos of island-nation girls trying to recite famous Chinese lines with perfect seriousness.
Naturally, that left the sisters completely baffled.
"Rin… why is Chiya-kun laughing?" Kaede asked in confusion. "Was our pronunciation really that bad?"
"I think…" Rin answered after a pause, "he just remembered something very funny."
"Is that so?"
"Probably."
The two sisters whispered to each other, though the sudden embarrassment had at least dulled some of the tension in their hearts.
After laughing for a while, Chiya finally calmed down and began seriously explaining the breathing method to them.
The joke had served its purpose.
It let all three of them relax a little.
And being relaxed was helpful for cultivation.
Over the next half hour, Chiya carefully explained the formulas and principles behind the Basic Spiritual Breathing Technique until Kaede and Rin had a basic understanding of the口诀.
First they recited it aloud with him.
Then silently with their lips.
And finally with only their thoughts.
The three of them sat cross-legged on the bed, their palms facing upward, their bodies neither fully relaxed nor fully tense.
A calm, natural rhythm slowly began forming between them.
Chiya guided the sisters' breathing, helping them align their flow and making it easier for them to condense their very first strand of true qi.
After half an hour, the two sisters had already entered a stable cycle on their own.
Sensing that, Chiya opened his eyes and carefully observed them.
"If you can cultivate your first strand of true qi before sunrise tomorrow," he said softly, "then that means you truly can practice Daoist arts."
"And if that happens, then you'll be cultivation geniuses just like me."
After saying that, Chiya slowly stood up and left the room.
He could not stay inside.
If he remained there, his own presence would gradually increase the density and quality of the spiritual energy they absorbed from the world around them.
After all, he had already become a second-rank exorcist.
Even when he was not actively meditating, his body would automatically draw in the ambient spiritual energy around him.
Although he left the room, Chiya did not go far.
Tonight, he would keep watch from the hallway outside.
Time passed quietly.
Before long, midnight arrived.
Inside the room, the lights were still on.
Kaede and Rin remained seated in the same meditative posture as before. Their similar beautiful faces both wore calm, peaceful expressions, looking utterly at ease.
And in front of them, thin wisps of energy had begun to gather, slowly drifting around their bodies.
One was earth-yellow.
The other was water-blue.
If Minamiya Chiya had been able to clearly observe their state at that exact moment, he would have instantly recognized what he was seeing.
Because this was exactly the special little animation from that xianxia mobile game he used to play, the one that appeared when a character with high-grade earth or water spirit roots successfully condensed true qi for the first time.
And the moment those two threads of spiritual energy were drawn into the sisters' bodies, Chiya suddenly opened his eyes in the hallway outside.
Surprised, he slipped quietly back into the room.
And there, he caught the last traces of color from the energy curling around the sisters.
"Earth and water-attribute true qi?"
"They're both high-grade spirit roots?!"
Chiya recognized it instantly.
For a moment, he felt both overjoyed and faintly aggrieved.
Their cultivation talent was actually higher than his.
He only had mid-grade spirit roots, exactly like the alt character he had used before transmigrating.
The more he thought about it, the more frustrated he felt.
If he had known it would turn out like this, he should have created an alt account with top-tier aptitude from the very beginning.
Wouldn't that have meant his transmigrated body inherited those talents too?
Now that really was a massive loss.
...