Chapter XVI: The Disciple and Her Sister

Outside Shizukana Gake, The Great Plateau

Month of the Garuda 32, 172 ,328 DE

It is a couple hours before midnight, when I pass through the gate to the patio in the front of the residence. This has turned into one of the longest couple of I have had in a long time, and it is still not over.

The light coming from the kitchen window means Old Man Jones should be up and reading as usual. On the way to the kitchen door, I sling the carcass of the Spotted Forest Cat onto a stone table we use for butchering Beasts.

As I shove the door open and step into the kitchen, Old Man Jones looks up from the book he has open on the table, and as he frowns his one human eye narrows. "You lost your clothes again?"

I shrug as best I can while still holding onto the kimono covered Aoi. "I left them at the base of the escarpment. I came up by a different path than normal, one a couple hundred kilometers south of here."

Old Man Jones raises one eyebrow. "You found something?"

"Yeah. I'll give you the details later."

Raising her head from my shoulder, Aoi looks around blearily. "Where?"

"My home."

"Oh. Disgusting." Aoi pulls off the kimono and throws it on the floor.

Old Man Jones' one human eye opens fractionally wider. "You bringing home a naked, prepubescent girl? I didn't know you'd picked up those kinds of tastes."

Puffing out her cheeks, Aoi turns her head to glare at Old Man Jones. "Not prepubescent. Fourteen. Just like Pervert. Aoi will be fifteen before year's end. An adult woman."

I shake my head. "Did you just notice her now?"

Old Man Jones shrugs. "I thought she was an animal. Come to think of it, she reminds me of a chipmunk. So why are bringing a naked fourteen-year-old home? You planning to get your rocks off with her?"

"I don't need to get my rocks off, Shitty Old Man. I'm not like you, plowing every somewhat good piece of ass I see."

"It's not dangerous for me to play the field. But you, if you knock that girl up, it's gonna cause problems for her." Old Man Jones gives me a flat, expressionless stare.

"I already know the dangers, Shitty Old Man! Better than you!" For some reason, my anger flares at Old Man Jones' comment.

With her eyes narrowed into slits, Aoi gives me a crooked smile. "Sounds like fun. Pervert can satiate his lusts with Aoi's body. All days safe days. Aoi takes menstrual suppression pills. Bleeding every moon sucks. Heh. Heh-heh. Heh. Heh."

With a smirk dripping schadenfreude, the shitty old man watches me like I am one of his experiments. "So, why did you bring her here?"

I shrug. "Matsuda Sakura handed her over to that little shitbag Harada Gohan and his ass-fucker, butt buddies, for a good old-fashioned gang rape and beat down. I took the chance to fuck them up, and I might have crippled or killed a couple. Maybe more than a couple. Their heads made wonderful crunching sounds. I did rip off most of Harada's miniature dick. He won't be fucking anything bigger than a mosquito from now on. Because of what I did, they might retaliate against Aoi."

Old Man Jones snorts. "I can't remember the last time you worried about the collateral damage from your rampages. I'll take care of the clans. They won't touch your new girlfriend's family."

"Girlfriend? Heh-heh. Heh. Heh. Aoi caught the Beast." Staring at me with her cooked smile, Aoi blushes for the first time since I cut her loose from the steamer car. Despite the blush, she does not seem to be embarrassed, only aroused.

I ignore Aoi. "I beat Miura Ryo pretty bad. I couldn't resist giving him some extra kicks after he was down. I won't make a guess about his condition."

Old Man Jones' snorts. "His clan won't dare to get involved. Solve him on your own. But what the fuck was the Miura heir doing with a rape gang going after a prepubescent girl? I thought for sure he was a fag."

I shrug. "He's probably just a Cultivator. He's already in the Qi Condensation realm."

"Aoi is not prepubescent." Aoi snorts angrily. The sound is not as creepy as her laugh.

"Are you gonna get down yet?"

"Comfortable." Aoi snuggles up against me and lays her head on my shoulder. This girl has a few screws loose, like a hundred or more. Since grabbing onto me, even while asleep, she has only relaxed her grip enough to shift her position. Also, she does not seem to have any concept of shame or embarrassment, which is refreshing for a human.

I let out a sigh. "Get down already. I need to gut the cat and hang it up to drain the blood."

"Brat, we're not a fucking Chinese restaurant. Stop bringing home fucking dead cats." Every time I bring home a dead cat, Old Man Jones makes some Chinese restaurant crack. He has yet to explain what 'Chinese' is supposed to be, but I gather they must have cat on the menu.

"Okay." With a sulky expression. Aoi finally lets go of me and drops to the ground. Puffing her cheeks out, she looks up at me with an over-exaggerated pout. The shitty old man is right. She does remind me of a chipmunk.

"There's a blanket on the couch in there." After I point to the door at the far end of the kitchen, I go back outside.

Aoi looks at Old Man Jones with an expression as blank as the ones he puts on when he is annoyed. "Thank you."

"Don't worry about it." Old Man Jones turns back to his book.

Still naked, Aoi follows me outside.

"You like running around naked?"

As she shifts stare at my face, Aoi gives me a crooked smile, and her eyes narrow into slits like crescent moons. "Thought Beast liked Aoi's small tits. Heh. Heh. Heh-heh."

I shrug. "I won't complain about the free show, but don't complain to me if you get sick."

Even for a girl who is only at the Flesh Tempering stage of Body Tempering, the night is nowhere near cold enough for her to get sick. I am just fishing for a reaction, but Aoi does not even blink.

Looking at the carcass on the stone table, Aoi watches me cut open the belly of the Spotted Forest Cat, with a complete lack of reaction. From the way she tilts her head and stands on her tiptoes to get a better look in the body cavity of the cat's corpse, she should have no delusions about what I am doing, but it does not seem to have much of an impression on her. She just watches me work with the crooked smile never leaving her face.

Humans do not understand how much they give away with their bodies' odors. When their emotions change, their scent reflects the changes. When they lie, their scent gives them away. When they are sick in any way, the clues are in their scent. But with Aoi, her scent does not even change much, no matter what I say. If not for the odor of her lust, she might as well be a statue with how few clues there are to her state of mind in her scent. The girl is not quite normal.

After gutting the Spotted Forest Cat, I hang it in the cooler.

When I leave the cooler, Aoi plants herself right in front of me. "Body Forging?"

I shake my head. "It's not good for you. You're better off practicing normal Body Tempering."

Without looking up from his book, Old Man Jones sticks his nose into our conversation. "You could let her use the Precious Herb solution. It would improve the effectiveness of her normal Body Tempering several fold."

"That solution is meant for Body Forging."

Old Man Jones looks up. "Not really. Similar solutions were used as supplements with a lot of Body-focused techniques to strengthen a practitioner's physique. You just haven't encountered other techniques and systems that use it."

Looking at Old Man Jones and back at me, Aoi's crooked smile turns into a huge grin. "Wanna use it!"

I suppress my urge to hit the shitty old man.

"Not tonight. Tomorrow."

With a decided smirk, Old Man Jones looks back at his book. "You should probably teach her to fight, while you're at it. There is no guarantee you'll be around the next time some clan asshole targets her."

With her crooked grin nearly splitting her face, Aoi practically bounces up and down on her toes. "Teach me to fight! Old Man Jones told you to!"

Old Man Jones looks at Aoi with a faintly annoyed expression. It serves the shitty old bastard right. He hates being called Old Man Jones. I spent years spreading the name around, just to make sure as many most people as possible would use it.

"Obnoxious brat, you could use the Mind Net to teach the girl. You won't need to hold back since it won't do any damage to her Body. Her Mind is already fucked up." This would be the shitty old man's way to get even with Aoi for calling him Old Man Jones. The old bastard can be amazingly petty, especially when people call him Old Man Jones.

"Teach me! Use the Mind Net! Pervert Master can use Aoi's body to satiate his lusts as payment! Heh. Heh-heh-heh." The girl may be calling me Pervert, but she is inundating the air with the scent of her lust.

Old Man Jones smirks. "Why are you holding back, Obnoxious Brat? You know you want to get into the Mind Net where you can have your way with her . 'Abuse the weak and the strong.' Isn't that what you're always spouting? You can abuse her to your heart's content."

I pat Aoi on the head. "Alright. I'll teach you."

"Disciple bows to Pervert Master." Dropping to her knees, Aoi bows to me the three times. That stupid custom comes from beyond the Kami Kaze mountains, but it has been all the rage here in the Heian Kingdom for the past few years.

For a moment, I wonder what kind of trash the girl reads. Someone in the empires at the center of the Great Plateau figured out a way for wannabe authors to publish novels through the mind net and make money off it. In recent years, the idiots in the Heian Kingdom have been imitating the customs in the novels. Aoi's bowing comes straight out of those trash novels.

"So says the naked girl, offering her body as payment."

If I knocked Aoi up, it would be bad for her. Unfortunately, I cannot really explain the danger to her without exposing my Wolf blood, and that would be even more dangerous.

"Time for you to go home. Won't your family be worried about you?"

"Maybe."

"Let's go."

With a sly glint in her eyes, Aoi holds out her arms. "No shoes. Carry me!"

Looking into Aoi's eyes, I revise my estimate; the girl has at least two hundred loose screws.

After staring at Aoi for a moment, I grab a leather cloak hanging on a peg near the kitchen door and toss it over her head . "Put that on."

After Aoi wraps the cloak around herself, a good thirty centimeters of it pools on the floor around her feet, but if I did not know it was her inside the cloak, I would have no way of telling by sight alone. Opening the door, I pick Aoi up, with one arm behind her knees and one behind her back.

"Oh, did you decide to marry that little shrimp of a girl?"

Ignoring Old Man Jones and the pure mockery dripping from his voice, I leave the residence and head for the back corner of the compound. Testing the air, I do not pick up any strong scents that would indicate the nearby presence of any unknown humans. While I do pick up the scents of a few dogs, cats, and birds that I do not recognize, they should not be the tools of any humans I would need to worry about. Common animals are seldom used by Cultivators.

Springing to the top of the compound's wall, I check the streets with all my senses and find no one suspicious. This is probably too soon after my rampage for anyone to be acting, and people who get too nosy about our compound have the habit of disappearing. Most of them become experimental subjects for Old Man Jones' research on Cultivation.

Dropping into the alley behind the compound, I look at Aoi's face, which a common human would not even be able to see in the darkness. "Where do you live?"

"George Blockman's Apothecary."

"Do your parents work for him?"

"He's Aoi's father."

"Your father? Why is your surname, Sato?"

A disgruntled expression twists Aoi's face, and an odd mix of scents rises from her body.

"Aoi's mother is a bitch."

Since I do not have the interest in digging any deeper into Aoi's family situation, I silently head in the direction of George Blockman's Apothecary. Keeping to the back alleys for the most part, and using the rooftop route when necessary, I avoid the prying of the few humans out at this late hour.

Upon reaching the Apothecary's compound, I jump to the top of the compound's wall and hop inside. Like Old Man Jones and my place, a residence sits inside a compound behind the Apothecary shop and clinic. Most Apothecaries practice a branch of Alchemy that specializes in producing medicines to treat diseases and heal injuries, and most of them are also practicing physicians. George Blockman is no exception to the rule. He is rather well known in Trade District. While he has a good reputation, most of his notoriety come from him being a gaijin, which explains the gaijin half of Aoi's parentage.

Through a lighted window, a woman can be seen sitting in a chair reading under the light of a gas-fueled lamp.

"Backdoor." Aoi speaks the single word in a voice barely above a whisper.

Once I set Aoi on her feet outside the backdoor, she pulls an iron key out from under a stone and opens the door. Through an arch on the far side of the large kitchen, the woman sitting in the chair reading turns toward the door, and her eyes widen in surprise as the sight of Aoi's cloaked figure and myself. I had thought she was older, but upon seeing her face, I revise my estimate to under twenty years of age.

Aoi pushes back the hood of the cloak.

"Aoi! What are you doing with the Beast!" While the surprised ejaculation is not very loud, it seems thunderous in the relative silence of the residence.

"Heh-heh. Heh. Aoi caught the Beast. Beast is Aoi's Master. Aoi will make Beast her boyfriend, too. Heh-heh-heh. Heh-heh."

The other girl's confused features bear a resemblance to Aoi's, but they show no signs of her being a half like Aoi.

Taking off my cloak, Aoi hands it to me and stands proudly naked in front of me.

"Aoi! Where are your clothes?" The other girl grabs a blanket from the chair she was sitting on and stalks toward the door. She has a solid twenty centimeters in height on Aoi, making her very tall for a female of the people east of the Kami Kaze Mountains.

"Don't need clothes. Beast likes Aoi's small tits."

As she wraps the blanket around Aoi, the other girl glares at me. "What did you do to my sister?"

So, the two are sisters. That would explain the slight similarities in their features, but the older girl shows no signs of being a Half like Aoi. Do they have different fathers?

I shrug indifferently. "I saved her from a rape gang of nobles. Should I have left her there, instead?"

The sister's eyes open wide, but the hostility does not leave her expression. "Aoi, is what he said true?"

With her crooked smile on her lips, Aoi watches me without so much as a glancing in her sister's direction. "Beast is Aoi's. Maki can't have him."

"Aoi!" As Maki hugs Aoi tightly from behind, the muscles in her forearms stand out. The older sister has a lot of muscle in her forearms, but with her loose kimono, it is impossible to make an accurate judgment about the rest of her body.

"Old Man Jones will make sure that the City Lord keeps the noble clans from retaliating against your family."

Maki's gaze shifts from me to Aoi's profile. "Aoi, go take a bath and get to bed before the bitch finds out what happened."

With no sign she even heard her sister, Aoi stares at me. "Pervert Master. No school tomorrow. Aoi wants training."

After returning Aoi's stare for a few moments, I nod. "Come to the compound tomorrow."

Aoi grins, and her eyes turn into narrow crescents. "Pervert Master better not slack off. Aoi wants him to be hard with her."

As her little sister slips out of her grasp, Maki glares at me. "What does she mean? What are you doing with my sister?"

I put on my well-practiced smirk. "What do you think she means?"

Maki's glare intensifies. If looks could kill, I might be dead. "Just because she'll be an adult in six months, it doesn't mean she won't be my little sister. You better not hurt her Pervert Master! If you do, I'll make you pay!"

I shrug. "When I'm done with her, she'll at least be able to defend herself against the younger generation of noble trash."

As I turn and leave, I feel Maki's glare trying to burn holes in my back until I leap over the wall surrounding their residence's courtyard.

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