The fact that the children sat still and paid any attention until physical cultivation class – physical education by Earthling words – during the first day of class is the true miracle. That feat is not repeated a single time since then and I don’t know if it ever will. Who would have thought that putting a bunch of literal babies into twelve hour schooldays had the potential to backfire? That’s right. I said they were a bunch of babies, despite the fact that they are four or five years older than me physically.

For while alchemy and cultivation techniques, spiritual and physical, can accelerate growth speeds, it cannot replace it. The ten-thousand-year-anniversary of the Spiritual World’s descent is not going to change that. But the anniversary does bring an amount of qi never before seen outside a Spiritual World’s descent, so some brainlet got the amazing idea: if we can accelerate normal baby growth with qi and alchemy, if the ambient qi increases, we can increase the acceleration, right?

Introducing my cohort: noble children with almost twenty times the growth acceleration of a normal baby and the first trial run of the kind. With one-hundred and two children growing more than six times faster than the normal noble child, it has been a logistical nightmare. Five years of preparation beforehand to gather the funds needed to even start the experiment and ensure enough alchemists, doctors, teachers, elders and more are on standby to help one way or another. Ascetic Yang has stopped short of saying that this trial has been a failure, but I can read enough between the lines to see that this is below their expectations, continued only because of the initial investment and some hope for a miracle to happen.

And yet, with all of those geniuses put together, not a single one of them realized one giant flaw in the program: experiences build the mind. By extension, time is needed but not provided. Worst of all, it seems that due to such earlier cultivation, their growth has actually sped up past Ascetic Yang’s expectations.

With the children going so quickly, they are often left confused and irritated, by everchanging standards and their place in the world. And I don’t blame them. It’s like holding a ruler that never retains a size length to measure something. Every single day the children grow – not in some abstract way, though it does happen – but physically. Perhaps half an inch or an inch may not seem much, but before they can even adjust to that new situation, another half an inch appears.

This might not have been a problem the first six months for a variety of reasons – I don’t really know and cannot even begin to imagine. But now, puberty has struck and many of them are ready for the second rank of cultivation, both spiritually and physically – despite how little time and practice they have spent in the past month. Crying has been habitual for them and it only takes a single baby to cry before all of them soon follow suit. Domains blocking the sound of a crying baby does not help either, since simply the sight of a single baby doing so acts like a domino effect, sending all the rest into a crying frenzy.

If anything the babies are learning, it is crying gets them what they want. Violence for discipline has yet to be used, as far as I am aware. No adult wants to be remembered by any child – who they are dumping vast resources into and could very well potentially outrank them in little more than a decade – as someone who has harmed them. Besides, violence hardly teaches anything but animosity, pushing people to withdraw or lash out instead of sharing their problems and thinking for solutions.

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Not that there has not been any strategies to resolve the situation. The schedule starting from the third day onwards was inverted in the hopes that physical exhaustion will reduce the amount of crying and work out that energy. It did not. Then came in the smaller physical cultivation classes – five person each. Then smaller meditation and spiritual cultivation classes – five each. None of that worked as well as they hoped – the problem was not so much that there was a specific child or age group at play, but all the babies.

This does not even begin to account for the variance in growth in children, especially in the early stages, so while Chen Yingyue had four months to spiritually cultivate, Fang Wangyong only had two – some children only had one and it showed. And those who were fat or female grew faster, due to increased estrogen levels I believe, and had a head start in cultivation, which should have reduced their irritation and confusion. But since they grew faster, they suffered more growing pains and even more confusion. Those male and skinnier grew slower on average, but had a weaker spiritual cultivation, due to a later start on average, to properly understand their situation, so they did not adjust too well either.

That just left me, twenty-four-year-old Mel who knew enough about the world to not be too negatively affected. And if the biggest profiteer of a program directed towards six-month-old babies is twenty four, well, enough has been said already. Ascetic Yang even praised me for my good behavior. My embarrassment almost ended me.

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All in all, due all the miscalculations the adults responsible made, their original game plan did not even last a single day, let alone the entire month. I have become quite acquainted to the amusement park my fellow high-rankers – I want to call them friends, but it is rather difficult to call them my peers when they cry or get distracted through any meaningful conversation. I cannot blame them for acting as such nor do I act dismissive towards them, but it takes a different type of interaction, one that requires me to be more understanding and considerate. Not really a bad thing, but hard to relax around them when every step I take around them has to be gingerly.

Anyways, the amusement park takes up the entire building, the one caught directly in the middle between the two male dorms. Half of the building is one giant indoor playground and jungle gym hybrids, with a series of interconnected tunnels, slides, stairs and more. The rest of the building is divided into floors, each with small rooms holding their own little surprise: dolls, stuffed animals, arts and crafts, books, toys and even a nap area. I visit the nap area a lot, because class is canceled so often. Mostly because I much rather cultivate on my own rather than learn about any esoteric jargon about cultivation history – though I do ask Tie Liyi, Ascetic Yang and just about any other adult questions when I do have them. It is good to get answers from a variety of sources.

Physical cultivation class is really the only one I really take seriously. For while Body Like Fire is detailed in what to do once I am exhausted – I can permeate qi while fully rested, but its effects are slower and weaker – I do not know how to physical train myself. Teacher sets my training regime for me instead. A mixture of calisthenics and gymnastics, if there is such a difference. No weight training for me, since my body has yet to finish growing.

The rest of it has either been spent meditation, sleep or pretend napping while I meditate so Tie Lijie, Chen Yingyue, Fang Wangyong and Nan Yenay don’t bother me. I originally thought they were pretty smart for their age, but man was I wrong. About how old I estimated their age was. I guessed about thirteen and they are more like five. No matter how smart they may be, if they have yet to fully master object permanence…. I don’t think I can have a conversation with them.

As for how did any of them do so well on the test? Every single of one them cheated. Like how Chen Yingyue gave me the answers to that history test, but with every single test instead. Turns out even the weightlifting test was altered so the heavier weights were actually rather light – not so much a lie I guess as much as it is encouragement to get the babies to work harder since they feel like they are good at it. Same thing goes for the speed tests. And cheating on the information tests was due to some cramming sessions beforehand or something, because none of them remembered the information afterwards. And not just those four either, all the children did it. Except for me, who spent the month before either in a coma or recovering from one.

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All in all, since none of the dorms have burnt to the ground, I say it has been a success. Not a single week goes by in college have I ever had the fire alarm not triggered one way or another. And with babies with the self-control rivaling a goldfish’s memory running amuck with superpowers….let’s just say I’m happy that there’s some formation fireproofing the buildings.

The end of the month brings about the monthly exam and I do not really care for them. The dorm rooms don’t change because of the new rankings, so it all does not matter. Foster some competitive spirit perhaps, but I doubt that is conducive at all – since the variance in child development has really been literally skewed in the fat girls’ favor to such an extent, it is not even funny. The rankings could be determined by size and sex rather than anything else. Perhaps any speed related event would see these fat girls suffer, but this month has gained almost all of them another head in height and their physical cultivation seems to prioritize strength, so no one stood a chance against them. Next came girls and fat boys, then lean boys – like me physically.

It looks like the adults share some of my concerns as well – since four different listings are created to ensure the babies compete within their weight and sex bracket. While those differences should balance out by the time everyone finishes puberty, having just one rank listings will only punish the late bloomers for things they cannot control.

I rank somewhere in the middle of my group, mainly held back by a lack of effort and the fact that my spiritual strength has not changed outwardly – a solid 300 for everyone to see – even though I have surpassed a 1000. It seems that the essence cloak puts the lowest spiritual strength it can for the checkpoints I have fulfilled. So although I am nearing the third soul rank, the overall number has yet to change. My four ‘friends’ for a lack of a better word rank first in their respective list, so props to them.

Overall, I am not looking forward to the next five months if the first month is any indication. Spending the time at home at least gave me the illusion that the adults in my life were competent, but I am now beginning to think that the fall of the Colorful Peaks was less due to Empire’s sudden skill and ingenuity and more due to a cataclysmic series of failures on the part of the sect’s elders. Perhaps I should take a more active role in collecting the treasures lying about – while Xin Feng did not collect all of them in Overthrowing the Heavens, I do know where quite a few of them are and how to obtain them.