Ultimate Villain's Return as a Doctor in the Cultivation World-Chapter 148 - Trying to obtain a complete breeding realm for his Wives

Chapter 148: Chapter 148 - Trying to obtain a complete breeding realm for his Wives

"’I know,’" she said. The flat, maternal steadiness of Madam Lin, which was the steadiness of a woman who had been raising a hero and had lost him and had found something else to organize herself around. "’I’ve been taking the herbs Suyin has been providing. I know what I’m doing.’"

He looked at her.

Her chin came up.

"’I’m not fragile,’" she said. "’And it’s yours. Don’t look at me like a patient.’"

He looked at both of them.

Chen Yun and Wei Lingyue had arrived behind him, three steps back—they had stopped when the six women came out of the cave, the social geometry of the moment producing a natural pause—and were observing the proceedings with the specific quality of two women who have just been introduced, without introduction, to the full scope of the arrangement they have joined.

Wei Lingyue’s grey eyes were moving across all six women, formation-sight reading cultivation stages and histories with the automatic thoroughness of a cultivator who processes everything she sees. Her expression was the expression of a woman doing arithmetic she had not expected to be doing.

Chen Yun was looking at Zhen Ying—specifically at Zhen Ying, at the silver eyes and the cultivation stage and the First Wife’s particular quality of presence, the three-hundred-year-old serpent matriarch who had clearly been the organizing principle of this household in his absence.

Zhen Ying looked back at Chen Yun.

The specific assessment of two Nascent Soul Early Stage women registering each other.

Zhen Ying’s silver eyes moved to Wei Lingyue.

Then back to Cang.

"’You were busy,’" she said.

"I was occupied," he said.

"’With two new wives.’"

"With the First Demon Trial," he said. "The wives were a development."

Zhen Ying looked at him with the expression of a three-hundred-year-old woman who has decided that the man she married is exactly as infuriating as expected and that this is not a revision of her assessment but a confirmation of it.

"’Two new Nascent Soul wives,’" she said.

"Yes."

"’While I was here.’"

"You were safe," he said. "And I needed—"

"’I know what you needed,’" she said. And the silver eyes had something in them that was not entirely disapproval, because Zhen Ying’s three hundred years had given her the specific pragmatism of a woman who understood the difference between jealousy and territory, and what she was managing right now was not jealousy but the calibration of territory boundaries in a newly expanded geography.

She looked at Chen Yun again.

"’Demon sword,’" she said.

"Yes," Chen Yun said.

"’Sword cultivator.’"

"Yes."

"’You’re shorter than I expected.’"

The silence.

"’You’re a snake,’" Chen Yun said.

"’Snake spirit beast,’" Zhen Ying said. "First Wife. You’ll learn the distinction." She looked at Wei Lingyue. "’Crown.’"

"Jade Meridian Sect," Wei Lingyue said. "Formation cultivator. Princess." A pause. "Nascent Soul Early Stage as of thirty-three hours ago."

Zhen Ying’s eyes went to Cang.

"’Thirty-three hours,’" she said.

"It was a long cave," he said.

Zhen Ying pressed her lips together. The expression moved across her face—the full sequence of a three-hundred-year-old serpent matriarch processing the information that her husband had been in a cave for thirty-three hours with two women who were now Nascent Soul Early Stage—and arrived at the place where it always arrived, which was: ’this is who he is and I knew who he was and the alternative is being without him which is worse.’

"’Fine,’" she said. The word of a woman who means the opposite of fine and has chosen to deploy it anyway because the conversation it represents is going to be had at a different time and at her chosen timing, not now, not in front of everyone, not with his seed probably still—

She stopped that thought.

He was looking at her abdomen again.

His hand came up.

It found the curve of it—the physician’s contact, flat palm, the warmth of it—and he stood there on the approach path with Zhen Ying in front of him and his hand over the place where fourteen weeks of pregnancy was proceeding at cultivation-accelerated speed, and his face did the thing it did when he was not performing anything and was simply present.

Zhen Ying looked at him.

"’There you are,’" she said. Very quietly.

He looked up.

"You should have told me before I left," he said.

"’I didn’t know before you left.’"

"You knew at nine weeks," he said. "Your cultivation sense would have registered it."

"’At nine weeks you were already gone.’"

He looked at her.

"I’m here now," he said.

Her hand came up and covered his—the pale, serpent-spirit skin over his physician’s hand over the curve of fourteen weeks of his child—and she looked at him with the silver eyes that had stopped being afraid of him sometime in the weeks after the cave and had started being something else.

Madam Lin had arrived beside him.

He moved his free hand—found her, the same contact, the same flat warmth—and he stood between both of them with both hands occupied and said nothing because the physician’s register that he applied to everything had been temporarily suspended.

Song Mei was crying.

Not about herself—Song Mei cried about other people’s things, it was her specific characteristic—she was standing with both hands over her mouth and her eyes very bright and she was crying about Zhen Ying’s expression and Madam Lin’s expression and Cang’s face and the general weight of the moment, which was considerable.

Xiao Hua had her arm around Song Mei’s shoulders.

Suyin was maintaining composure with the focused professionalism of a maid who is on duty and is not going to cry at the place of employment, and the fact that her eyes were bright and her jaw was slightly pressed together was an unrelated atmospheric response.

Wei Lingyue and Chen Yun stood three steps back and observed the full geography of what they had joined—the six women, the two pregnancies, the household that had been operating for weeks without the person organizing it—and both of them were quiet in different ways.

Wei Lingyue’s grey eyes had arrived at the arithmetic and were sitting with it.

Chen Yun’s dark eyes were on Zhen Ying’s hand over his.

Cang looked up.

He looked at all of them—all eight, the full count of what thirty-three hours in a terminal chamber plus whatever had happened in the months before he reached the Trial had produced—and he said the thing that the physician’s part of him and the strategist’s part of him and the very small part that was neither had arrived at simultaneously.

"It seems," he said, "I need a good place to keep you all together."

The mountain air was clean.

The cave behind them was full of century-grade herbs and formation inscriptions and two thousand years of accumulated spiritual density.

Zhen Ying looked at the cave.

"’We already have one,’" she said.

He looked at it.

"Bigger," he said.

[Evil Points: +412 (Full harem reunion — Nascent Soul grade new additions — confirmed pregnancies x2 — management complexity increase — general productive chaos)]

[System Note: Current harem count: 9. Pregnancy count: 2. New Nascent Soul additions: 2. Spatial requirements: Significantly exceeding current cave infrastructure. The System recommends: a compound. The System notes this is the first time it has recommended real estate. The System acknowledges this is an escalation.]

’I know,’ he thought.

He looked at all of them.

"I will go to runes tomorrow to find hidden realms."