Baby Jiaolong

Chapter 1.

That day... I was, as usual, playing a new xianxia game.

“No, I’m telling you, we need to dissect the brain of whoever put out this piece of trash and called it a xianxia game! Cultivation, my ass. You just sit in a cave and click a few buttons, and that’s it? Why does an idle game have so much to do? This isn’t idle! If it’s idle, why won’t my cultivation level go up?!”

I was furiously hammering away at the keyboard, gleefully tearing into the game, when it happened.

[--------------------]

Zzt—.

A strange sensation enveloped my entire body, and my vision turned bright red in an instant.

When I came to, my head throbbing as if it were about to split open, I felt as though I were trapped in a cramped, suffocating prison.

The situation was so sudden that I wondered if I’d been kidnapped.

Bang. B-bang.

I knocked against something.

With a crack, blinding light poured in.

I blinked and looked around, my jaw dropping on its own.

“... What?”

What I saw was a vast cave.

A mysterious pool, black as ink, filled with spiritual energy flowing down from the walls on every side.

At its center lay a giant eggshell. It was a ‘Jiaolong egg,’ something humans couldn’t obtain even if they offered a fortune.

Just moments ago, I’d broken out of the egg, and now I was soaking in the water.

My body had the shape of a baby jiaolong, with the beginnings of horns and scattered silver scales.

This was on a whole different level from ordinary reptile scales.

The silver scales, intricately overlapping from head to tail, were harder than steel or jade, yet flowed in graceful, wave-like curves.

“But wait, a jiaolong?! Could this be a xianxia world?”

Beneath their silver surface, it was as if the mysteries of all creation swirled. Each time the scales slid against one another, the world’s primordial energy settled around me stirred and scattered in tiny sparks.

I was still in the transitional stage before evolving into a true dragon, but the pair of horns rising from my forehead alone radiated the intimidating presence of a higher being.

The weight of my massive body and bones.

Yet moving it wasn’t difficult at all.

A body this heavy should have put a strain on me, but I couldn’t feel any at all.

“But what do you mean, a jiaolong? I was playing a game just a moment ago.”

My confusion lasted only a moment before the world’s primordial energy, filling every corner, streamed into my nostrils with each breath.

The cave was a dense, heavy sea of spiritual energy. I didn’t even need to meditate or rack my brains to cultivate here.

In xianxia, human cultivators struggle to draw the world’s primordial energy into their bodies and turn it into a Golden Core.

That energy, in its raw form, is poison to humans.

So they create something like a filter called a dantian and cultivate it to advance their realms.

Spiritual energy is what filters out the harmful parts of the world’s primordial energy before letting it into the body.

That’s what spiritual energy is.

The spiritual energy inside the dantian condenses into a Golden Core, and by infusing it with mind, qi, and body, one creates what’s called a Nascent Soul.

Struggling for hundreds of years to advance one’s realm—that’s cultivation.

More precisely, that’s human cultivation.

But yao beasts...

A jiaolong, a rather high-grade yao beast, was different. Just by breathing, the world’s primordial energy gathered in the inner core in my belly.

Raw, unfiltered energy was powerful all on its own.

‘If I remember right, the realms for yao beasts are...’

The realms differ from one xianxia story to another, so I wasn’t sure.

But I think their rough ranks go Yao Minion, Yao Soldier, Yao General, Yao King, and Yao Venerable. As for the specific realms, if I went by the game I used to play...

Yao Creature.

Yao Harmony.

Yao Knot.

Yao Fate.

Yao Tribulation.

Yao Origin.

That’s the order, as far as I knew.

“But why did I become a jiaolong?”

My stomach rumbled.

I wondered if there was anything to eat, but there was plenty.

By the pool near the cave abode, spiritual fruits hung in bunches, fragrant enough to smell from a distance.

Spiritual fruits dangled from precious spirit trees, and the ground was strewn with spirit grains and herbs.

I picked up one of the spiritual fruits scattered around me and wolfed it down. As its sweet, bitter energy slid down my throat, a hot sensation gathered in my belly, forming a solid mass.

“Hmm? What’s this?”

I hadn’t done anything special.

I’d just stuffed myself with spiritual fruits, then flopped down by the pool and taken a nap. But the energy in my belly compressed into a heavy mass, and every cell in my body began to tingle. After sleeping for three straight days, I woke up to find that I’d grown quite a bit.

“Is this shell mine? Did I shed my skin in my sleep or something... Reptiles really are reptiles.”

After a week of lazing around and patting my belly, I broke through a realm that most human cultivators couldn’t reach even after decades of cultivation.

“I got an inner core, so did I reach the Yao Creature realm? That’s awesome.”

Unlike human cultivators, the realms of yao beasts are determined by the number of inner cores they have.

Each inner core is sometimes called one yao. If you compared it to human cultivation, it would be like reaching the Qi Refining stage.

“Wow, this is awesome. Cultivation? Why bother with that? I get stronger just by eating and sleeping. Idle games are the best!!”

I rejoiced.

I might not have a human body, but I was living the life of a jiaolong, an apex predator who seemed to have no equal in this world.

And for good reason. Even in xianxia games, jiaolong scales and inner cores are used to make some of the highest-grade magical artifacts and pills, depending on their quality. On top of that, I could grow infinitely stronger just by eating and sleeping without lifting a finger.

“... Could I get hunted? That might be a little scary.”

Still, if I stayed in this cave to cultivate, I might be safe. As far as I could tell, this cave was a jiaolong’s den, a place my parents had prepared for me.

Otherwise, why would they have left an egg in a place like this? They’d set me up with everything I needed to eat and grow on my own, hadn’t they?

“Maybe I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth!”

But that only lasted a day or two.

I counted the days by scratching lines into the wall with my short front legs.

I roughly kept track of time by scratching a line whenever I got hungry twice. It had already been three months since I was born.

Boredom was beginning to rear its head.

“... Ah, I’m bored.”

I remembered someone once saying that boredom was proof you were lonely.

But leaving the cave was a little scary. I was top-grade magical artifact material, after all. What if I got hunted?

It wasn’t like I could interact with anything else, either. Listening to nothing but the sound of water in this pitch-black cave filled me with an overwhelming loneliness.

Having a full belly and a warm back was nice for a day or two, but staying here all the time was so boring I felt like I was going to die.

A world without phones, short videos, or online forums.

“This place is practically designed to drive you crazy.”

I grumbled to myself and was just wishing I were human instead when—

Zzt—Pop!

A translucent blue window suddenly popped into existence in the corner of my vision, in empty space where there had been nothing before.

[Connected to the Yao Immortal Gallery.]

“Huh?”

Even after rubbing my eyes and looking again, it wasn’t a hallucination. It was a neatly laid-out forum, reminiscent of the online gallery I used to visit all the time.

“The Yao Immortal Gallery... I guess it’s a forum for yao cultivators?”

All sorts of yao cultivators hiding throughout the planes were posting away in real time on the board.

[LotsaTails: Ugh, those human cultivators are making a racket on the mountain ridge again today. I wish humans would just go extinct.]

[Black Wind: Humans think they’re the only lords of creation. They’re so obsessed with stealing our inner cores. We should just kill every last one of them.]

I stared blankly at the window floating in the air.

The yao beasts were posting some pretty colorful shit about how much they hated humans.

The bizarre forum, where they shared cultivation methods and tips for looting human sects, was different from what I knew, but still awfully similar.

It even felt familiar.

“This is... pretty awesome.”

I wasn’t lonely anymore.

With the corners of my mouth lifting, I began tapping on the keyboard window in the air.

Of course, I wasn’t using my hands.

My will.

In xianxia, you tapped away with your spiritual sense, like a wave of energy.

Using the Yao Immortal Gallery required a certain amount of yao energy and spiritual sense.

Well, that much was standard for a xianxia forum.

[Author: Baby Jiaolong]

-Waaah, newbie here!

The view count shot up as soon as I posted. The comments filled with bewildered questions from the famous old hands among the great yao beasts across the continent.

Now this is why I love forum lurking.

[AwkwardTurtle: Newbie? What’s that? For some reason, it rolls right off the tongue.]

[LotsaTails: A jiaolong? Do you have an inner core?]

[HumansSuck: Do you like humans? Want to read my post?]

└Black Wind: Do not read this guy’s post!

From that day on, there was no time to be bored in my underground cave. When I got hungry, I picked spiritual fruits by the pool and ate them. When I was full, I lay down and browsed the Yao Immortal Gallery, checking out posts stoking hatred for humans.

[Author: [HumansSuck]]

-If a yao beast really wants to advance its realm and compress its inner core into something nice and dense, there’s no material more cost-effective than humans.

Especially humans born with Dao Seeds or Heavenly Spirit Roots—they’re walking spirit pills. I’ll teach you how to make a real human pill.

You can boil just any human you catch, but all you’ll get is dregs. You have to pick 'heavenly prodigies from orthodox great sects who’ve at least dabbled in spiritual energy.

These guys have been raised on all sorts of spirit herbs and expensive pills since they were young, so their whole bodies are lumps of top-grade medicinal tonic.

The important part is to cram their murderous resentment, born from their screams of agony, into the pot with them. That raises the quality of the pill.

“Ugh... That’s a bit much...”

Just when I was starting to feel a sense of camaraderie, a post like this would pop up and remind me all over again.

That I really had become a yao beast.

Of course, there were plenty of helpful posts too, not just shitposts like that.

[Author: Abracadabra]

-The Qi Gathering stage comes first, then the Core Condensation stage, when a solid yao core forms in your belly. When your stomach gets unbearably itchy and stuffy, don’t just sit there—move your body. Otherwise, your inner core will get stuck.

“How does an inner core get stuck? It’s not an egg. That’s ridiculous.”

That shitpost I’d dismissed as a joke soon saved my life.

“Ugh!”

After doing nothing but eating, shitting, and posting in the cave, my oversized inner core got stuck in my body. Was “stuck” really the right word for it?

Anyway, maybe because it had settled in some weird spot, my body felt out of balance, and my lower belly kept throbbing with pain!

[Author: [Baby Jiaolong]]

-Uuuaaagh!! My inner core’s stuck! What do I do?! Help meeeee!

└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└Baby Jiaolong: Don’t just laugh!!!!!!!!!!!!

└[AwkwardTurtle: Try banging against the wall.]

Banging against the wall?

What kind of stupid advice was that?

I was going to ignore it, but no one else replied. I figured I might as well humor them and slammed my body into one side of the cave.

Thud—!!

“Aaaagh! It just hurts... Huh?”

I felt a little better.

But the dull pain in my lower belly kept coming back, so it looked like I had to keep going.

“Ah, whatever.”

Thud! Thuuud!!

Every time the massive boulders cracked apart, I could feel my inner core compressing more tightly.

[Baby Jiaolong: Thanks, [AwkwardTurtle]... I’ll pay you back someday for this.]

[AwkwardTurtle: Then give me merit.]

└Baby Jiaolong: How can I give you any if I don’t have any...

Anyway, my daily routine was just eating, shitting, and posting. Even that was enough for my cultivation to grow on its own, and my inner core kept getting bigger and more compressed.

And then a hundred years passed.

“Ah... Finally.”

I advanced to the next realm.

From Yao Creature to Yao Harmony, then all the way to Yao Knot... A lot happened.

Most of it was eating spiritual fruits and posting shit, but a lot happened, anyway.

After reaching Yao Knot, another inner core formed atop the one I’d already compressed.

I didn’t do anything in particular.

I cultivated just by breathing.

‘I finally reached Yao Knot! In that case...!’

Once yao beasts reach around the Yao Knot realm, the moment of taking human form arrives. It varies from beast to beast, but I figured it would probably happen for a jiaolong.

And at last, the great turning point arrived: the moment of transformation, when I would shed the shape of a massive beast and become human.

It was a painful ordeal, a mysterious force surging through me as if it were burning my veins while my bones were rearranged. Instead of gritting my teeth, I opened the Yao Immortal Gallery in the air and started furiously hammering away at the keyboard.

[Author:Baby Jiaolong]

-It hurts so much while breaking through to human form. Any painkiller recommendations...?

└Red Mist: Lmao, you’re in the middle of transformation pains now. No point trying to meditate through it. Just read the trending posts and laugh.

LotsaTails: True. If you take your mind off it, you won’t even notice the pain.

└Baby Jiaolong: Okay, thanks. I’ll go read about how to make human pills.

As I giggled over the Yao Immortal Gallery’s shitposts to forget the pain, the jiaolong’s hulking body vanished without a trace.

“Huh? No heavenly tribulation... I was kind of looking forward to it. Is it because I’m a jiaolong?”

Silky, snow-white hair, a pair of firm red horns, and the tiny, pretty form of a human girl.

That was me, reborn as a princess of the yao beasts.

I flicked my tiny hand, and purple lightning crackled softly at my fingertips.

My inner cores had grown denser and more solid, and my whole body was brimming with strength.

“But why am I a girl...?”

That was the only thing I couldn’t figure out.