My Mother Has a System but Won't Use It

A cloud that hid the sun\'s rays from their faces moved away, and its blinding light hit them on their faces, making them squint. "What do I want you to do…" Yue Li pondered aloud and then shook her head, "Why should I be the one to decide that? Are you not the smarter one?"

Han Li looked at her with a sigh. Her black gaze looked the same as yesterday while her looks appeared as refreshing as ever, but on her, he could feel a bit of hopelessness. Of a lack of meaning.

She looked almost like the ones who lost their way—The Lost, the cultivators who couldn\'t handle the recurring dreams after each breakthrough and chose suicide instead.

He felt his heart clench, and his anger almost soared—had he been the young and idiotic man he once was, he would have already wanted revenge, but he was not that naive, nor was he so optimistic.

\'This is quite irritating, though,\' he thought.

"Mom, what do you actually want me to do though? Yell out loud that I care for you beyond anything or marry you?" he gently questioned.

"I don\'t know Xiao Li, that\'s what I am telling you… do something," she replied while sniffing his clothes. They smelled so much like her.

But beyond that, she could feel his heart pump.

It seemed… anxious?

"I know how to do it," he sighed. "We\'ll link our hearts."

"Link… our hearts?" Yue Li\'s heart rate quickened.

"I told you earlier about how I am bound and couldn\'t speak much about the enemy that came the other day, right?"

"Yes. Xiao Li."

"That binding was made using something that only the Transcendant Cultivators have. Using Heart Qi… We can just bind our hearts together in a way, and it would change your fears forever and might even…" he paused, "Honestly, Mom, it might even actually complete my own Heart of Cultivation."

Yue Li looked at him with bright eyes. "I am having trouble understanding everything, but it means that you will bind your heart with mine, and you can never go away after that, right?"

"Yes, in a sense. But more than that, it will also fix your confusion and fears without any doubts."

Suddenly, Yue Li\'s eyes darkened, and she shook her head. "That is such an enticing deal. I almost want to lunge at it. But for one, we don\'t have any Transcendent person to help us. Moreover, I don\'t like it. It almost feels like I am forcing you to be with me when you don\'t like me… and I want you to like me naturally."

16:42

Suddenly, Yue Li\'s eyes darkened, and she shook her head. "That is such an enticing deal. I almost want to lunge at it. But for one, we don\'t have any Transcendent person to help us. Moreover, I don\'t like it. It almost feels like I am forcing you to be with me when you don\'t like me… and I want you to like me naturally."

"That\'s dumb. You do know I love you, right?" he asked, feeling really pissed and rather confused himself—maybe, women were as hard to understand as the wise sages of the past said. His mom was also a woman in the end, even though she seemed different from everyone.

She pondered for a while and said with a sigh, "You don\'t have to worry. I feel like my motivation will be back whenever I feel like I want to train. I am just rather unmotivated today. This Heart of Cultivation becoming confused can\'t be that hard to get rid of if I want to train." n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Han Li thought for a while and spoke, this time, for the first time in this life, about cultivation: "Mom, there is a legend that speaks about Motivation, Heart of Cultivation is something vague and not very understandable till you have one solid heart like the Transcendents, but this heart decides what kind of emotions we have as mortals…."

…

Once upon a time, long lost in the pages of history was an ancient tree.

It existed in the desolate world where no wind, earth, water, or fire had yet come to.

In nothingness, it existed as the sole something.

It looked vast, way bigger than anything a man could ever hope to see. When the first signs of life started to appear in the world; the emptiness was filled with land, water, fire, and wind. The tree witnessed and withstood all of that chaos and stood watch over the then, birthing world calmly.

It wouldn\'t budge when the oceans at one part slammed into its humongous branches like puddles slamming into a wall when disturbed. It wouldn\'t flinch when a part of the new forest on one side burned atop its roots. Its leaves, big enough to let giants take cover under it, were seen throughout the world.

In this ancient world covered by the Tree so colossal—a creature walked.

Not many knew how it looked, but the stories say the creature? Beast? Whatever it was, the stories said it had a pair of abyss-like crimson eyes and supposedly a face worthy of mortal nightmares that could steal lives.

It was a creature of horrors.

Maybe the word suited for it was neither beast nor a creature; that was too disrespectful of its divine Sacredness—it was a Demon.

One of the original life of the new world.

It stood mightily under the shade of the Ancient tree, looking up with wonder in its eyes. Below its feet, it could see the waves of the once fearsome ocean slamming hard. In a different direction, there was a desert that stretched long.

It didn\'t know in which way to walk, was it the hot desert or the deep sea?

Should it even walk?

It didn\'t think much.

It chose to go with the more comfortable and cold deep sea rather than the irritatingly hot desert. It walked above the sea with only its waist under the water. His back almost seemed as if it held the world secure, akin to a pillar holding up the sky.

As it walked through the rainy days and got washed by thunder and storms, it bellowed like a child with eagerness. It was happy and interested in these small movements happening around it.

On a day when The Demon reached a part of the sea where even its body, as humongous as it was, was sunken almost all over, only leaving its head behind… something happened.

The Tree shook, it was a gentle and small shake; a tiny tremble—

Stop.

—and the lands, deserts of ice, volcanoes, and everything suddenly came to a stop. The falling little leaves of the small trees around their original ancestor were stuck in the air. The erupting volcanoes were the same, while the Demon was no different. It was frozen in place. It didn\'t move—it couldn\'t move. It stayed frozen like that. But the Demon, for some reason, could still see everything hundreds of thousands of seas away from it. And in that distance, it saw a small fruit, the color of blue so vibrantly beautiful, shine as it grew from a small light at the intersection between the desert and sea.

The Fruit was at the top of one of the heaven-arcing branches of the mighty Tree, but the creature was no longer so tiny as it had been when it wanted to eat the red fruit, if it tried, it should be able to reach the fruit in only some time.

And unlike the past when the Fruit looked so gigantic, it looked like a small delicacy now. But as its beautiful aura exploded into the world, the beast\'s lust was induced.

It wanted it. It wanted the fruit.

It wanted to eat a second of that magical thing that made it into this new form.

Of course, it couldn\'t.

The Tree\'s tremble seemed to have stopped all motion in place as it screamed inside in agony.

In its sharp senses, it could feel little organisms that it had ignored till now race towards the fruit.

They were so small. So tiny.

Why could they move when all else couldn\'t?

They always vanished after some time of looking at them. Why won\'t they vanish now?

Why were they going there?

It couldn\'t make out what creature it was that finally reached the blue and crystalline delicacy clung to the branch, but finally, it saw the Fruit\'s meat vanishing. It saw the two orbs of light in the sky changing again and again from the gentle one at dark and the harsh one at light as the Fruit became little and little.

It screamed shrilly and suddenly, a red light blasted out from its heart.

"I want it! I want it!" it said in its hoarse voice.

Then, it broke out of the restraints holding it back and headed towards the fruit but sadly, the moment it reached near the fruit, the restraint came back, this time, strong enough to hold it back.

…

Yue Li looked at Han Li with a pondering gaze. "So what is the moral of this story?"

Han Li smiled, now calm. "It means only one thing, Mom. There were restraints in this world which even the Sacred Demons couldn\'t break apart but at the end of the day, it was because its heart was weak at that point. The red light is its Heart Qi, and that is as strong as the strength of its heart. If the Demon had a stronger heart, it could\'ve broken that barrier too."

"…I am confused again…" Yue Li drew on his chest. \'I really am so dumb…\'

"This is not your fault mom, let me explain first. The essence of the story is, that brute forcing things like training without motivation to build a routine and discipline is a good thing, but what is even better is having a heart devoid of flaws. Heart aiming for something. If it wants something strong enough, it won\'t need motivation."

"So I have to fix my heart before training?"

"Yes, and I know how to do that. Even though it is quite the thing to do."

"What is it Xiao Li?" she asked, rather curious.

Han Li smiled and whispered something to her ears.

She was stunned, and a crimson hue spread whole throughout her face and body. "You are going to do that? That\'s… that\'s…"

Han Li shook his head. "It is nothing if your training would get back into motion and your heart would be back to normal."

Yue Li gulped. She was not gonna lie—That was such a disturbing but hot thing for Xiao Li to do… but he was really gonna do that?