Chapter 3354: Three Weeks Of Trouble At The Binggan Clan

It became clear that the child had a talent for humiliating adults simply by pointing out their vanity. Lin Mu laughed until his sides hurt, which made the monks who had stayed nearby and visited every couple days nervous. They did not enjoy their High Abbot acting so mortal.

By week two the clan had developed systems.

There was a feeding roster, a rotation for who would soothe the child when he wanted to be ’soothed’, and a daily schedule posted on a large board that Tao Yinsu tore down at least once a day.

Lin Mu introduced a rule.

If Tao Yinsu misbehaved three times in a morning he had to spend an hour listening to Cattaleya’s recounting of her childhood training. Tao Yinsu tore up the first rule and then fell asleep listening to Cattaleya describe how she had once wrestled a river eel into submission while she was six years old.

Little Shrubby refined his culinary repertoire.

He discovered that certain boiled sea herbs mellowed the infant’s voice and made him sleepy. The beast invented a stew the clan privately called the Twelve Fold Doze. The first ones who tested it needed pats on the back for embarrassment.

Tao Yinsu consumed it, declared it passable, and demanded a second bowl in a style more suited to a duke than an infant. Lin Mu watched it all with faint glee.

The wine chain incident was classic. The dwarves had left a barrel of their special ale for Lin Mu as a gift. He had taken it out for Cattaleya to drink it. Tao Yinsu discovered it, managed to unstopper the barrel by wedging a spirit spoon in the top while three servants took a nap, and then sampled the fumes.

He announced he had become enlightened and attempted to deliver a sermon to a very small audience of kitchen rats.

He was not drunk in the human sense, but the wine did make his already slurry words more slurred and his ideas bolder. He declared the rats his followers and tried to set them on the head of the Patriarch like hats.

The patriarch nearly fainted from indignity. Lin Mu intervened, used a combination of Buddhist patience and a very credible threat about changing the infant’s name to something worse than Binggan Tao Yinsu. That finally sobered Tao Yinsu up enough to hand the rats back without a costumed coronation.

Though it was clear that Tao Yinsu’s control over his spirit qi was only getting better with each passing day.

The third week was a sequence of incremental successes and spectacular setbacks that the clan would talk about for a generation.

Tao Yinsu developed a penchant for impromptu debates while out on daily ’walks’.

He challenged a local fortune teller to a contest of wits and then used a childlike argument tactic that involved constant interruptions, loud noises, and the sudden revelation of a grown man’s childhood nickname.

The fortune teller, losing public face, demanded a rematch. The rematch took place in the courtyard with Lin Mu as impartial judge. Tao Yinsu won by ad hominem and then insisted on returning the prize, a small silver comb, because the hair it would comb was not his to comb.

He also discovered mirrors again and decided he needed to practice being awe inspiring just like he was in his past life. For three days he would sit in front of a polished shield and practice scowling.

Lin Mu found him one morning in what could only be described as a full theatrical study in eyebrow control. The infant’s eyes were serious and his pout professional. It was deeply unsettling and very funny to everyone except the Patriarch who was already thinking of any possible way of retiring early and secluding himself as an ancestor.

A more dangerous episode involved the infant’s curiosity about the Sacred Tea.

The clan had a small supply of imperial tea reserved for important guests. Tao Yinsu asked for it, then sneezed while holding the cup, and managed to spray tea over three guests, a monk, and an irate courier.

Cattaleya turned the incident into a water fight of discipline that ended in the courier being politely dunked by Little Shrubby. The courier was remarkably philosophical about it and took home a better sense of humor.

Another one of the dramatic incidents was the tantrum in the harvest field.

Tao Yinsu was left with a pair of apprentice gardeners to watch. He was given a basket of shellfish, told to arrange them for a lesson in counting... though he didn’t really need to and promptly decided that counting was beneath him.

He hurled the shellfish into the air with great authority. They rained down and created a cascade that astonished a flock of ducks into organized terror. The apprentices panicked and fell over. Lin Mu arrived in record time, caught a runaway duck with Meld, and delivered a small lecture on patience while handing each gardener a few spirit stones as compensation

Still, the single most beneficial development of week three was the baby’s slow, grudging enrollment into a basic routine.

Lin Mu instituted a schedule that combined play, reading aloud from simple moral tales, and short meditation exercises. Tao Yinsu objected strongly to meditation at the beginning, producing an explicit speech on the absurdity of sitting still.

After the third day he fell asleep on the mat and had a dream about being a very short celestial who was accidentally wearing someone else’s crown.

Xukong and Lin Mo provided commentary from inside Lin Mu’s mind, alternating between gruff criticism and snide laughter.

Xukong suggested cultivating the child’s sense of responsibility by assigning him a small task. Lin Mo suggested crowning him with a paper hat whenever he behaved. Lin Mu did both.

Tao Yinsu dutifully watered a single lotus bud each morning with his improved control over Spirit qi, then demanded to be carried by the servants to reorganize the clan’s stack of broom handles into a personal monument.

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