Chapter 30: Mingzi’s Rebirth in the Demonic Embryo

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Liu Pianpian’s soft call of “husband” was clearly just an unconscious slip of the tongue from Liu Linglin, the dreamer.

And yet, precisely because of that, this emotion was the deepest projection of the current Saintess of the Hehuan Sect’s innermost heart.

Xiao Yi casually pulled the broken sword from his chest as most of the black aura around him dissipated, revealing skin so pale it was nearly devoid of any trace of blood.

That face remained handsome, yet it had long since lost the spirited youthfulness he once carried as the Young Prince.

He walked before Liu Pianpian and spoke in a cold, indifferent tone:

“Longing… is the most unreachable distance. Understanding… is the most insurmountable chasm. Liu Linglin, have you truly loved me?”

A single utterance of her real name nearly shattered the tears Liu Pianpian had barely managed to hold back.

She stumbled backward four or five steps until she pressed against the still-standing pillar of the Pleasure Boat.

And she finally realized that she was no longer that dreamer named Liu Pianpian.

She was Liu Linglin, the current Saintess of the Hehuan Sect.

“Love… husband! I love you, I truly do…”

Liu Linglin’s emotions were spiraling out of control, her voice growing incoherent, yet she desperately tried to express the deepest thoughts in her heart.

But Xiao Yi’s words, devoid of any emotion, cut off her drowning struggle.

“But you not only took my bloodline, you also offered the child in your belly as a sacrifice to the evil spirits, and used the Heaven-Earth Dual Cultivation method of the Yin-Yang Harmony Art to drain my cultivation dry. All so that you, the Saintess, could obtain the Righteous Qi that never belonged to you… all for what your Hehuan Sect calls its grand sect plan.”

At this point, a subtle, nearly imperceptible change finally rippled through Xiao Yi’s emotions.

That change was so slight, yet the faint tremor in his tone and his subdued voice struck Liu Linglin like thunder.

But… what could she say to refute or to argue?

“In the face of the sect’s grand plan, romantic feelings are nothing more than a dispensable game of house. You, the current Saintess of the Hehuan Sect, are like this, and Wang Lihua, my birth mother, is no different. Those who accomplish great things can sacrifice even their closest kin…”

Xiao Yi’s gaze gradually dimmed, and his tone grew heavier and quieter.

“Husband… is that why, at the Southern City Altar at the very end, you refused to look at me even once?”

Faced with the heart-piercing truth Xiao Yi laid out, Liu Linglin had no words to answer.

Yet a stubbornness buried in the deepest part of her heart compelled her to ask that one question.

And Xiao Yi’s answer would determine whether she could face her Inner Demon directly.

“No… no, no, no…”

Xiao Yi’s dimming gaze suddenly flickered with a glimmer of spirit.

“Sister Liu, do you know? Wang Lihua is unworthy of being called my mother. And the woman who can be my mother… there is one and only one…”

He turned his head and looked through the broken ruins of the Pleasure Boat toward Yuning Town on the riverbank.

There stood a young woman, radiating a scent of Magnolia Scent that was familiar to Xiao Yi and slightly annoying.

She was merely a father and daughter pair he had casually saved from wild beasts when his father, Xiao Yunshan, took him on a tour of Yuning Town in years past.

Neither the girl nor Xiao Yi recognized who the other was, yet under Xiao Yunshan’s deliberate arrangements, the girl was accepted into the Xuan Yu Sect and later married into the Xia Manor.

After that, the girl turned the manor upside down, played chess with him when he felt utterly lonely, and tended to him with meticulous care on the bed when he was gravely ill…

Memories of the past flooded back into his mind.

Now, the young woman still carried a faint scent of Magnolia Scent, yet Xiao Yi no longer found it annoying.

He even believed that this was what a mother should smell like.

Xiao Yi’s answer never once uttered Bai Yao’s name, yet in that fleeting moment of recollection, his gentle gaze was filled with the words Bai Yao.

Liu Linglin saw it clearly, and pain pierced her heart.

Her once-calm Heart Lake rapidly turned murky, turning black as ink.

That was the Inner Demon gnawing at her soul—the sign that, after her heart had died, she was about to be fully possessed by the Inner Demon.

But at that very moment, Xiao Yi extended a single finger and gently tapped the ornamental flower mark on Liu Linglin’s forehead.

“Liu Linglin, all things have their causes and effects. Perhaps you don’t know that the child in your belly is a vessel, merely one of the pawns in this grand scheme of the Hehuan Sect. The legacy of the ancient Zong Heng Sect that you seek—I couldn’t care less. But this vessel is of my bloodline, and since that woman tacitly allowed me to do this, I shall not decline.”

Liu Linglin could no longer hear Xiao Yi’s words, because that single finger strike instantly annihilated the Inner Demon in her Heart Lake, restoring its clarity and serenity.

And with that, Liu Linglin completely lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground.

Xiao Yi looked at the fallen Liu Linglin as he himself began to dissolve into a thick, ink-like mist, slowly seeping into Liu Linglin’s swollen belly.

“This body was ultimately born from the power of the evil spirit Mingge. Only by being reborn through a demonic fetus can I truly be resurrected as ‘Mingzi.’ All you outsiders, just wait. When the Yuning tide recedes on the ninth day of the eighth month, after my flowers bloom… a hundred blossoms shall die!”

Xiao Yi’s figure vanished completely amidst the ruins of the Pleasure Boat, leaving only that phrase, “After my flowers bloom, a hundred blossoms shall die,” embedded into heaven and earth like an unyielding night.

Beneath the moon over the river, the Pleasure Boat remained quietly moored on the water.

Shangren Cangjie, a woman with half her bangs veiling her face and clad in a sea-blue long robe, hovered silently in the sky, expressionlessly watching Liu Linglin lying among the ruined pavilions below.

At that moment, a gray raven landed amid the ruins, quietly keeping vigil beside Liu Linglin.

“After dying and turning into an evil spirit, sealed for tens of thousands of years, you ultimately chose to give birth to Mingzi this way, didn’t you, Haihou Mingge?”

Shangren Cangjie’s voice was very calm, as if she were chatting with an old friend, yet she was only talking to herself.

“Descending through a demonic fetus and instantly becoming a Celestial Immortal above, it is indeed a fine choice. But this way, Mingzi loses the qualification to compete for the [Dragon Palace]. Is it all worth it? Well… we two Cangjies… Hmm? Two? No… The ancient Zong Heng Sect passes down a single lineage. I am the only Guigu. Where does this talk of two come from?”

When mentioning her own identity, Shangren Cangjie suddenly felt something was off, yet she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“Forget it. For now, I only need to wait until this junior Liu Linglin gives birth to Mingzi, and Haihou Mingge’s obsessive evil spirit will naturally dissipate. My ten-thousand-year mission is finally complete.”

With that, Shangren Cangjie cast her gaze toward distant Yuning Town and said in a flat tone,

“That being so, I can no longer concern myself with the little ones in this Illusion. You all will have to look out for yourselves.”

…

Inside a rundown hut somewhere unknown, on a simple bed made of piled straw, lay the youth Luo Huai’an, covered in wounds.

“I… I’m not dead?”

Luo Huai’an groggily opened his eyes and realized that although his body ached terribly, his wounds had been neatly bandaged.

He stumbled to his feet and, leaning against the wall, pushed open the door.

And it was at that very moment that the sharp crack of a storyteller’s wooden block rang out.

Luo Huai’an looked up and saw, on the village path outside, a gray-haired young man in a Daoist robe sitting before a dusty, mud-caked square table, striking the table with great vigor as he told his tale.

“Picking up where we left off.

The dragon’s seven sons and the Seven Mansions of the Azure Dragon now face the grand contest of seven dragons vying for their true souls in the Eastern Sea Dragon Abyss.

The thunder flood dragon Ao Tian, the legitimate son of Meng Zhang, the Azure Dragon—strategic and commanding, overwhelming all rivals, his might shaking the Eastern Sea!

Just as he seemed poised to seize the true soul of the Azure Dragon in one fell swoop, a sudden change erupted!Taiyuan圣母, who had long been lurking in the Dragon Abyss, led the Storm Flood Dragon and the Mirage Tower Flood Dragon forces in a surprise assault, determined to settle the score with the thunder flood dragon Ao Tian once and for all.

Ao Tian, confident in his true dragon bloodline, transformed into the Azure Dragon’s true form to command the Eastern Heaven, thinking little of Taiyuan圣母.

But little did he know that Taiyuan圣母 was one who wielded the primal origin of the Ancestral Dragon of heaven and earth, and she fought Ao Tian to a standstill!

A thousand miles of the Eastern Sea churned with wind and waves, the Dragon Abyss was turned upside down, and even the Eastern Sea Dragon Palace itself was on the verge of collapse…

If you wish to know what happens next, listen to the next installment.”

After hearing that passage from the storyteller, Luo Huai’an felt somewhat dazed, vaguely sensing a revelation but failing to grasp anything.

He instinctively asked the gray-haired young man in the Daoist robe:

“Might you be Shangren Cangjie, master of this Cave Heaven?”

“Me?”

The storyteller looked up, and the eyes that met Luo Huai’an seemed to harbor the vicissitudes of ten thousand ages.

He paused, then answered in a calm tone distinct from his animated storytelling voice:

“Shangren Cangjie… that’s merely a trick to fool that woman. Even if I told you my true name, you likely wouldn’t be able to remember it. Well then, at least within this Cave Heaven, you won’t forget it so easily. My title—Guangguai Luli.”