Linger puckered her lips in clear disagreement.
“Who says gender doesn’t matter? I, for one, can’t accept being in a male body. And if Cousin Yue were Cousin Brother Yue instead, I’d stay far, far away from her.
As for descendants, Aunt, Uncle has been gone for many years. You can’t spend the rest of your life clinging to memories, can you?”
Xueqing was choked speechless by Linger’s words, her beautiful eyes widening in anger until she couldn’t even get a sentence out.
Xuan Yue straightened and knelt down properly.
“Mother,” she said, “we cultivate, grow stronger, and lengthen our lifespans for what if not to protect those dearest to us?
Without a Demon Emperor, can the Celestial Fox Demon Emperor clan still be called the Demon Emperor clan?
To force Linger to sacrifice her happiness and betray her own heart just to extend some long-fallen glory and a future that may never come—don’t you think that’s too cruel?
Linger has been sealed for many years. She’s only a little over five hundred now, still in her juvenile fox stage. Her mental age isn’t even of age yet. To be talking about heirs and bloodlines already… isn’t that far too early?”
Xueqing forcibly calmed herself. She stared fixedly at Xuan Yue.
“Linger is being childish. Are you being childish too?”
Xuan Yue knocked her forehead heavily to the floor in a kowtow.
“I only wish to follow my true heart and what I really want. I beg you, Mother—please fulfill my wish.”
Xueqing’s body trembled. She clenched her fists tight.
“You know this,” she said. “Those of the imperial bloodline who have proven the Heavenly Dao are born with the mark of the Heavenly Dao’s laws imprinted in their blood. It’s very easy for them to resonate with the Heavenly Dao and draw down heavenly phenomena.
You both carry pure Demon Emperor blood. If you, as direct-blooded cousins, commit incestuous acts, and that draws Heaven’s wrath… then what?”
Xuan Yue answered in a low, steady voice.
“Even if that day comes, I would die without regret.
While I live, I want to live freely and to the fullest.
If I die, I want to die openly and without shame.”
Xueqing sucked in a sharp breath. A knife of pain stabbed through her chest.
Had Xuantian himself not also lived freely, and died openly and without shame?
And then what?
He left her alone in this world, utterly by herself. Husband gone, younger brother gone. The Celestial Fox royal line hunted almost to extinction. Only she and these two children remained.
If anything happened to Linger and Yue, she would lose the only two loved ones she had left…
She wanted to grant them their wish. She wanted to bless their love. But with what could she afford that blessing? With her two children’s lives?
She could bear a lifetime of loneliness. What she could not bear was losing both her children.
The mere thought of that possibility made a cold chill crawl up her spine.
Between two evils, she could only choose the lesser.
Her resolve hardened. Her tone turned icy.
“If you don’t even have your lives, what right do you have to talk about love?”
“Then let us share one quilt in life and one resting place in death,” Xuan Yue replied.
Linger bristled.
“And what, if I give up being with the one I love, I just won’t die anymore?
No one will kill me?
I won’t get struck dead by lightning during a tribulation?
I won’t run out of lifespan and die of old age?
The Demon Emperor Ancestor was that powerful, and didn’t he still die in the end?
Either way, we all die sooner or later—so why can’t I at least live this one life happily and die without regrets?”
Xueqing’s voice grew colder.
“And if I refuse to agree?”
“Aunt, you’re being unreasonable!” Linger burst out, furious.
Xuan Yue secretly tugged on Linger’s sleeve. She lifted her head to look at Xueqing.
“Mother…”
She bit her lip, hesitating for a moment.
“Please allow me some time to think this over.”
From the way her mother’s expression had cooled, and the hint of icy, ruthless light in those eyes, Xuan Yue already knew words wouldn’t get through today. If they kept pushing, there would be only one outcome: her mother would forcibly separate them.
Her mother might seem gentle most of the time, but if truly provoked, she acted like thunder—swift, decisive, merciless.
Up against her, the two of them together wouldn’t stand a chance. One raised finger from Xueqing would be enough to leave them unable even to struggle.
“Think about what?” Xueqing asked.
Linger turned to look at Xuan Yue as well, confused.
Xuan Yue turned to Linger.
“Linger, you’re not afraid of dying,” she said softly. “But I’m afraid of you dying. Mother’s concerns are not without reason.”
Linger ground her teeth in frustration.
Xuan Yue went on.
“Two people are together in order to be happy and live better lives, aren’t they?”
She grabbed Linger’s hand and held it tight.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you. Even more than that, I don’t want anything to happen to us.
If something did, what would happen to Mother?”
Linger was struck speechless. She had no idea how to refute that, yet she couldn’t accept it either. Her chest felt stifled and tight.
But when she looked into Xuan Yue’s eyes—so full of sincerity and affection, filled with nothing but her—she knew Xuan Yue wasn’t trying to abandon her.
She angrily yanked her hand free.
“Think whatever you want!” she shouted.
Xuan Yue raised her head, looking at Xueqing again.
“Mother, please give me time to think it through.”
Xueqing didn’t actually want to force them to the breaking point either. Her expression softened a little and she nodded lightly.
“Can you not lock us up, then?” Xuan Yue asked. “Just look at how filthy Linger is.”
Though Linger had returned to human form when she saw her aunt, the fur coat formed from her fox pelt was so dirty its original color was almost unrecognizable. Crawling out of that tunnel had left her covered in dust.
She clearly had plenty of ability, but for fear of alerting her aunt, she hadn’t even dared to use the most basic earth-escape technique. She’d had to claw her way out of the ground, head to toe in dirt—and in the end she’d still been intercepted by her aunt.
“Go back and wash up,” Xueqing said. With that, she turned and left.
Xuan Yue grabbed the sulking Linger and dragged her back to her own bedchamber. Using “taking a bath” as a pretext, she closed the doors, pulled Linger straight into the secret escape tunnel that had been built when the Demon Emperor’s palace was constructed, and followed it down into an underground chamber.
There, they stepped onto the teleportation domain gate and headed directly for the cultivation realm.
The escape passage had been constructed with great care. The teleportation gate was buried deep underground and covered by formations. When it was activated, not the slightest ripple leaked out.
Xueqing would never have imagined her own daughter would dare play tricks on her. By the time she realized Xuan Yue and Linger were gone, the two of them were already nowhere to be found.
* * *
Yu Mi was startled by the commotion outside the hall. When she rose and came out, she happened to see Xueqing pulling the palace doors shut, then leaning against them with a trembling sigh.
That trembling breath was like a silent sob, full of helplessness and confusion.
Yu Mi opened the other door beside Xueqing and slipped out, catching up to Linger and Xuan Yue just as they reached the main gates of the Emissary Manor.
Yu Mi’s pretty face tightened.
“What are you running for? If Ancestor-Grandmaster truly wanted to stop you, to drag you back, do you really think you could have roamed free outside all these years?”
She didn’t even need Ancestor-Grandmaster to take action personally, or to invoke the power of the entire demon domain. Just on the strength of Ancestor-Grandmaster’s status as Xuantian Sect’s founding master alone, one word from her would have Xuantian Sect and the whole Kan Gang moving to haul the two of them back.
Linger stuck out her tongue guiltily, gave Yu Mi a fawning smile, and asked, “Why is my aunt here?”
Xuan Yue, however, asked, “How… how is my mother?”
Yu Mi shook her head lightly.
“Bao Gu came back, and your mother rushed over in a hurry. Once she saw Bao Gu, the two of them both started acting strange, as if it had something to do with your father. After that, neither of their moods were right.
Bao Gu shut herself away in seclusion to reforge her sword soul. She wasn’t at ease leaving Ancestor-Grandmaster to go off alone, so she left your mother here and, before she sealed herself in, she told me over and over to take good care of her.”
Xuan Yue didn’t really understand everything Yu Mi was saying, but she grasped the gist.
“Bao Gu’s seclusion has to do with the sword my father left behind? To reforge its sword soul?”
Once she heard “reforge the sword soul,” she had a vague sense of what was going on.
“All this time,” she asked, “Bao Gu never forged a sword soul into my father’s sword?”
“How would I know?” Yu Mi said, shaking her head.
Xuan Yue patted Linger’s arm.
“Don’t worry. My mother isn’t an unreasonable person.”
She strode toward Xueqing’s palace. Seeing the doors tightly closed, she called from outside.
“Mother.”
The hall inside was utterly quiet. Not a sound answered her.
Xuan Yue knelt outside the door and kowtowed heavily, her forehead thudding against the stone.
“Your daughter has been unfilial,” she said. “I’ve made you sad.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than she felt movement at her side. Linger hurried over, knelt beside her, and called softly:
“Aunt…”
There was only silence behind the door.
Xuan Yue and Linger knelt side by side, backs straight.
Yu Mi sat at a jade table in a nearby courtyard and watched them. She waited for quite a while. When none of the three moved, she lost patience and stood.
“When you’re done, remember to come to my little courtyard for drinks and skewers,” she said. “I’ll apologize in advance for leaving first.”
She turned toward the hall and bowed respectfully.
“Ancestor-Grandmaster, Yu Mi takes her leave.”
Linger looked back at her, eyes pleading for help.
Yu Mi gave a short, amused snort.
“Kneel slowly then. If it were me, I’d definitely give you two a proper thrashing.”
She paused, as if reminded of something from long ago.
“Back then, when Grandmaster wouldn’t let me and Bao Gu be together, I left for ten whole years. Looking back on it so many times…”
She gave a bitter little smile.
“I really do regret it. I never fought for it. I never even stopped to think about what I actually wanted, whether I really liked Bao Gu, whether I loved her. I just gave up so easily. In the end I hurt her heart, and I missed the ten most important years of her growth.”
She paused again, then said:
“I thought that by leaving her, she’d live a better life. I thought that by forgetting her, I wouldn’t feel any pain. But in the end, all that ‘it’s for her own good,’ all that ‘it’s for my own good’—it was just self-deception.
Feelings come from the heart. You can’t just cut them off because you decide to.
Once you’ve fallen in love, it’s no longer up to you.”
She said this not just to the two kneeling outside, but through the door to Xueqing within.
“Ancestor-Grandmaster,” she asked, “even if Linger and Xuan Yue part ways, if they aren’t happy, you wouldn’t want to see that either, would you?
Since you want to bless them… then why not truly bless them?”
When she finished, she brushed off her skirt, bowed respectfully through the door, and strode away.
Not long after Yu Mi left, Xueqing opened the door. She stood framed in the doorway, her expression cold as she looked at Xuan Yue and Linger.
“Get up.”
Her gaze landed on Xuan Yue.
Her daughter was no longer the little girl who had nestled in her arms, throwing tantrums and begging for her parents’ protection. In that instant, Xueqing was struck by a sudden, aching sense that her girl had grown up beyond her reach.
Looking at her daughter and at Linger—both children of her own family—Xueqing found she simply couldn’t keep her heart frozen.
Seeing that they still hadn’t risen, she flicked her sleeve. A gentle force swept out and lifted the two of them to their feet.
Linger might be mischievous, but deep down she was a little scared of this aunt of hers. She shrank back at the threshold, not daring to enter.
Xuan Yue simply grabbed her and hauled her inside.
Following at Xueqing’s side, Xuan Yue held tight to Linger’s hand with one of her own and clung to her mother’s sleeve with the other. She looked up at Xueqing pitifully.
“Mo—ther,” she drawled, drawing the word out, “Linger and I spent every day outside scared out of our wits, terrified you’d suddenly show up and unleash your full mighty feminine wrath on us…”
She suddenly lunged forward and hugged her mother’s waist, acting spoiled.
“Mother is the best. From now on, Linger and I will both stay by your side and be filial to you properly, all right?”
Xueqing let out a cold laugh, giving Xuan Yue a sidelong look.
“Linger picked up that stubborn straight-shooter temperament from following Yu Mi around. You, on the other hand, have grown so devious your heart has nine twists and turns. You even dare to trick me?”
Precisely because she was her own daughter, Xueqing had never guarded herself against her. And as a result, she’d been fooled—completely.
They vanished for over three hundred years without a single word.
Xuan Yue blinked, looking up at her with an innocent, aggrieved face.
“I did not,” she protested.
Xueqing sighed softly.
“Go play with Yu Mi and the others. I’m a little tired and want to be alone for a while.”
As she spoke, she turned to look at Xuan Yue again—at her and Xuantian’s child.
This girl was her daughter, yet she didn’t resemble her much at all. There was, faintly, a shadow of Xuantian in her.
Seeing that, though Xueqing’s face was calm, Xuan Yue could tell how listless she was, especially from the look in her eyes. It made Xuan Yue’s own chest ache.
Sensitive as she was, and having heard what Yu Mi had said, Xuan Yue could already guess seven or eight tenths of what was going on. There was no way she was going to let her mother curl up alone in her room to grieve.
Without another word, she grabbed her mother’s arm and tugged her outward.
“Mother hasn’t tried Yu Mi’s cooking yet, has she?”
