Silence blanketed the ancestral temple.
Even Lu Qianfan's adopted sons broke into a cold sweat, staring at the bewildering scene before them.
She was nothing but a lowly False Saint of a mere Sequence, with a Martial Saint's blade pressed to her throat — yet she didn't retreat. She pressed forward, aggressive and unyielding!
Nie Yunyi stared at the proud, defiant woman before him, his gaze flickering, the sharp edge of his sword intent growing ever more oppressive.
Li Fei felt pain prickling across her entire body, as though thousands of invisible steel needles were driving into her skin. Still she refused to yield an inch, certain that Nie Yunyi wouldn't dare go all the way.
She'd guessed correctly. In the end, Nie Yunyi silently withdrew his blade.
When the three-foot sword was locked back into its sheath, his sharp aura dissipated all at once. He seemed to wither, and the frost already streaking his temples turned visibly, rapidly white.
"..."
Nie Yunyi said nothing more. A thousand unspoken words collapsed into a single long sigh.
He turned, gathered up Chang Bin's corpse, and walked silently out of the temple gates. For a Martial Saint capable of splitting rivers and shattering waterfalls, his steps seemed strangely unsteady.
The temple doors swung open with a boom. Nie Yunyi paused for a moment, gazed up at the blazing sun, then lowered his eyes and walked step by step into the distance.
The imperial guards exchanged glances. In the end, at Chancellor Liu's sighing word, they let him go.
The assembled officials parted to clear a path for him, silent, as though bidding farewell to a fallen hero leaving the stage.
— Being a good man just means having a gun pointed at your head.
Watching Nie Yunyi's listless, retreating back, Li Fei's eyelids drooped half-shut.
A Martial Saint of such standing — first cowed by Lu Qianfan, now driven off by a lowly Heaven Realm rebel... If he'd been willing to play the reckless villain, would he ever have fallen this low?
"Your Majesty!"
The eunuch who had served at Zhao Bing's side for years forgot all propriety, shrieking as he stumbled into the ancestral temple and collapsed beside Zhao Bing's body, wailing:
"The imperial physicians? Where are the imperial physicians! Summon them at once..."
But no one was going to answer his cries.
"Your Majesty!"
The imperial guards rushed in as well. The instant they saw the emperor's corpse, they froze in place — then killing intent surged through them. "Where's the assassin? Where is he!"
"His Majesty has passed."
Su Wen spoke softly, distantly. "The assassin has already been slain by Lord Li."
The guards let their weapons droop, a blank look overtaking their eyes.
How could it be... His Majesty had been fine just a moment ago, and now he was dead?
Even the culprit had vanished without a sound...
In the deathly silence, Chancellor Liu stepped back through the temple gates. He looked deeply at Li Fei, then glanced at the three jade tablets on the wall, now dimmed of their light, and swayed slightly on his feet.
He closed his eyes and bowed toward Zhao Bing. When he opened them again, his expression had returned to its usual calm, unfathomable composure.
"The traitor Chang Bin concealed his true cultivation base, colluded with Chu spies, and conspired to murder His Majesty and the entire family of the Prince. He sought to sever the imperial bloodline and bring catastrophe upon the realm."
"Fortunately, in this hour of national crisis, Lord Li stepped forward, struck down the villain, and protected the royal heir — preserving the last remnant of the imperial bloodline."
With that, the old minister — a servant of three reigns — knelt and bowed his head to Zhao Bing's corpse.
"This old servant will devote himself entirely to assisting the Crown Prince, and will not betray His Majesty's final wishes."
Clank, clank...
Amid the ringing of metal, the guards knelt one after another as well — though not facing their sovereign, but bowing toward Su Wen instead:
"We pledge our lives to the Great Song."
"We pledge our lives to the Great Song."
"..."
The clamor of armor and blades carried beyond the temple doors, and the assembled officials knelt in succession, bowing toward the temple:
"We pledge our lives to the Great Song!"
At last, a shrill, grief-stricken wail cut through the chorus of officials:
"Your Majesty, the road is cold — let this old servant add another layer for you—"
A sharp crack rang out as skull met stone pillar, and everything fell abruptly silent. Only the eunuch's blood trickled down the pillar, glistening, mingling with the king's own bloodstains still clinging to the stone, pooling quietly on the ground.
Besides the Empress, only Li Fei remained standing.
She looked down upon the assembled court, reaching out one hand, fingers pressed tightly together, as if she were closing her palm around the sun and moon, the mountains and rivers, the towering imperial court itself.
Then, Miss Chiliarch — who had never once bowed to the Song Emperor — knelt before her own wife and daughter, her knees striking the ground hard.
"We pledge our lives to our sovereign!"
Amid the resounding declaration, a wave of pleasure surged through her mind, thunderous as a rising tide.
...
By the time Li Fei returned to the Prime Minister's Residence, night had fallen deep.
The moment she stepped into her stepdaughter's room, the heavy scent of wine hit her. Li Fei only raised an eyebrow, her tone unbothered:
"Where did you kidnap this little girl from?"
A girl lay asleep on the bed, tear tracks still fresh on her face.
"She's Prince Rong's daughter."
Lilith tipped her head back and took another swig from the bottle, her eyes hazy with drink.
Dowager Consort Tong had voiced her dying wish for Lilith to care for the orphaned girl, then, with nothing left to live for, the old woman had breathed her last.
Lilith couldn't refuse a dying request.
"Then we'll take good care of her — we do owe her that much, after all."
Li Fei casually plucked the bottle from Lilith's hand and took a swig herself, straight from the mouth.
Though it had been Li Fei who'd ordered Lilith to silence witnesses, an act that had claimed innocent lives along with it, her stepdaughter showed no sign of shouldering the blame alone. Instead she naturally folded the guilt onto both of them — and though Li Fei still didn't fully understand the mid-Sequence Ascension Ritual for the Life Reaper Legacy, her uncannily sharp instinct for reading people told her that right now, her stepdaughter needed less a doting, all-forgiving mother and more a wicked stepmother willing to share in the sin.
"Did we... do something wrong?"
Lilith fell silent for a moment, then asked suddenly.
"What's wrong about it? Without developing the Folded Space, how would Loxibrook ever have grown prosperous and strong?"
Li Fei said it as though it were obvious. "Even the Academy teachers teach it that way."
"..."
Lilith stared at her stepmother, her eyes still clouded with confusion.
"If we're soft-hearted, then what's happening to the Great Song today will be our tomorrow."
Li Fei lit a cigarette, her gaze distant and dark. "Only the powerful have the right to enact justice as they see fit. If we were already high-Sequence, we wouldn't need to go through all this trouble — we could just crush them with force, cut down every demon and monster, take what we need, then bring supplies back from Loxibrook to aid the commoners and develop the territory in peace. Everyone wins."
"Maybe there's a better way..."
Lilith murmured, her voice barely a whisper, her head hanging low.
Of course she understood what Li Fei meant — sword and sorcery had always been the eternal creed of the Enros Continent, and this kind of might-makes-right logic was carved deep into the heart of every Transcendent.
But for some reason, she couldn't shake the memory of that graceful, kindly old woman. It weighed on her chest, making it hard to breathe.
"Heh."
Instead of comforting the confused, guilt-ridden Lilith, her stepmother only curled her lips and continued to provoke her, voice teasing and mocking: "Such a sweet, kind, merciful little angel — now you have two choices."
"One: hand over every scrap of loot you plundered here to me, and let me take all the blame while you're at it, so you can go home with a clear conscience — back to your cozy Magic Academy, or run crying to Teacher Annie, and stay a good little girl in your ivory tower."
"Two: remember this feeling of helplessness, grow up fast, and earn yourself more choices for the future."
"You damn — I'll , ."
Her stepmother's taunting shattered whatever control Lilith had left. Tears fell like a string of broken pearls, and she lashed out, venting her fury, her small fists striking Li Fei again and again.
But that wasn't enough to satisfy her. She even grabbed her own twin ponytails and used them to whip at Li Fei.
As one of the Magic Academy's star students, Lilith had always been taught that strength was truth — otherwise she'd never have raised a hand at all.
But her own feelings were a wreck. Was it really too much to ask for a bit of comfort?
And instead she got sarcasm...
A splash of warm liquid on her cheek startled Lilith awake.
She looked up and saw a face more radiant than moonlight.
Her stepmother still wore that flawless smile, her tone taunting:
"Go on, then."
But the tears welling in her eyes struck Lilith's heart like a blade, filling her with an unbearable ache of tenderness and guilt.
Lilith suddenly realized — Li Fei was a kind person too.
She herself had broken down over some of the choices she'd been forced to make while developing the Folded Space — so did this woman, praised far and wide as the Angel of the Solitary Isle, the beloved Philanthropist everyone adored, ever feel any better inside?
Lilith stared blankly at Li Fei, memory after memory flooding back.
She recalled that afternoon, after a fight with her stepmother, when her own mother had taken her hand and sighed with guilt:
"She's the one who raised your tuition... She really does love you."
She saw again the night before they'd left for the folded dimension, walking hand in hand with her stepmother through the Transcendent Market, about to buy her a Life Amulet — and the flash of genuine heartache in those smiling eyes.
She seemed to feel again the warmth of the White Radiance Stone Necklace against her skin.
And she remembered her stepmother during training camp, fingers severed by the headmaster without a single complaint, simply picking them back up, currying favor with those powerful women...
Tears blurred Lilith's vision.
Even someone this radiant knew how to swallow her pride and pour what little warmth she had toward the people she cherished... what right did Lilith have to resent her? What right did she have to stand still?
Maybe... maybe she provoked me on purpose, let me hurt her, just to ease her own guilt?
She's even younger than me!
Under the gentle, pale moonlight, the tears finally broke free, sliding down her chin, dripping onto her collar — and the clay figure of the Life Reaper cradled in her arms bloomed with gray light.
In that moment, Lilith understood the true meaning of tilling in darkness while serving the light, and the divine clay figure seemed to call out, urging her to conceive a Forbidden life and step early into a deeper realm.
The feeling welling up inside her could no longer be hidden. Following the pull in her heart, Lilith leaned in toward the woman who carried both the most beautiful light and the darkest shadow she couldn't bear to look at.
Clearly, even Li Fei hadn't expected that a moment of improvisation would not only shatter what remained of her stepdaughter's defenses, but also clear away the mental fog blocking her path to Transcendence.
Her stepmother merely raised a slender index finger and pressed it gently against the approaching lips, eyes crinkling with amusement:
"What do you think you're doing?"
A flicker of struggle crossed Lilith's sapphire eyes, gorgeous and troubled, before it was swallowed by a haze of tears:
"I want to be near you, stay with you, have you, protect you..."
She murmured the feelings she'd suppressed for so long, and Dowager Consort Tong's dying face suddenly transformed in her mind into the face from their first meeting — that gentle old voice, "cherish those in front of you," echoing in her ears.
Yet Li Fei still held her finger against her stepdaughter's lips, and produced, as if by sleight of hand, a bottle of sobering medicine. She drank half herself, then passed the rest to Lilith.
"And now?"
Her stepmother wiped away her tears, breath sweet as orchid. "Have you thought about the consequences?"
Though it was a question, her eyes were clearly full of encouragement and anticipation — just as they had been with her mother.
"I..."
The wine's fog lifted from Lilith all at once, and her face twisted with struggle and pain.
Clearly, her stepmother's words had reminded her of her mother, waiting patiently at home, and she could no longer escape the guilt, pain, shame, and self-reproach toward her.
But an even more intoxicating scent of tea slid down her throat and through her senses, silently filling her chest.
The blossoming flower on the Forbidden fruit swayed and rustled, letting out a joyous rustling sound.
Even poisoned by a substance named betrayal and taboo, the flower didn't wither — it only bloomed more brilliantly, blossoming to the point of near decadence, looking impossibly alive and impossibly rotten all at once, seductive and sickly, cloyingly sweet and steeped in Depravity — just like the stepmother before her.
Finally, Lilith reached out with both hands, trembling yet resolute, and cupped her stepmother's face — like a nun stepping out of a ruined cathedral, walking step by step deeper into the gray mist of the forest, until she found, at the mist's end, the tentacles of some eldritch god, and offered her devotion to that twisted, sinking, unspeakable thing.
— This was all your idea, you know. You'll have to explain it to Teacher Annie yourself later...
— And maybe beg forgiveness from your other mother too?
— Good luck, stepdaughter.
Li Fei's eyes curved with a smile as she gestured vaguely toward Prince Rong's sleeping daughter nearby, murmuring:
"Why don't... we move somewhere else?"
Lilith no longer had the presence of mind to answer. She simply waved a hand and cast a Slumber spell.
...
The family reunion held to celebrate the successful development of the folded dimension, and the long-desired, unbreakable bond forged with the supreme ruler, didn't wind down until dawn.
"Morning."
Lilith opened her eyes to find her stepmother's stunningly beautiful face right beside hers.
It brought the impossibly wonderful dream from the night before rushing back to her.
Then her nose caught the rich scent of tea in the air, and she realized — it hadn't been a dream at all.
— What, what did I do!
Her blood ran cold in an instant. Lilith's eyes widened in horror.
"What's wrong? Not happy to see me first thing in the morning? You were the one who started it, you know..."
Li Fei's voice carried a note of wounded complaint, though her eyes were plainly brimming with amusement.
Lilith covered her blood-red cheeks and let out a wail of despair, turning away in an attempt to clear her head.
Turning, she found herself face to face with the sleeping girl, still knocked out by several rounds of the Slumber spell.
"..."
People always become rational after the fact.
Lilith finally grasped just how shameful, wretched, and utterly wrong what she'd done was.
She hadn't just come between someone else's relationship.
She had betrayed the mother who had raised her through hardship with her own hands.
"Guh..."
Her sapphire eyes lost all their light, turning hollow and empty.
Her stepdaughter sat up mechanically, retrieved her wand from the spatial ring by the bed, and pressed it to her own forehead, her movements as stiff as a walking corpse.
Magic surged wildly, and the ghostly shape of a Death Reaper's Scythe began to gather in the room.
— I'm sorry, Mom.
— Please forget you ever had a daughter this vile and shameless.
— I love you.
Lilith closed her eyes, a single tear sliding down her cheek.
Realizing what unforgivable harm she had done to the mother she'd depended on all her life, guilt, regret, and self-loathing crashed over her heart like a landslide, like a tidal wave.
Even in death, Lilith couldn't forgive herself for having stolen something her mother treasured as her own life.
Slap!
Li Fei's hand cracked across her face, jolting her awake.
"Huh?"
Lilith touched her cheek in bewilderment, turning to look at her stepmother, whose face had gone in an instant from tender warmth to icy coldness.
"If you did the deed, you own the consequences. Don't think you can just die your way out of it."
Li Fei said, back turned to her, her tone dripping with disappointed frustration.
Then a cold vial of medicine landed in Lilith's arms.
"Drink that. You don't even have the nerve to carry my child anyway. Come find me once you've figured things out."
Li Fei pulled on her dress and walked out the door without a backward glance.
"..."
Lilith bowed her head deeply, staring at the vial in her hands — medicine meant to keep her stomach from swelling.
The images of her mother and her stepmother flickered through her mind like a slideshow, pulling in two opposite directions, threatening to tear her heart apart.
Lilith stood frozen for a long while, lost in thought, before finally dressing and walking outside, where she hurled the vial with all her strength into a nearby lake.
Ripples spread across the water, breaking the reflection on the surface into fragments — much like the tangled, chaotic mess her double mother-daughter relationships had become.
____
________________________________________
💖 Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter to warm your hearts.
🚀 Community Reward: If we reach 20 supporting members, we'll have a +5 chapter marathon across all stories! The romance won't stop.
👻 Come to our secret corner: Search for GirlsLove on (P). You know that's where the magic happens... 😉