My name is Ethan Gray, and I am a tragic transmigrator.
I've been stuck in this world for over a hundred years, held hostage by a System for just as long — living out my days in idle comfort, signing in, clocking out, drinking tea, and admiring flowers.
Then, just now, a general from the Aurewyn Empire showed up at my door holding a baby girl barely past six months old, claiming she was my daughter.
He shoved her into my arms without another word and left.
I stood there, stunned.
My mood, to put it mildly, was complicated.
Over a hundred years as a transmigrator, and I'd just become a father.
---
Tens of thousands of miles away, beyond the mountains, a carriage drawn by two feral beasts rolled to a stop. The aura rolling off those creatures was enough to drive every beast within a hundred miles into retreat. None dared approach.
Inside the carriage sat Seraphine Ashveil — Empress of the Aurewyn Empire.
Her presence here was no coincidence. Two years ago, she had hit a cultivation bottleneck, exhausting every method she knew in her attempt to break through to the sixth tier of the emperor realm — all without success. Left with few options, she'd set out to clear her head and search for another path forward.
She hadn't expected that journey to end in ambush by the forces of three rival empires. Nor had she expected to cross paths with an utterly shameless scoundrel — a man whose cultivation was clearly beyond measure, yet who had played the part of a mortal with nothing to his name.
Caught deep in the ambush, unwilling to drag what she believed to be an ordinary man into her troubles, she had pulled him along as she fled. In the end, even she couldn't hold out against the combined might of the three empires' experts. Her life had hung by a thread.
It was only after she staggered into the wooden house — the scoundrel's home — that he dropped the act entirely. A power that shook heaven and earth erupted from him, and with a single gesture, he obliterated all three experts.
She had witnessed it all through her injuries before losing consciousness. When she came to, her innocence was gone.
She, an empress, had been violated.
The memory made her teeth clench. An involuntary surge of pressure bled outward from her, filling the carriage.
*"Bastard!!"* she hissed. *"If the Aurewyn Empire weren't already under threat from three rival empires — if I weren't afraid for Sera's safety — I would never have handed her over to a scoundrel like you. Once I've dealt with those three empires, I will come for her myself. And when I do, I will make you pay for everything."*
---
Back at the wooden house, Ethan looked down at the small, sleeping bundle in his arms and felt something entirely new stir inside him.
He lifted one of her tiny hands. A rich, unmistakable bloodline aura radiated from her, sinking straight into his bones.
Bloodline power.
*"This… she's really my daughter."*
His hands trembled. The dazed look on his face melted into something warm, something he didn't have a name for yet.
*"That's correct, Host. She is your biological daughter."*
*"Two years ago—"*
Before he could finish the thought, the System's flat, mechanical voice cut in — toneless, as always.
*"You shut your mouth,"* Ethan snapped. *"If it weren't for that absurd mission you gave me two years ago, none of this would have happened."*
He hadn't been able to help it. Two years ago, he'd been one step from the ascendant emperor realm — but the laws of this world couldn't sustain the influx of ascendant emperor energy. His cultivation had been granted to him whole, arriving out of nowhere, and he still hadn't fully learned to control it. So the System had issued him a mandatory mission.
The mission: rescue Seraphine Ashveil, Empress of the Aurewyn Empire.
Simple enough, he'd thought. Until the System added its restriction: he was not permitted to use his cultivation to save her. Only once she was inside his wooden house could he act.
What followed was, in a word, a disaster. By the time he'd gotten Seraphine back to the house, she was already critically wounded, moments from death. If he didn't treat her immediately, she would die — and then the mission would fail, and his breakthrough would be out of reach.
Desperate, he'd asked the System for a life-saving medicinal pill.
The System had given him a Dragonfire Blossom Pill.
It did have healing properties. It also had… side effects.
Ethan let out a hollow laugh. A hundred years in this world, and he'd never so much as held a woman's hand. His first time — gone, under those circumstances. And in return, he'd earned the lasting resentment of an empress.
*Thanks for nothing, System.*
*"You cannot blame this System entirely. You asked for a healing medicinal pill. This System provided one. The side effects were not this System's primary intention."*
Ethan stared at nothing for a long moment.
*"You are genuinely despicable."*
*"We share a fate. If you die, I cease to exist as well."*
Their bickering was cut short.
At some point, the small bundle in his arms had opened her eyes. A pair of wide, watery blue irises gazed up at him — clear and startlingly perceptive, as if they could see straight through him.
*Those eyes…* Ethan thought. *They're just like her mother's.*
For a first-time father, looking down at his daughter — round-cheeked, luminous, like a little porcelain doll — was enough to make his heart clench with something helpless and adoring.
In his past life, he'd died alone. In this one, he'd been stranded in the mountains for over a century with nothing but a System for company. He'd never once imagined he might get to be a father.
He held her a little tighter.
Genuine, uncomplicated happiness settled over him — the kind he hadn't felt in a very long time.
---
The baby in his arms, however, was having a very different experience.
Sera was, in this life, the daughter of the Aurewyn Empress. In her previous life, she had been something considerably more significant.
She was from the High Realm. An eternal lord realm expert. *The* eternal lord realm expert — Eternal Lord Vael, peerless within her tier, invincible to all who shared her level.
She had died in the Ascendant Emperor's Vault, ambushed without warning by five eternal lords acting in concert. They'd shown no honor, no restraint. In the end, she had lost.
*Eternal Lord Aurin. Eternal Lord CEthan . Eternal Lord Maren. Eternal Lord Draveth. Eternal Lord Ossian.*
*Every last one of you — just wait.*
*When I return to the High Realm, I will have you all cut to pieces, cast into the Void Cage, denied reincarnation for eternity.*
Her grand scheming was interrupted by something being pushed into her mouth.
She blinked.
*What is this? Mortal, what are you putting in my—*
Sweet.
Warm.
She stilled.
A phantom — faint but unmistakable, the image of an ancient great demon — flickered briefly behind the bottle. Eternal Lord Vael recognized it immediately.
*Beast milk.*
*A great tonic.*
She had just reincarnated. Her memories were intact, her mind sharp as ever — but she was, for all practical purposes, a baby. She couldn't speak. She couldn't cultivate. She couldn't cause trouble even if she wanted to. She simply had to be raised.
She couldn't read this cheap father's cultivation. She couldn't feel a single fluctuation of power from him. But producing beast milk strong enough to summon a great demon's phantom? That was something even her mother couldn't do.
Her eyes moved from the bottle back to his face.
*Fine. He might be useful.*
She kept drinking. Growing up fast was the priority.