Chapter 1268: The Only Rule and Law of the Jungle!

Phei’s thumb moved slowly over the steering wheel.

He had almost asked Melissa how long she had known about the pregnancy again during breakfast.

The questions had come to him several times over breakfast.

When had she discovered it?

How many hours had she carried that knowledge alone? Had she sat somewhere touching her stomach and imagining how he would react? Had she been afraid?

Phei looked sideways again.

Melissa’s expression stopped him.

She looked like she had entered utopia and politely refused to return.

Her fingers moved gently over her belly while a private smile remained on her face, soft and peaceful and so completely happy that Phei suddenly found the investigation unbelievably useless.

Who cared whether she had known yesterday morning or the evening before?

They had their child.

That was what mattered.

And somehow, knowing about that tiny life had washed something else out of him too.

The guilt.

Phei’s expression slowly changed as the villa disappeared behind another bend.

He had spent far too much time thinking about what happened in Anarctica afterward. About the people he’d killed, the people enslaved beneath his Marks and how easily commands had come from him while the Void and Eira possessed enough power to carry them out.

He had blamed the circumstances in little ways.

Eira and the Void had poured her strength into him and the three of them been controlling his body time to time shifting who acted and who did what and what.

That deeper presence had been the one looking through his eyes when World Transcendents died and others received Slave Marks.

All true.

Also complete bullshit.

Phei knew that now; the and Eira Void had possessed the hand and provided him strength.

But the decisions had belonged to him.

Kill him. Spare her. Mark those two. Take the Coffer.

Those thoughts had been his and at the end he’d bene the one in the control and he’d been the one in cot nil of his body when he freed the elves.

Those choices had been his.

And if time reversed and placed him in Anactica again, knowing everything he knew now?

Phei would give the same orders.

Every fucking one and after this retreat with Melissa and revealing about his child something inside him finally settled with that admission.

Why had he been pretending otherwise?

The Ancient Naga had driven a dagger through his heart and prepared another for his throat. Cassian and the others had tried to kill him. The Vampire Lady had nearly shattered his entire body:

They had been enemies standing between Phei and something he needed and the moment he’d appeared on that Dead Winter Realm, only one truth had remained; they were his enemies and kill or be fucking killed!

So should he have apologized while they murdered him?

Should he have spared every useful enemy afterward because slavery offended some pretty little conscience inside him, even knowing those same beings could return tomorrow and tear through people he loved if given an opportunity or offered freedom by their captors as long as they Tok care off him or his loved ones?

No.

’So... fuck that.’

The world he had entered did not work that way.

Cultivation had stripped civilization down to something embarrassingly ancient beneath all the estates, noble surnames, expensive cars and elegant halls.

Strength!

That was the rule beneath everything.

Strength decided whether ancient families survived.

Strength decided whose bloodline became inheritance and whose became history.

Strength allowed Danton to treat World Transcendents like chained weapons.

Strength allowed Legacy Families to butcher weaker people, steal children, bury crimes and continue smiling beneath chandeliers afterward.

Strength allowed those two families to murder his parents, Melissa’s fourth child and took Althea too!

And strength was the only thing that could guarantee Phei never had to stand helplessly beside another grave belonging to someone he loved.

His father.

Mei-Lin, his mother.

Melissa’s child who never even got a names much less a grave!

The things they’d done to such an innocent life always made his blood boil in anger!

Everyone his family had already lost.

Phei’s jaw tightened.

He was done apologizing inside his own head for understanding the world he lived in.

He had been selfish in Anactica.

Good.

He would be selfish again.

He had enslaved those beings because they were useful and because leaving them free created risks he was unwilling to accept and killing them outright would be a waste and killing the others made a good example to the rest!

He would do that again too.

If an enemy forced him to choose between their freedom and his family’s safety, Phei already knew which side of that moral equation was getting thrown off the fucking page.

Cruel? Maybe, he didn’t care.

Merciless? Sometimes, of course, he didn’t care!

Phei could live with both.

What he could not live with was another day standing helpless because he had been too frightened of becoming ruthless enough to protect what mattered.

His eyes shifted toward Melissa again.

She caught him looking this time.

Her brows lifted slightly, a silent question forming in those warm eyes, but Phei only smiled.

Then he reached across the console.

Melissa looked down as his fingers found hers; her expression immediately softened.

Phei threaded their hands together before bringing hers toward him and pressing a kiss against her knuckles. Melissa’s other hand remained resting over their baby while Phei returned their joined hands toward the center console.

The road widened ahead.

They left the smaller hill route and merged onto one of Paradise’s main roads, morning traffic opening across several lanes beneath the brilliant sun. Phei guided Sienna’s predatory machine into the flow with one hand, the other refusing to release Melissa’s.

Something almost frighteningly peaceful settled over him.

He knew why he wanted power now.

Maybe he always had.

But the answer had gained another face; a new soul and presence in his life.

One he had not even seen yet.

A tiny face.

A child who would one day open his/her eyes inside a world where monsters wore expensive suits, Gods hid inside mortal bodies with ancient bloodlines and old grudges could cross centuries just to murder someone born with the wrong name.

Fine.

Let that world remain cruel.

Phei would simply become crueler whenever it came for his family.

Let cultivation demand strength.

He would gather enough that the word eventually became insulting.

Let enemies rise.

He would kill the ones who needed killing, enslave the ones worth keeping, protect the people who belonged beside him and continue climbing until merely considering Melissa or their child as a target became a form of suicide.

His guilt had accomplished nothing.

His hesitation had protected nobody.

Phei squeezed Melissa’s hand.

She looked toward him again.

This time the smile he gave her was different.

Calm. Certain. Happy.

’To hell with the guilty conscience.’

Phei had a mother to protect. Women he loved. Family. Friends. A child now, impossibly small and already valuable enough that he would burn worlds before allowing anything to reach it.

If becoming powerful enough for that required him to become worse in the eyes of his enemies, then they were welcome to hate him from somewhere beneath his feet.

This was a cultivation world now.

Power could wear beautiful names, noble teachings, ancient philosophies and enough heavenly scripture to bury a mountain, but beneath all of it rested one law every living thing eventually understood.

Strength.

’Immense, merciless, endless strength.’

And Phei intended to have enough of it that nobody he loved would ever again need to discover what helplessness felt like.