Chapter 615: Ch 615 - Past Life and Present Life

"It seems your earlier battle with Ruzhi left your Dao Heart partly tainted by Ilya’s resentment."

In the Dragon Palace Immortal Pool, the crimson beauty walked ahead with her stately phoenix robes trailing behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder at the white-robed young man and sat down with a faint smile.

"A rare moment of risky demonic transformation. Did you happen to glimpse anything from the old days?"

Yino sat down quietly, lost in thought.

"I saw... when the two armies clashed, you were standing behind the Dragon Dynasty..."

His voice wavered. He could feel the rage stirring in his bloodline, but in his current circumstances he didn’t dare comment on it.

Changli watched him, thoughts drifting back a thousand years.

After some time she lowered her gaze. Then she lifted that jade hand with crimson markings, pressed two fingers together, and tapped sharply between Yino’s brows.

In an instant his eyes cleared. The fire in his heart went out, and the demonic whispers in his ears fell silent.

"Master... I..."

"There’s no need to fear. What you saw were facts that took place a thousand years ago."

She withdrew her fingers and lifted her teacup, sipping quietly.

Yino touched the seal between his brows. "I also saw... a young phoenix girl being publicly executed in the Dragon Palace..."

"That was Zhaoyu. She was your mother’s little sister."

Compared to their last meeting at the Liuli Sect, this time Changli seemed far more willing to speak openly, with fewer reservations.

Yino sat across from her, listening. But the story grew stranger by the moment.

"So my mother is...?"

"Your mother is called Ilya. She was the Princess of the True Phoenix Clan, and once my first disciple."

Changli closed her eyes. Her tone stayed calm as her thoughts traveled back a thousand years.

Yino’s brow lifted. "Wait. So Zhaoyu is my real aunt?"

"That’s right. Though Zhaoyu died early. To you, she’s a deceased relative from a thousand years ago."

He held his tongue and waited for her to continue. But after a moment of silence, his master seemed unwilling to say more.

"Compared to the meaningless dead, what matters most to you right now is this: who am I, and how did I come to be?"

The crimson beauty turned the topic to Yino himself.

Hearing this, he drew a deep breath. "I’m guessing I’m just a demonic embryo abandoned by parents who never loved me..."

He spoke half in jest, yet the words rang true to everything he had ever lived through.

At his words, the hand holding the teacup trembled.

She curved her lips into a smile. "After all these years living with Yuan Xinyao, you must have noticed the special biological cycle of the phoenix Clan."

"Periodic egg-laying...?"

"Correct."

She nodded. "You’ve seen the hens kept at the Grand Tutor’s Mansion. Even without a rooster, hens still lay unhatchable eggs on a regular cycle. Phoenix, though they’ve awakened spiritual intelligence and can cultivate as higher beings, still share the same reproductive nature as their ancestors."

"Wait..."

Yino sensed something off. He couldn’t help recalling what his aunt had once told him.

She had said she saw signs of life in that phoenix egg, and so she carried it through the night to the Dragon Palace to show her master.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and he half-probed.

"Master... you wouldn’t be saying that I’m just an egg mother laid on schedule, would you?"

"That’s right. That’s what you were supposed to be."

Changli smiled knowingly and reached out to pat his cheek.

She remembered that dark, windy night when Xinyao had come running to the Dragon Palace with panic written across her face, cradling an egg in her arms.

"The so-called Ancient True Phoenix, though their bloodline is supreme, cannot escape the biological cycle of laying eggs. Their cycle is simply far slower than that of lesser Phoenix. It takes a full century to produce a single True Blood Phoenix Egg that absorbs the essence of sun and moon."

Her jade hand with crimson markings kneaded Yino’s cheek. The motion was less like pinching a young boy and more like stroking an egg.

She continued.

"In the war between dragons and phoenixes long ago, Ilya was defeated and sealed by the Dragon Clan in the Abyss Dungeon."

"But her heart was filled with hatred. She loathed this world. She fell into Qi Deviation, and over the years her Dao Heart was eaten away by endless resentment..."

"Yino, as I said earlier, in the traditional sense a True Blood Phoenix Egg is a True Blood Embryo nurtured in the mother’s womb, drinking in the essence of sun and moon for a hundred years before being laid..."

"So consider the opposite. What do you think becomes of a phoenix egg nurtured for a century in the Demonic Abyss Dungeon, fed on nothing but resentment and hatred?"

At this, the jade hand with crimson markings stopped stroking his cheek.

Her gaze held a touch of pity, as if she were looking at a poor little child.

"A Demonic Embryo..."

Yino’s face darkened. For the first time he felt like a true orphan, abandoned by parents who had never loved him.

This was a reborn game world, but he had still lived through nearly twenty years here from childhood. How could he feel no connection to this identity?

He was Yino. And Yino was him.

This wasn’t a soul transmigration where someone snatched a body partway through life. He had carried his own consciousness from infancy, and he recognized every elder and every relative in the clan who had ever held him.

Yet now, looking back, he realized not a single person at the Grand Tutor’s Mansion was actually his blood kin.

"Yino, you have only a mother. No father."

"An unfertilized phoenix egg should never possess spiritual intelligence, and could never hatch into a true form."

"So, Yino, you were always meant to be nothing more than an unfertilized egg. But the resentment and savagery Ilya accumulated across a thousand years gave shape to your personality. You came into this world as a Demon Child, savage by nature..."

She went on, thinking of the countless ways Yino had died across her billions of Reincarnation Simulations. Her gaze lowered in quiet sorrow.

She drew a deep breath and continued.

"In all of my past Reincarnation Simulations, you never had a true sense of self. You existed purely as the embodiment of Ilya’s resentment. You bore hatred toward every person and everything in this world. From childhood you inherited your mother’s True Phoenix Bloodline with boundless divine power. But because of your savage nature, from the moment of your birth you tore through the Grand Tutor’s Mansion. You nearly turned the entire He mansion upside down..."

"Across those countless reincarnations, even Xinyao, the one who pitied you most, who couldn’t bear to leave that Demon egg alone in the cold dark Abyss Dungeon, who carried you all the way to the Dragon Dynasty from afar, was struck and wounded by you time and again..."

"In the end, even I had no answer for you. I could only suppress your bloodline with a seal, and ask the Grand Tutor’s Mansion and Xinyao to hide the truth, letting you live in the world as the young master of the Grand Tutor’s Mansion."

"Yino, in those countless reincarnations, no one in this world ever truly loved you. Not even your birth mother ever cared for you."

She paused.

Her tone softened as she cupped his face and leaned forward. A comforting smile touched her stunning face.

"But, Yino, you broke through my billions of simulations..."

"In my eyes, you are a miracle. In all these thousand years, you are the one miracle that has truly brought me comfort."

"You have no father. You should never have been able to awaken intelligence..."

"Perhaps you really are a miracle granted by the heavens. Perhaps your soul never belonged to this world at all. Or perhaps you were just a stray soul drifting among the thousand galaxies, who blundered into the wrong womb, falling into Ilya’s belly while she lay sealed beneath the Demon Abyss..."

"Whatever the truth, you have broken free from your original destiny."

"Yino, I have always been watching you in secret. Through those years, Xinyao would tell me stories about you. She said you were clever from a young age, well-behaved and sweet, so easy to love. She said you were nothing like a savage demon child born of resentment. One day, she came to me with a pair of bells, brimming with excitement, telling me you were not only gifted by nature but boundlessly promising in cultivation. She begged me to ease the Seal on you, so that one day you could better draw on your mother’s bloodline..."

"Yes. Xinyao loves you. Your father at the Grand Tutor’s Mansion and the elders too, they all love you. They were never meant to share a single drop of blood with you. But day after day at the Grand Tutor’s Mansion, they witnessed how the legendary demonic egg of the Primordial Evil Phoenix proved itself..."

At these words, her golden eyes shimmered with starlight.

She gave a soft, beaming smile and cupped the young man’s face. It was as if she had stirred ten thousand ripples through the night sky, and Yino was left dazed by the sight.

He stared at the sweet-faced immortal, unable to find words.

"So..."

"Yino, in my eyes, you are now the one truly unique existence in this world."

"But because of that, you stand out too much. Bit by bit, you keep breaking through one destiny after another..."

"That’s why all these years I refused to show myself. I didn’t dare disturb you. I feared that if I stepped into your world, I might instead derail the path of life you had built for yourself..."

"So I stayed here, listening quietly through the crystal ball, or through Xinyao’s words, to your stories and your new achievements."

"If Iris hadn’t broken the rules at the Liuli Sect that day, trying to crush a junior with her greater strength, perhaps even now I would never have appeared before you. Perhaps you would never have learned any of this. You would still be walking this land as you pleased, breaking one destiny after another, saving the poor souls bound by their fates..."

"You should also know that, even now that you’ve taken me as your master, I have no wish to meddle in your life or your future."

"Because you are you. You have your own path to walk. You’re simply still young and weak, and you need my protection. But you will never be my pawn. Quite the opposite..."

Her voice grew quiet, the excitement fading at last.

She lowered her phoenix eyes and drifted for a moment, as though she had thought of something.

Yino didn’t dare make a sound. Like his master, he was reluctant to break the warmth of this moment.

"Quite the opposite. Perhaps you are the Variable I have been waiting a thousand years for."

"Perhaps..."

One day, just as before, you will save me from this eternal Heavenly Prison of Fate.

The latter half of those words she did not speak aloud. She kept them locked in her heart, brushing the young man’s face with quiet joy.

She gave a faint, self-mocking smile, and at last her jade hand slipped from his cheek.

The Savior I have finally met after billions of reincarnations across countless timelines. How could your life ever need a frail woman, who still struggling in the cage of her own fate, to guide and direct it?