The whole audience was silent.
In an instant, Fu Changling felt that hitting him would be detrimental to his own style.
He turned his head and looked at Yue Sihua and asked, "Madam, how could you have raised your son to be such a fool and kept it a secret for so long?"
"Chang Yan," Yue Sihua said hoarsely, "This is your... cousin from the Fu family. Just call him Big Brother."
Hearing this, Fu Changyan suddenly felt a little embarrassed. He knelt on the ground, not knowing whether to stand or not. Fu Changling glanced at him and reminded him, "Get up. You're still kneeling. Do you really want to be your godfather?"
Fu Changyan's face flushed red as he slowly stood up. Yue Sihua gave him a weary look before saying, "Go away. This cousin is a matter of the Fu family, so don't reveal it for now. It's confidential. As for the wooden plaque, you go away. I've already reached an agreement with the two immortal masters. They're both incredibly powerful, and the three of us can fight them together. This will keep everyone safe and keep everyone calm."
"Just stay in your respective residences," Fu Changling added, "and don't leave the backyard."
Fu Changyan responded and walked out in a low voice. As soon as he left, he saw Shangguan Mingyan standing at the door wearing a coat. He frowned and said, "Is the matter settled? I just fell asleep..."
"It's over." Fu Changyan nodded and said tiredly, "You can go back to sleep. I still have work to do."
After saying that, Fu Changyan left.
Only Yue Sihua, Fu Changling and Qin Yan were left in the room. Yue Sihua's expression was unusually clear, as if she was slowly calming down as she witnessed death one by one.
Fu Changling tapped his small fan and waited patiently with Qin Yan for Yue Sihua. After a long while, Yue Sihua spoke again: "What do you want to know?"
"Yue Sinan is a member of the Yue family."
Fu Changling confirmed: "How did she become Madam Yue?"
Yue Sihua laughed when he heard this question: "Let me answer this question. I am going to die. Can you guarantee that I will live?"
"Why do you want to die?"
Fu Changling leaned back in his chair and said with a smile, "Madam, we already know what will kill you."
"Eighteen... Oh no," Fu Changling smiled, "After the New Year, it will be nineteen. Nineteen years ago, the high-ranking officials of the Immortal Realm discussed and decided to use people to refine the meridians in Le Country."
Hearing this, Yue Sihua looked up in shock, staring at Fu Changling, and said in a trembling voice: "You know..."
"A formation that uses people to refine their meridians requires a core, and Yue Sinan is this core, so she was sacrificed, right?"
Yue Sihua's expression changed several times when she heard this. After a long while, she seemed to lose her temper and leaned against the wall with a blank expression: "Since you already know everything, why are you asking me?"
"I want to know more."
Fu Changling said calmly, "I want to know who she is, how she became the center of the formation, how she escaped from it, and how she became Madam Yue. Tell me everything you know."
Yue Sihua didn't say anything. She looked at the ceiling. Fu Changling saw that she hadn't left the province yet, so he couldn't help but get anxious. He stood up and was about to speak when Qin Yan held him down. Qin Yan said calmly, "Be patient."
"She is my sister, born from the same mother."
Yue Sihua spoke, a sigh in her voice: "We were born together, both born on a Yin year, Yin month, and Yin day, with Water Spiritual Roots. Moreover, she is more talented than me, with Heaven Spiritual Roots, while I am much inferior, with Earth Spiritual Roots. My family said a long time ago that she would inherit the Yue family. We are both the legitimate daughters of the Yue family, but we have never been treated the same. Wherever she goes, she is always surrounded by people, but what about me?"
Yue Sihua chuckled: "No one pays attention to me."
"No one cares if I'm practicing well, no one cares if I'm studying hard, and no one cares if I'm making progress. I do whatever I want, and no one cares about me. Actually, she's been nice to me, but so what?"
Yue Sihua propped herself up and sat up, seeming to have regained some strength. She raised her hand to push her hair back and said slowly, "She took away my father, my mother, and everyone who loved me. I have always lived in her shadow. Every time I go out, everyone looks at her. Everyone knows she has a natural spiritual root, that she is excellent, and that they all think she is great."
"I really hate her, but actually, I don't hate her."
Yue Sihua smiled with some contradictions: "When I was bullied, she would help me beat them up and told me that I was her sister and would not tolerate outsiders bullying me. When Dad was partial to her and gave her everything first, she would tell Dad seriously that this was not right. She and I are both children of our parents and there should be no difference. She asked them to treat me well."
"What do you think she did wrong?"
Yue Sihua's voice was nasal: "She didn't do anything wrong. She's just too good, so good that you can't even hate her. You can only be jealous and hope that she will have a better life."
"She's getting better and better. At the age of fifteen, she's already close to the Nascent Soul stage. The whole family is proud of her. On the day of her coming-of-age ceremony, her father even held a special banquet for her. Of course," Yue Sihua raised her hand to wipe away her tears and said hoarsely, "I didn't."
"She and I have the same birthday, but no one remembers my birthday except her."
"But she herself didn't know our parents had forgotten my birthday. On the day of the coming-of-age ceremony, when she was the only one present, she panicked and kept looking at me. I was so annoyed at that time."
"Why is she looking at me? To show how kind and innocent she is? She knows nothing. She's the most perfect and flawless, right?"
"Everyone only cares about her and loves her. It makes no difference whether there is one more Yue Sihua or one less."
"Then what?"
Qin Yan interrupted her, and his calm voice made Yue Sihua calm down a little. Yue Sihua leaned her forehead on her hand, and she relaxed, then continued: "Then I was very angry. I left the table early and ran around in the yard. Then I met someone."
"He is a young master of the Fu family. There are many young masters in the Fu family, and he is ranked very far behind. His status is far different from mine."
"But what does it matter?" Yue Sihua smiled bitterly. "He remembered that Yue Sinan and I were twins, and that it was my birthday that day. He made me a little grasshopper as a birthday present. I loved him very much. That was the first time I felt that there was someone in this world who loved me. When I got back, Yue Sinan was standing at the door of my house. She brought me a bowl of noodles and kept apologizing to me. In the past, I would have scolded her and argued with her, but I didn't that day."
"Because I found that what I really want is someone who genuinely cares about me a little bit and treats me a little bit well. As long as I feel that I am cared about, even for a moment, I will be satisfied."
"That night, my sisters and I ate longevity noodles together. We slept in the same bed, and I whispered to her about that man."
"I didn't dare tell anyone because if I told them and they told my parents, it would be the end of him and me."
"But little girls always want to share things, so I told Sinan that that was when our relationship was best. She listened to me every day. I didn't want to compete with her for the position of Patriarch of the Yue Family. We made an agreement that she would be the Patriarch and take charge of the overall affairs of the Yue Family. When that time came, she would let me marry the person I loved openly."
"Every day, we waited for that moment to come. She worked hard to learn the Yue family's puppet secrets, and then helped me use the puppets as a cover, allowing me to secretly meet the person I like."
As Yue Sihua spoke, he couldn't help but smile.
On the roof in the distance, a woman was sitting high up. She was dressed in purple, holding a wine bottle in her hand, and wearing a white jade mask with golden chrysanthemum patterns on her face. She was quietly looking at the inn in the distance.
The moonlight fell on her, and next to her sat a puppet-like figure, imitating Yue Sihua's words very realistically.
"Every day, we are looking forward to growing up, but also afraid of growing up."
"I was with that guy for six months. Six months later, the Lin family came to propose marriage. It was a marriage between the two families. The one proposing marriage was Lin Ya, the second son of the Lin family. I was older than Si Nan and had no use to the Yue family. If it was a marriage, it was natural for me to go. I was very scared, but I didn't know what to do. Si Nan found out about this and went to the main hall on the day the Lin family came to propose marriage."
"She said in front of everyone that whoever wanted to marry me had to at least beat her. So she had a fight with Mr. Lin, the Second Young Master. That fight left our yard in tatters. We fought for a long time but couldn't decide who was winning. Finally, Mr. Lin said he wouldn't marry me, but he would marry her and go home to deal with her."
"When I found out about this, I went to my family crying. I couldn't let her marry Lin Ya for me. But she sat alone in a corner that day. A long time later, she told me that she thought Lin Ya was a good man and that she could accept marrying him. So she and Lin Ya got engaged. The Lin family has a young master, and from now on, Lin Ya will take over."
"Is this also acceptable?"
Fu Changling was a little surprised: "I thought, given the character of the Lin family, they would let Yue Sinan go to the Lin family?"
"Why would my family let Sinan go to the Lin family?"
Yue Sihua laughed. "She's the most promising person in the Yue family. If Lin Ya refuses to come, then I'll have to marry her. But the Lin family isn't really that arrogant. When Lin Ya said he wanted to marry Si Nan, my father told him he had to come to the Yue family. He agreed right away, saying that the Lin family already has a young master, so they don't need him."
"Since Yue Sinan is so important to the Yue family, why is she still the center of the formation?"
Yue Sihua was silent for a long time. After a while, she spoke slowly in a hoarse voice, "Three months after she and Lin Ya got engaged, the man I was with was sent to Le Country. When he came back, he brought a piece of news. He said that Hongmeng Tiangong would build a formation in Le Country that would use people to refine their meridians. It required five different kinds of spiritual roots. The core of the formation required a water spiritual root born on a yin year, yin month, and yin day. The Yue family had already agreed to choose one of the two twins."
Hearing this, Fu Changling and Qin Yan understood, but neither of them expressed their opinion. Fu Changling tapped his palm with his fan and said, "What did you do?"
"I didn't want to do that," Yue Sihua said painfully. "I thought, since one of us is going to die anyway, it doesn't matter if I die. She still has a bright future, doesn't she?"
"But?"
"I'm pregnant." Yue Sihua raised her head and looked at the two people with shocked expressions. Tears welled up in her eyes and she said hoarsely, "I'm pregnant with that man's child."
"I can die, but what about the child?"
"I was very scared and conflicted at the time. I didn't know what to do or what to choose. Then that person told me that as the center of the formation, I wouldn't die. I just had to stay at the center of the formation and keep bleeding until I had refined all the people in Le Country."
"If it were me," Yue Sihua choked out a sob, "I'm pregnant. I wouldn't survive, and neither would the baby. But if it were Sinan, it would be different."
"You think," Qin Yan said calmly, "she can survive."
"I didn't think so!" Yue Sihua roared, "She can survive!"
Yue Sihua said, tears welling up in her eyes. "This is the best of both worlds, isn't it? This way, both of us can survive, and my child can survive too. She can go to Le Country and be the center of the formation. After she succeeds in refining her meridians, she will be Yunze's greatest hero! By then, she can have whatever she wants. The position of elder or even palace master of Hongmeng Tiangong could be hers!"
"She's been cared for for so many years," Yue Sihua cried bitterly. "She gets all her parents' love, all the attention she gets, just because she has a Heavenly Spiritual Root and I have an Earthly Spiritual Root. All the good things in the world belong to her. She has the best resources, and now that Yunze is in trouble, she only has to sacrifice a little, while I have to sacrifice everything. Regardless of reason, she should go, right?"
"But, is she back?"
Fu Changling spoke calmly, looking up at her with sharp eyes: "If it is really as you said, just a little blood loss, why would she become Madam Yue?"
"She didn't want to," Yue Sihua said through sobs. After calming down, she continued, "I told her all the circumstances and all the possibilities, but she didn't want to. She told me she wanted to live, too."
"She also wants to have her own life. She can let me do anything. But I can't do this. If it's a matter of fate, let God choose."
"But what kind of choice is this?" Yue Sihua laughed. "She has a natural spiritual root. She is the hope of the Yue family. She has been studying hard since she was young. She has the best master and the best elixir. What do I have? She was sixteen years old and reached the Nascent Soul stage. I was sixteen years old, and both of us have formed low-grade golden elixirs. There is a huge gap between us. How can God choose?" Yue Sihua said, and suddenly shouted, "God made the choice the moment she and I were born!"
"So?" Fu Changling chuckled. "You want to change your fate? You want to change God's decision?"
"Yes." Yue Sihua raised her chin slightly, as if she were a soldier on the battlefield, without showing any sign of weakness. She stared at Fu Changling and continued, "If others don't give me a way to live, then don't blame me for not giving them a way to live."
Vultures circled overhead. High above, the purple-clad woman heard the puppet beside her say this and chuckled softly. The lower half of her mask was pulled up, and she raised her head, pouring wine down her throat in the moonlight.
The wine shone brightly in the moonlight, and the puppet beside her continued to imitate the woman's voice, saying, "She rejected me, and I stopped asking her. I found my lover and asked him what to do. We came up with a solution."
"What method?" Qin Yan frowned. Even though he tried to control his emotions, he still found it difficult to accept this kind of thing.
"Melting Pill."
Yue Sihua said it easily.
Qin Yan and Fu Changling were stunned for a moment, then reacted. Fu Changling shouted, "Did you melt her golden elixir?!"
Yue Sihua's face remained calm. She was not affected by Fu Changling's roar. Her tone remained calm as she spoke, "She has a natural spiritual root. As long as she remains useful to the family, the family will not give up on her. Unless, between us, I am more useful, then I have no choice but to fuse her golden core."
"Without her golden elixir, she can't cultivate. She was born on a yin year, yin month, and yin day with a water-element spiritual root, which makes her the perfect material for the center of the formation. Besides being a cauldron or the center of the formation, she has no other use."
"So I specifically invited her down the mountain to dinner, saying it was to apologize to her. I had Qinglai drug the food and wine so that we could both be poisoned. Her cultivation was higher than mine, and when she saw I was poisoned, she hid me and carefully lured everyone away."
"Then," Yue Sihua swallowed back his tears, stiffened his neck, and remained calm. "I had my lover and Yue Ming lead people to intercept her while she was poisoned, and melt her golden core with poison. Then, we dumped her at the gate of an evil sect. This sect is not big, and no one knows about it. But they have a legend about a formation that uses women with water spiritual roots born on an yin year, yin month, and yin day as a lure. This formation can allow people with damaged spiritual roots to continue practicing. It's extremely evil. I heard that this formation was derived from the Baile Sect's training formation, and I also heard that the Baile Sect's formation was derived from this formation. It's hard to say which came first."
"What is the name of this evil sect?"
"I don't remember clearly."
Yue Sihua thought for a moment, then said, "However, I heard that Shangguan Hong, the head of the Shangguan family, was a disciple of this sect back then, but he left early. When he was there, this sect wasn't yet an evil sect, so few people knew about this."
Hearing this, Qin Yan looked at Fu Changling. Fu Changling tapped his palm and said, "What happened next?"
"She was imprisoned by the evil sect for three days. I pretended to escape and returned to my family to report the news. The Yue family, a small sect, easily rescued her."
"It's just that after she came back, her golden elixir was gone. I thought she didn't know, but when she saw me that day, she slapped me in the face."
“She asked me why.”
"Do I even need to ask? Why? I just want to survive, that's why!"
"I was terrified at the time. She knew everything. She claimed she wasn't the one whose golden elixir was melted by someone in the evil sect. She told everyone and demanded a thorough investigation of everyone around me. I was terrified. Since I was a child, she'd always gotten whatever she wanted. She demanded a thorough investigation of everyone around me. Once she started, nothing could be hidden. I was so scared I almost confessed, but that day, my father told me not to talk nonsense."
Yue Sihua laughed as she spoke, tears streaming down her face. "My father said, 'I'm the older sister, how could an older sister murder a younger sister?' He told her to stop talking nonsense, saying her golden elixir was melted by the evil sect. Then they had her locked up and didn't let anyone see her. And then, the moment she was dragged away, my mother slapped me hard."
"Look, they know it all." Yue Sihua lowered his head and covered his face with his hands. "They know everything. They know I killed my own sister, but because they know Yue Sinan is useless, they can abandon the person they have loved for more than ten years in the blink of an eye."
"I thought I was cruel enough, but then I realized they were the truly cruel ones."
"That night, I stood at the door where she was being held. I heard her banging on the door and shouting. At first she cried, then she cursed, and then her voice became hoarse. She stopped talking."
"Not long after, her voice disappeared. It was announced that she had passed away due to illness. That's when I knew she had gone to Le Country."
"My parents found out about my lover and I, and my child is gone."
"They asked me who I was, but I never told them. Then they told me that I couldn't possibly marry someone of low status, even if I died."
"And then?"
Fu Changling tapped his palm and asked, "How did Yue Sinan escape?"
"Later, my lover stayed in Le Country and never returned. Then, the young master of the Lin family, Lin Chen, married the young master of the Fu family, Fu Yushu. On the wedding day, the Fu family suddenly called off the engagement. Not long after, Fu Yushu also disappeared."
"At this time, my lover finally came back and told me that Yue Sinan was rescued by Lin Chen."
Hearing this, Fu Changling looked up suddenly.
He clenched the golden fan in his hand, trying hard to control his emotions, and said in a low voice: "You said, it was Lin Chen who saved her?"
"Yes," Yue Sihua chuckled. "People in the outside world say that Lin Chen used a human to refine his meridians, but as you know, the real decision to use a human to refine his meridians came from the upper echelons of the Yunze Immortal Realm. And although Lin Chen was an elder of the Hongmeng Heavenly Palace back then, the Lin family was small and rarely interacted with the secular world. Their position of elder was originally established by the Hongmeng Heavenly Palace to commemorate the birth of Sword Master Ye Lan from the Lin family. Lin Chen was young, so how could he have any real power? I know about the use of a human to refine his meridians, but she doesn't know."
"She discovered it accidentally. After she found out, she couldn't tolerate the immortal world using such evil magic, so she has been fighting against them ever since. This is also the reason why the Fu family broke off the engagement. My lover told me that Lin Chen collected the souls of the people of Le Country and transformed them all into ghosts. He then set up a formation and opened up the Ten Thousand Bones Cliff. No one dared to enter, and she didn't dare to come out either."
"Then what?"
Fu Changling's question was rather extreme, and Yue Sihua couldn't help but feel strange. After glancing at him, she continued, "Then, for some unknown reason, she suddenly reappeared, and this time, Fu Yushu also showed up. I heard that she was kidnapped by Lin Chen, and then rescued. After being rescued, everyone discovered that she had lost her Xuanling roots."
Hearing this, Fu Changling couldn't help but be a little surprised.
The Xuan Linggen is a kind of spiritual root unique to the Fu family. It means that in addition to the family's own spiritual root, there is another spiritual root. The greatest function of this spiritual root is that people who possess it can naturally comprehend the formation.
For ordinary Taoists, whether it was formations or spells, it was like learning a new language. But for those with profound spiritual roots, these languages that communicated with heaven and earth were their mother tongue. Therefore, regardless of their cultivation level, the formations they drew were naturally near-perfect.
Born with a mysterious spiritual root, Fu Yushu should be the first in the Fu family's designated succession sequence when he was born.
Yue Sihua scoffed as he spoke, "In the competition for the Fu family's Patriarch, he was originally ranked eleventh. It was only because of his Mysterious Spiritual Root that he became the Young Patriarch. Now that he's lost his Mysterious Spiritual Root, what can he use to compete? But he's smart."
Yue Sihua sneered, "He came to me and asked me to help him get the position of Young Master. I didn't want to do it at first, but he promised me that if I married him, he would let me be with the person I like forever."
"He won't touch me." Yue Sihua calmed down. "He won't even care about my fertility. My child will still have the right to inherit the family. As long as I help him become the head of the Fu family."
"It couldn't be a better deal," Yue Sihua whispered, "isn't it?"
Fu Changling listened and was a little shocked: "So..."
He said in disbelief: "Fu Changyan..."
"He's not your father's son." Yue Sihua laughed, "And you, do you know whose child you are?"
"You," Yue Sihua walked up to Fu Changling and bent down. She smiled and said softly, "You are the son of Lin Chen, the one who was so foolish that he was treated as a demon even though he clearly protected the people. He was beheaded by your father himself on the judgment platform!"
"Do you understand?" Yue Sihua stared at him and shouted, "It was your father who killed your mother with his own hands! And you, the female devil Lin Chen whom I used to hate the most and curse whenever she mentioned you—"
"She is your mother!"
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