Inside the main hall of Ziji Peak, Ayao sat at a jade table, looking at Xu Lianxin opposite her. Xu Lianxin's maid placed plates of pastries on the table, and Xu Lianxin smiled and said, "These were all made by my mother herself. Please try them."
Ayao glanced at her mother, then at Lu Yunchuan and Lu Yunlin standing behind her. Lu Yunchuan was expressionless, while Lu Yunlin stood with his arms crossed, looking as if he had condescended to be there.
"Mother, what do you want from me? Just say it!" A-Yao said coldly.
"What kind of attitude is this? Is this how you should talk to your mother?" Lu Yunlin glared at A Yao.
"Shut up!" Xu Lianxin scolded Lu Yunlin, and Lu Yunlin fell silent.
Xu Lianxin looked at A Yao and said, "You already know about your older brother's situation, right?"
Ayao said, "I know."
It was her clone who did it, how could she not know?
Xu Lianxin immediately played the sympathy card: "Xiao Qi, I know you've held a grudge against your mother all these years. I apologize to you; it was my fault, I neglected you. But... but no matter what, we're family. Even if Yun Li has wronged you, he's still your own brother!"
"Please save him, please go and save him!"
Ayao coldly replied, "I can't save him. I don't have the ability."
"You didn't even look at it, and you say you can't save him? You just don't want to!" Lu Yunlin said angrily.
Ayao sneered, "You're right, I just don't want to save you."
"You..." Lu Yunlin was so angry that his chest felt like it was going to explode. How dare she say that? "You, you are too vicious. You didn't even save your own brother. You are simply inhuman!"
Ayao said, "Yes, I'm heartless!"
Lu Yunlin was dumbfounded. He was furious, but didn't know what to say next. Lu Yunchuan looked at A Yao and said, "Seventh Sister, if you are willing to save your elder brother, I will forgive and forget what you did to Xiao Ba in the past."
Ayao didn't speak, but looked at Lu Yunchuan with a mocking expression, as if to say: Can you hold me accountable?
Although she didn't say a word, she could tell that Lu Yunchuan was furious.
Xu Lianxin felt that bringing Lu Yunchuan and Lu Yunlin along was a mistake, and angrily said, "Get out!"
Lu Yunchuan and Lu Yunlin left indignantly.
After they left, Xu Lianxin humbled herself and said to A Yao, "Xiao Qi, I'm begging you, please save your eldest brother."
"He's not dead, he just can't cultivate. There are plenty of ordinary people like that in the world," Ayao said casually.
“But he is the eldest son of the Lu family of Kunshan. He was originally a prodigy, but now he has become a cripple who cannot cultivate. How can you expect him to bear this?” Xu Lianxin’s words were filled with grief, as if she were about to weep blood, but A Yao remained unmoved.
She suddenly remembered that in her previous life, after being dragged into the endless abyss by the demons, she first lost her nascent soul, then her core, and then her foundation shattered, causing her strength to regress to the fifth level of the Qi Refining stage.
She, a mere fifth-level Qi Refining cultivator, endured countless hardships in that abyss teeming with demons before finally escaping. However, due to severe damage to her foundation, her cultivation progressed extremely slowly. After finally rebuilding her foundation, forming her core, and condensing her nascent soul, she encountered a powerful enemy, which caused her to shatter her nascent soul, core, and foundation once again. Her spiritual root was also shattered beyond recognition.
At that time, she was reduced to a mortal. Despite losing her cultivation twice, she refused to accept her fate. She went through countless hardships to repair her spiritual root, refine her Qi, build her foundation, form her core, condense her nascent soul, and then transform into a deity and refine the void. In her previous life, it took her more than three thousand years to cultivate to the Void Refinement stage.
If it weren't for those two instances of her energy being dissipated, with her talent, it wouldn't have taken her this long at all.
Before meeting her master, she had endured almost all the hardships on her own, and no one shed a single tear for her.
“If he can’t handle it, it proves he’s useless,” Ayao said lightly.
Xu Lianxin stared at A Yao in disbelief. How could she be so heartless as to speak of her own brother like that? But now, A Yao was her only hope. With tears in her eyes, she held A Yao's hand and said, "Xiao Qi, do you want your mother to kneel down and beg you?"
Looking into her eyes, Ayao asked softly, "If I were the one who was crippled, Mother, would you shed tears for me? Would you lower yourself to beg for help for me?"
Xu Lianxin's body trembled.
A-Yao sneered, "You can't."
She said it with absolute certainty.
Xu Lianxin felt that A Yao's gaze was like two sharp swords piercing her heart, especially her words "You won't," which turned into sharp thorns that pierced into her bone marrow.
Enraged, she pretended to slap Ayao, but Ayao stared at her without flinching.
"You, you wretched child..."
As she uttered the words "a disgrace," tears streamed down Xu Lianxin's face. It shouldn't be like this, it shouldn't be like this! Why had their mother-daughter relationship deteriorated to this point? Her heart ached.
She raised her hand, but the slap didn't fall.
Ayao looked at her and asked, "Why didn't you hit me? Oh, you were afraid that if you hit me, Father and the ancestors would be unhappy."
Xu Lianxin lowered her hand, biting her lip, and said as if crying blood, "Fine, fine, you've grown strong enough that I can't touch you anymore, fine, very well! Do you intend to disown me as your mother in the future?"
Ayao looked at her and asked with amusement, "Do I have a mother?"
Xu Lianxin was stunned, her eyes wide open.
“Ever since I returned to the Lu family, have you ever truly regarded me as your daughter? You were the one who abandoned me first, Mrs. Lu!” Ayao said softly.
The words "Madam Lu" struck Xu Lianxin like a thunderbolt, causing her to stagger backward. She looked at the beautiful young woman sitting there, a girl whose appearance resembled hers. The girl's expression was very calm, very calm. Her eyes showed no resentment, anger, or hatred, only calmness and cold indifference.
She suddenly realized that she had lost her biological daughter once again, but she was unwilling to admit it.
She was frightened by that calm gaze and left in a disheveled state.
After Xu Lianxin left, A Yao activated the protective formation of Ziji Peak.
Ayao sat at the table, silently for a long, long time, as a gentle breeze blew by. She reached out to feel the breeze, and the image of Xu Fengzhi appeared in her eyes.
With a flick of her wrist, the Reincarnation Bead floated in her palm, emitting a faint glow.
"How exactly do you intend to use it? If you're going to let me go back in time, why not turn back time to ten years ago..." Ayao said softly.
If time could turn back ten years, she would choose to stay far away from Xu Feng and never cross paths with him again, so that perhaps he wouldn't have died.
A gentle breeze ruffled A Yao's hair, and suddenly golden light flashed around her. A Yao vanished, replaced by a mysterious figure dressed in white and wearing a mask, who sat in A Yao's spot. This mysterious figure had waist-length hair, and she reached out to remove her mask.
The face beneath the mask was exactly the same as A-Yao's.
Ayao swapped positions with her metal-elemental clone, who was tens of thousands of miles away. From this day forward, the metal-elemental clone would be drawing arrays on this Purple Extreme Peak. No matter how many people the Lu family sent out, they would never suspect that the person they were looking for was hiding within the Lu family compound.
Even if it were discovered that she was the one who crippled Lu Yunli, Ayao wouldn't be afraid. She knew her father well; compared to the crippled Lu Yunli, she was far more useful.
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