"Tell me—what should we name our child? Shouldn't the birth father choose? I've thought of a few already."
"Name it whatever you like. But when the time comes, I'll return for my daughter."
She paused, eyes narrowing with sudden interest.
"Daughter? You already know the gender?" Her voice softened, laced with curiosity and something darker. "You're an interesting man. Makes me want to tear off that mask and see the face beneath it."
"We were working together from the beginning," she said, voice low, eyes gleaming. "I warned Lingxue about the assassination. I chose you to sleep with for a reason—I knew you were her ally."
She stepped closer, triumphant, unrepentant.
"She would seduce my husband. That was always the plan. And I would carry your child—make her the heir of the reformed Zhang family. I don't need him alive. I need the world to believe we were the only survivors. That he named the youngest child as successor before the end."
Then her smile shifted—less ceremonial, more cruel.
"Of course, I didn't tell her that part. Not about conceiving your child. Not about sleeping with you. That was just for me. A little pleasure before I watched the Zhang family burn."
I looked at her—hair dishevelled, skin slick with sweat, her breath still ragged from what we'd done. She was twitching, shivering, not from cold but from something more profound. Her black hair clung to her shoulders, her black eyes fixed on me with a strange clarity.
She wasn't just spent. She was transformed.
I walked away without a second glance.
She stopped me with a breathless voice. "My name is Zhang Moyan. When you come looking for me again—which I hope isn't long—remember it."
Her eyes held something softer now. Not weakness. Memory.
"My husband ignored me for centuries. I waited for him to become the man I loved. He never did. Too many affairs behind my back. Too many lies. He kept adding women to his harem, but never gave me comfort. I tried—believe me, I tried. He ignored every advance."
She lay beneath the covers, her body hidden but not forgotten. "So I started sleeping with other men. Not out of spite—out of silence. I hope you don't become one of them."
I turned, voice flat. "We're not close enough for me to care who you sleep with. I don't tell you what you can or can't do—you just do it."
She was amused by that—genuinely. Her smile returned, not seductive this time, but curious. Interested.
Lingxue slept with the head of the Zhang family. She was going to kill him afterward.
She admitted she had fun while it lasted. He seemed to enjoy her body more than he understood it. She smiled at his face—not out of affection, but calculation.
She had great control. Years of practice. Enough to make men believe they mattered.
He didn't.
He was about to finish inside her. She could tell—his breath caught, his grip tightened, his body braced for legacy.
She slit his throat with her ice talons.
The shock on his face wasn't pain. It was disbelief. How could this happen? How could she—she—interrupt his ascension?
He was in the demigod realm, near the divine. So close to breaking through. So close to mattering.
"You bitch," he managed to yell, blood frothing through the gash. His throat was open, but his voice still clawed its way out.
She watched him die with practised detachment.
"You poor man," she said. "You slept with so many women for this one purpose—mating, impregnating, ascending. All of it for godhood. Interesting cultivation path."
She looked down at him. His throat was open, his body twitching, still clinging to the illusion of climax.
"Was it worth it?"
She raised her talon. Ice bloomed across his skin.
Then she flicked.
He shattered like glass.
She dressed herself in the personal guard's uniform—tight, ceremonial, bloodless. The mask slid over her face like silence. She walked out of the head's bedchamber without hesitation.
The guards closed the door behind her, trained not to pry.
She killed them anyway.
No witnesses. No echoes.
Then she began to destroy the Zhang family legacy.
Ice bloomed from her palms, threaded with cultivation techniques honed for annihilation. The air cracked. Ancestral walls split. Statues shattered. Scrolls turned brittle. Her Ice Phoenix ability surged—elegant, merciless, mythic.
She walked through it all, untouched.
I summoned my twin swords and slaughtered everyone in the Zhang family. No hesitation. No mercy. I burned them into oblivion—no ashes, no remnants. They no longer existed.
The building followed. Flame met timber. Stone cracked. Legacy turned to smoke.
Then I saw her.
Lingxue had already begun. She'd transformed into her Ice Phoenix form—wings of frost, breath of icefire. Her talons carved through stone, her cry froze the air. Where I brought flame, she brought silence.
Together, we erased the Zhang name.
I saw Zhang Moyan killing her own. Her daughter and son were with her—silent, precise, complicit. It wasn't a rebellion. It was orchestration. They'd plotted the downfall of their clan with the same blood they were born into.
I walked into the fire.
People burned alive around me, their screams swallowed by flame. I didn't flinch. I cleaved the head from one of the wives—clean, final. The others followed. Children. Infants. I killed them in cold blood.
They would've done the same in my stead.
So I didn't care.
I was indifferent
A man and a woman attacked me—Zhang blood, still loyal, still armed.
I kicked the man in the head. His skull slammed against the floor. I kept my foot on his face, grinding him into stone.
With my free hand, I seized the woman's throat and choked her to death. Her limbs thrashed, then stilled.
I towered over them both.
I still wore their family's personal guard attire—helmet, mask, and blood-soaked uniform—slaughtering their kin.
"You traitor!" they screamed.
I didn't answer.
They died beneath the mask they once trusted.
We walked away from the Zhang estate, burning behind us—my black flames devouring stone, her ice fire freezing memory into ruin.
We stopped.
Zhang Moyan stood ahead, her family gathered behind her—loyal to her alone. They waited in silence.
Lingxue stepped forward, her mask still cold with frost.
"Hello again, Zhang Moyan," she said. "As promised, I've spared you—your family, your followers—from this catastrophe. I appreciate your help. We're leaving now."
"Thank you for allowing my branch to live," she replied. "As I vowed, my part of the Zhang family will be loyal to the Black Dragon Sect from this day forward."
We boarded Lingxue's carriage.
As it pulled away, I felt Zhang Moyan's eyes on me. I turned.
She smiled—one hand resting on her belly, the other raised in farewell.
Zhang Moyan stopped smiling.
"What is it, Zhang Lin?"
"Mother… do I still have to marry that woman? For the Zhang family?"
"Of course. Both you and your sister. We must restore the Zhang name to peak power quickly, or we'll be bullied by the strong."
"Understood, Mother."
She turned slightly, her voice colder.
"One more thing. Your younger sister will be heir to the Zhang family."
"What? Zhang Yuyan is the heir now?"
"No. Not her. Your new sibling—the one I'm carrying."
Silence.
Zhang Yuyan stepped forward, voice sharp.
"You're pregnant. That child isn't Father's… is it?"
"No. It's not. It's that man beside Lingxue."
"Why him, Mother? I don't understand. This is ridiculous," Zhang Yuyan said. "He's a stranger—no influence, no wealth, no power, no status to protect you."
"He has all of it. Believe me, I would know. I can tell."
She placed a hand on her belly.
"I've always had exceptional intuition."
"Don't worry, my son, my daughter. I love you both. You will hold influence elsewhere—just not as patriarch of the newly reformed Zhang family. One day, you'll understand your mother's choice."
She looked at them, eyes steady.
"Do you trust me?"
"Yes, Mother," Zhang Lin said.
"Yes, Mother," Zhang Yuyan echoed.
Later, as the carriage pulled away from the burning estate, I turned to Lingxue.
"Tell me, Lingxue," I said quietly. "Are we going to spare the other eight families' branches—the ones willing to join our sect—just as we did with Zhang Moyan's?"
Lingxue didn't turn. Her gaze stayed on the flames.
"One of each," she said. "Of course. They have influence, wealth, power, and status. Enough to be useful."
She paused.
"But only if they kneel. And only if they swear it in blood."
"What's the next family we'll be eradicating?" I asked.
"Since Zhang Moyan's branch swore allegiance to our sect, we spared their lineage and their sect.
The next target is the Xu family.
Recent whispers claim the Xu are now the strongest among the Nine. But that's a lie.
The Zhangs still held the true title. We only eradicated them so easily because of the patriarch's wife, Zhang Moyan.
She opened the gates herself."
"Tell me," I asked her, voice low with curiosity. "What's the history of the Nine Families?"
She looked ahead, eyes distant.
"The Nine Families… each once ruled a separate empire. Zhang Lingxie united them—under her rule, under one banner. For a time, they stood as one."
She paused.
"But when she disappeared, the empire fell into ruin. That's the short version."
"They didn't lose their power," she added. "They just weren't an empire without her."
I said nothing.
"Some still speak of her legacy," she said. "They say Zhang Lingxie was trying to break through to godhood. And when she did—she vanished. No trace. No farewell. Just gone."
She paused.
"Others say she chose to leave. That she lost faith in the empire she built, and walked into solitude."
"Others say she was trying to compete with the legendary Emperor Genesis—the one who created Mìngjiè Xiānlù, and with it, the three ancient clans.
Some believe those clans still test us. Every step we climb in cultivation, they watch. They decide if we're worthy to ascend.
There's no limit. The steps are infinite. Climb as far as you dare.
Of course, the higher you go, the stronger you become. Like us, in the demi realm—we can only kill those below or equal to our level. Never higher. It's impossible.
Only the rarest geniuses can break that law.
Someday, I'll be one of them."
"Of course, as we both know, no one is punished for trying to reach immortality. Heaven doesn't strike us down—it only tests."
"If we're worthy, we climb. If not, we stop—by choice, or by death."
She looked at me.
"That's the path of cultivation. No mercy. No shortcuts. Just ascent."
I thought about Empress Lingxie.
I never met that woman—not even when I was Emperor Genesis. Strange, isn't it? Two figures said to shape the Nine, never crossing paths.
I wonder if what people say about her is true, that she vanished at the brink of godhood. That she walked away from her empire, not because she failed—but because she no longer believed in it.
It's hard to know. But it's interesting. Myth always is.