Looking at the pink-haired girl who had so familiarly called her “Mother,” Yun Xuechang was momentarily stunned.
‘Whose child is this? Did she mistake me for someone else?’
She lowered her gaze to look closer. The girl possessed a Qi Refining cultivation.
Her pink hair was divided into two strands that draped over her chest, and her small face was chubby and pink.
A pair of watery, pink almond eyes shone as bright as the stars.
‘How cute…’
Despite being certain she had never met this girl before, Yun Xuechang felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity from that innocent little face for some reason.
‘It’s as if I’ve seen her somewhere before…’
Before she could reach a conclusion, the street vendor nearby could no longer contain himself.
“Hey! Where did you come from, you brat! Get lost, don’t interfere with my business!”
“Pah! You’re clearly trying to cheat my mother! We’re not buying your junk!”
Hua Xiangrong kept one hand tightly gripped around Yun Xuechang’s, while using the other to pull down her lower eyelid.
She stuck out her tongue and made a face at the vendor.
“Mother, let’s go! We shouldn’t buy from him!”
“…Ah?”
Yun Xuechang didn’t quite know how to react, but she decided to follow this strange yet familiar girl for now.
It would give her a chance to figure out exactly where this sense of familiarity came from.
“My apologies, Fellow Daoist.” She turned back and gave a slight nod. “I must be going now.”
“Hey! Wait! If that’s how it is, 300… no, 100 Spirit Stones is fine, too!”
……
As the two of them walked along, Hua Xiangrong’s little mouth never stopped moving.
“Mother, I’ve told you so many times already. Those ‘Legacy Secret Manuals’ at the street stalls are all fake. They’re meant to trick honest people like you…”
“Wait.” Yun Xuechang stopped in her tracks and looked down at her. Sincere confusion flickered in her cold eyes.
“Little girl, you have surely mistaken me for someone else. I am not your mother.”
She squatted down to meet the girl’s eyes, and her voice softened slightly.
“What is your name? Have you been separated from your family? Do you need me to take you home?”
Hua Xiangrong pursed her lips and remained silent. Her small face first showed bewilderment, then shock, and immediately after—
“Waaaaaaaaah—!!!”
She suddenly lunged into Yun Xuechang’s arms and burst into loud tears.
“Why doesn’t Mother want Rongrong anymore! We haven’t seen each other for so, so long. Didn’t you miss me at all! Waaaah, ahhh—!”
Yun Xuechang’s body swayed slightly from the sudden “attack.”
For the first time, a look of utter helplessness appeared on her face, which usually remained as cold as eternal ice.
However, the crying in her arms only grew more intense.
“Uwaaa… Rongrong knows she was wrong! I’ll definitely wait for Mother to come back next time! Mother, you can’t abandon Rongrong! Wah—!”
Pedestrians on the street began to stop and gather around, their whispering voices rising.
“Look, look. Based on what the child is saying, the mother actually left her daughter behind while she was shopping. How reckless.”
“Exactly! The little girl is crying so hard, yet she doesn’t even know how to comfort her. She’s just standing there. What kind of mother is she?”
“Sigh, if you ask me, parents like this should be reported to the magistrate’s office. Otherwise, we’ll just have more of these irresponsible parents!”
“…”
“I… I am not…”
Yun Xuechang opened her mouth to explain, but she didn’t know how to start.
She looked around in a panic for a moment before hesitating.
Finally, she reached out and let her hand fall very lightly and slowly onto the shaking back of the mysterious girl who called herself “Rongrong.”
She began to pat her with awkward, unfamiliar strokes.
“…Rongrong,” she said, trying her best to make her cold voice sound gentler. “It was my fault. I didn’t abandon you.”
But the sobbing in her arms did not cease.
Yun Xuechang knit her thin brows, trying to trace back her distant memories—how had her Master comforted her when she was young?
Ah, that’s it.
“Rongrong, stop crying, alright?” she said tentatively, her tone carrying a cautiousness she hadn’t even noticed. “I… I’ll take you to eat something delicious?”
“Uwa… *hic*.” A choked sob came from her shoulder. “Then… then can we have candied hawthorns?”
Candied hawthorns?
The choice caused Yun Xuechang to pause for a moment, but she immediately responded.
“Alright, candied hawthorns it is.”
Fearing the girl would start crying again, she quickly added, “I… Mother will take Rongrong to buy candied hawthorns.”
***
“Senior Sister, we finally found you!”
Lin Qianqian and Qu Linglong ran into the tea room together.
“Where is the lost child you mentioned in the Sound Transmission Jade Slip? She—”
Lin Qianqian stopped mid-sentence, her eyes widening in surprise.
Yun Xuechang, who had her back to them, slowly turned around. In her arms, she was actually holding a charming pink-haired girl who was clutching a half-eaten stick of candied hawthorns.
“Wait, Fellow Daoist Yun.”
Qu Linglong, who was carrying a large trunk on her back, widened her eyes in disbelief.
“This is the one you mentioned earlier… the stranger who suddenly appeared on the street and called you Mother?”
“Yes, she is—”
“I’m not a stranger!”
Before Yun Xuechang could finish, the pink-haired girl in her arms glared crossly at Qu Linglong.
“Rongrong is Mother’s daughter! Mother is Rongrong’s mother!”
As she spoke, tears began to well up in her beautiful pink eyes again.
“Or… does Mother want to abandon Rongrong again?”
“I… did no such thing.”
For some reason, looking at those shimmering, watery eyes, Yun Xuechang couldn’t bring herself to say a single word of rejection.
‘Something is wrong! This is very wrong!’
Qu Linglong watched the cold, ethereal, white-haired girl clumsily trying to comfort the child. She quickly turned her head and exchanged a look with Lin Qianqian, sending a secret transmission.
‘Fellow Daoist Lin, there is definitely something suspicious about this girl’s origin!’
‘S-So Fellow Daoist Qu thinks so too! I thought it was just my imagination…’
Lin Qianqian breathed a sigh of relief and responded hurriedly.
Their gazes met, and a realization struck them both like a thunderclap.
‘This child—’
‘—she looks way too much like Senior Sister!’
Look at that nose, the shape of the lips… the bottom half of the child’s face was practically carved from the same mold as Yun Xuechang’s!
The more Qu Linglong looked at Hua Xiangrong in Yun Xuechang’s arms, the more certain she became of her suspicion. She continued her transmission.
‘Fellow Daoist Lin, I must ask a bold question,’ her tone was heavy. ‘Fellow Daoist Yun… she hasn’t ever given birth before, has she?’
‘Of course not!’ Lin Qianqian replied quickly. ‘Senior Sister spends every day practicing her cultivation and her sword. How could she have secretly had a child!’
‘In that case,’ Qu Linglong narrowed her eyes as if uncovering a shocking secret, ‘there is only one possibility left—’
‘—this girl must be a debt of passion Fellow Daoist Yun left behind!’
‘That’s impossible!’
Lin Qianqian nearly cried out loud.
‘Senior Sister has never had a Dao Companion, and she’s spent most of these years in secluded cultivation within the sect. Where would a debt of passion come from?’
‘Anything is possible!’
Qu Linglong’s tone was filled with mock grief.
‘Fellow Daoist Lin, I know it’s hard for you to imagine that someone as noble and pure as Fellow Daoist Yun would stir up such a romantic scandal and leave a child behind. But the evidence is right before our eyes!’
‘Look at that child’s face again!’
Lin Qianqian looked over and saw that Yun Xuechang had already finished comforting the girl. The two exquisite and similar faces were close together, causing her to daze for a moment.
‘Isn’t this irrefutable proof?!’
‘But… but when did Senior Sister…’
Lin Qianqian stopped halfway through her sentence as a memory suddenly surfaced.
‘It seems you’ve remembered.’
Qu Linglong’s voice echoed in her mind, carrying a hint of resentment for past events.
‘Ten years ago, your sect’s Senior Sister Yun traveled down the mountain for a long time. She went around “visiting” every single one of us from the Righteous Path and Neutral Sects…’
‘And look at this child. How old is she?’
Lin Qianqian looked at the chubby pink face and did the math in her head. Her pupils suddenly shrank.
‘The timing… it all matches up perfectly.’
Qu Linglong pronounced her final judgment, one word at a time.
‘This is definitely the bloodline Fellow Daoist Yun left behind during her travels ten years ago! There’s absolutely no mistake!’