“…Junior Sister, Daoist Friend Qu, are you keeping something from me?”
A cold telepathic voice suddenly echoed in their minds. They turned to see Yun Xuechang watching them, her expression blank as she slightly tilted her head.
“Cough, well, Daoist Friend Yun,” Qu Linglong said with a dry laugh. “Daoist Friend Yun, do you truly not recognize this little girl?”
“Exactly, Senior Sister, why don’t you try thinking about it carefully?” Lin Qianqian hurriedly added.
?
Yun Xuechang looked at the two of them. Seeing their hesitant yet incredibly curious expressions, the doubt in her eyes deepened.
“I really don’t know her.”
The white-haired girl holding the child shook her head slightly, her tone certain. “It’s just… I also feel a strange sense of familiarity coming from this child.”
She couldn’t help but frown. That thread of familiarity was like a silken strand in the fog; it clearly existed, yet she couldn’t grasp its source.
…Just where did this familiarity come from?
Qu Linglong and Lin Qianqian exchanged a look, their faces simultaneously shifting into expressions of sudden realization.
???
Seeing them like this, Yun Xuechang became even more confused.
“Junior Sister, Daoist Friend Qu, do you perhaps know where this sense of familiarity comes from?”
Seeking answers immediately was a long-standing habit of Yun Xuechang.
‘Ah, this… Could it be that Daoist Friend Yun truly doesn’t remember her love debt from back then?’
‘Uh… With Senior Sister’s cold personality and her singular focus on cultivation, maybe… she really did forget?’
Qu Linglong and Lin Qianqian quickly exchanged a few more telepathic messages. After Qu Linglong swallowed hard, she finally made up her mind to speak.
“Well, Daoist Friend Yun, regarding this matter, Daoist Friend Lin and I have analyzed it like this…”
“It goes like this… and like that…”
After Qu Linglong poured out all the theories she and Lin Qianqian had dreamed up, she cautiously asked, “Daoist Friend Yun, back then, did you truly never have the opportunity for… uh, intimate contact with someone else?”
Upon hearing those words, Yun Xuechang didn’t snap out of it for a long time. Her cold eyes suddenly froze.
Intimate contact with someone else…
This… I seem to have…
She suddenly lowered her head and looked into the lively eyes of the girl in her arms. Hua Xiangrong also looked up at that moment, her pink pupils reflecting the girl’s shadow.
That’s right, these eyes…
How could I have forgotten…
Although the color before her was a delicate pink, and her memory held a dazzling pale gold, the shape of the eyes—the slightly upturned almond contour—was clearly identical.
The gates of her memory swung open, dragging her back 10 years ago to the Martial Arts Stage of the Hehuan Sect, where the Yin-Yang aura flowed.
Those pale gold eyes had been so close—so close she could see the trembling of every slender eyelash.
The owner of those eyes had heated breath and a blurred gaze. Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, surrounded by the Yin-Yang Dao rhymes, on a clear afternoon—
The person kissed her.
A faint but incredibly real blush quietly crept onto Yun Xuechang’s ice-like cheeks.
“I… I indeed… know of such a person…”
Her telepathy carried a rare, almost imperceptible trace of hesitation.
Qu Linglong and Lin Qianqian were both dumbfounded.
‘I—I didn’t see that wrong, did I, Daoist Friend Lin?! Just now, Daoist Friend Yun… did she blush?!’
‘Daoist Friend Qu, stop shaking my hand! You didn’t see it wrong! I—I saw it too! Senior Sister actually blushed!’
Which meant—
The two quickly exchanged another look, a certain thought popping into their minds at the same time.
‘This really is a love debt Senior Sister left behind back then!’
“Well, Senior Sister, just to be safe, why don’t you use the Bloodline Detection Technique to see if this child is really your daughter?” Lin Qianqian cautiously suggested after a moment.
“Mhm.”
Yun Xuechang nodded and immediately activated the Bloodline Detection Technique taught by her sect.
“She… is indeed my… daughter.”
The moment the result was confirmed, Yun Xuechang felt even more dazed.
I… truly have a daughter? She was born from that person?
As a girl who spent her days and nights buried in cultivation, she knew very little about “children.” She only remembered that when she was young and asked her Master how children were made, her Master had answered like this:
“Child, babies are born after kissing.”
The graceful Daoist nun had looked at her dim-witted disciple with a solemn face and warned her, “Remember, Xuechang, babies are made from kissing. In the future, you must never let anyone take advantage of you in that way, or else you will have a child.”
Since her Master had said it so seriously, she had etched it into her heart.
In that case… I wasn’t pregnant back then, so could it be because… that person turned into a woman and gave birth to this child for me?
But between a woman and a woman kissing… who gives birth to the child? How is that decided?
The more Yun Xuechang thought about it, the more confused she became, but her arms unconsciously tightened around the girl. She looked down at the tiny figure in her embrace, and a trace of tenderness she hadn’t even noticed began to soften her cold eyes.
“Rong… Rongrong?”
She called out tentatively, her voice carrying a gentleness that was unfamiliar even to her.
“Hmm?” The pink-haired girl in her arms looked up, flashing a sweet smile. “What is it, Mommy? Do you want to eat tanghulu too?”
As she spoke, she held the sparkling skewer of tanghulu up to the woman’s lips.
“Mommy, eat!”
“Oh, oh, okay…”
Slightly flustered, Yun Xuechang released one hand, tucked a stray strand of silver hair behind her ear, and lowered her head. Following the girl’s hand, she took a light bite of a hawthorn berry coated in translucent sugar.
It was very sweet.
She gazed blankly at the girl in her arms, who was nibbling on the tanghulu with bulging cheeks, her mind a mess of complicated thoughts.
‘Hehe, mission accomplished!’
Hua Xiangrong snuggled contentedly back into that cold-scented embrace, a flash of mischief in her eyes.
‘But I say, 099,’ she muttered to the system in her mind, ‘can you really not help me listen to what Mommy and the others were just saying? They were making eyes at each other for so long without speaking; they must have been whispering via telepathy!’
‘Sorry, Host, I really don’t have that function…’
‘Aiyoo, forget it, forget it.’
‘Actually, I can guess most of it without listening. They were probably wondering about my origins but were afraid I’d hear them, so they used telepathy. Adults are so boring.’
‘Host, you can’t exactly be considered a simple child, can you?’ 099 couldn’t help but complain.
‘Hey, don’t worry about the details~’
She took another bite of the tanghulu, narrowing her eyes in satisfaction.
‘But I really can’t figure one thing out…’
As she chewed on the hawthorn, her thoughts began to wander.
‘I clearly acted according to my character setting and didn’t even have time to add extra drama. Why did the female lead and the others just accept me right after their chat? Shouldn’t they be suspicious of where I came from?’
‘According to Mother, she passed out back then, but the female lead was awake…’
‘Could it be that they really did that kind of thing back then? Does the female lead actually like Mother?’
But in the next second, she dismissed the idea.
‘Hmm, that doesn’t seem right. If they really had that kind of romantic connection, the female lead shouldn’t have drawn her sword to kill Mother when she became a villain later in the novel’s plot, right?’
‘So… what exactly is going on?’
This mystery thoroughly ignited her curiosity.
‘Could it be the legendary hidden plot in a galgame? The kind that players have to explore themselves?’
‘Oh oh oh oh! 099! I’m suddenly fired up!’ she shouted excitedly in her mind.
‘Do you have that kind of medicine that makes you feel hot all over and lose control of yourself? Let’s slip it into Mother’s teacup tonight and speedrun the plot!’
‘Something that seriously violates the system’s professional code of conduct doesn’t exist at all!’ 099 yelled back. ‘And we’re here to save the world, not to play a galgame!’