Phoenix's Requiem

Chapter 448: Self-Recrimination

The dream continued...

Xun Moyan soared through the skies with Yun Ruoyan when she suddenly said, “Isn’t the sky far more spacious than my stomach? To think I almost lost you in the womb!”

“What’s the matter? Mother, did something scary happen?” Xun Moyan looked back at her with his beautiful eyes.

Yun Ruoyan pinched his chubby little cheeks. “While pregnant with you, I was poisoned and forced into early labor, and I almost lost—” Yun Ruoyan’s mind suddenly blanked out, and she couldn’t seem to remember how she had given birth, how she had brought her child up.

Yun Ruoyan clutched her face, trying to remember those lost memories, but her mind remained as blank as if those memories had never existed. Suddenly, her body trembled, shaking her out of her reverie. She found that she was alone on Li Mo’s sword, Xun Moyan having vanished in an instant.

“Moyan, Xun Moyan!” Yun Ruoyan called out, but the chubby little child had vanished completely.

Li Mo walked out from the house exhausted, looking as though he had just returned from a battlefield—no, he was even more tired and weary than he would be in such a situation.

“Your Highness, what’s wrong with Miss Yun? How is she?!” Peony and Xi Lan were both kneeling outside the house.

“Why did you poison Yan’er?” Li Mo asked coldly.

“We didn’t know that was poison!” Xi Lan cried. “If we had known that it would endanger her life, we wouldn’t have given her any even if the third miss planned to kill our entire family!”

“The third miss—the third miss of the Yun family, Yun Ruoyu?” Li Mo asked.

“Yes, Yun Ruoyu!” Peony exclaimed. “She fed our children a slow-acting poison and threatened us with their lives to feed a certain pill to Miss Yun. She said that the pill would only cause her cultivation to stagnate, but not to harm her life.”

“And you believed something so ludicrous?!” Li Luo shouted from the side.

“Not initially, but she... she claimed that she didn’t dare hurt Miss Yun now that she was the consort of the Slaughtering King. She was just worried that Miss Yun’s rising cultivation would impede her, so...”

Before Peony could finish, Li Mo had kicked her away. “Yan’er rescued you from your suffering in the Yun manor, and this is how you repay her?! Useless, ungrateful trash!” Li Mo shouted. “If Yan’er doesn’t survive this ordeal, I’ll have the two of you accompany her to her death.”

Xi Lan kowtowed. “Your Highness, we deserve nothing less than death for our crimes. We don’t deserve to die by your hands—no, we’ll kill ourselves!” She clambered up and began knocking her head against a stone pillar.

“Xi Lan, wait for me!” Peony followed suit.

“Miss, Miss, apparently, Second Miss Yun is in labor! Both she and her child are in danger, and it’s very possible that they’re both going to die!” a servant girl rushed into Yun Ruoyu’s room and reported.

Yun Ruoyu was sitting in front of her dresser, grooming herself and preparing to sleep. When she heard the news, she immediately stood up, any thought of sleep vanishing in an instant. “I’ve waited so long for this day!” She paced back and forth in her room. “Yun Ruoyan, you didn’t expect you would suffer like this, did you? If only you had remained the naive second miss of the Yun family! Why did you have to change so suddenly?”

She couldn’t help but think back to how she, Yun Ruoyao, and Yi Qianying would bully Yun Ruoyan together. What a marvelous punching bag she had been! Even when she was bullied, she would bear her suffering in silence and cower whenever they walked by, giving her, the third sister, an overwhelming sense of superiority.

But the good times wouldn’t last. Somehow, such a docile, timid girl had suddenly changed. She became more and more skilled, harder and harder to control. Before she left for Kongming Academy, it felt as though everything in the Yun manor revolved around her.

She caused Yun Ruoyao’s death, Madam An’s craziness, and even her mother’s death...

Before her death, Qin Jianmei had told Yun Ruoyan that Yun Ruoyan wasn’t even a daughter of the Yun family, but rather a bastard child born to her mother and some wild ruffian. The teenage Yun Ruoyu had overheard those words and reeled in shock.

“This is retribution, divine retribution! You, an outsider, daring to put on the mantle of a daughter of the Yun family and destroying our family—you deserve to die, to have your child die with you!” Yun Ruoyu’s face had warped from her extreme excitement. “You couldn’t have imagined that your dear maids would poison you, could you? How does it feel to be betrayed?! Don’t blame me, I’m just carrying out retribution in heaven’s place.”

“If Yan’er dies, I’ll skin you and cut you up alive,” an icy voice repressing a boundless rage sounded from behind her.

Yun Ruoyu slowly turned around to see Li Mo standing a short distance away. “A—Ah, you, how did you get in here?! What do you want... Help, help!”

Yun Ruoyan woke up from a nightmare drenched in sweat. Li Mo had fallen asleep by her side, and when Yun Ruoyan reached out for him, he immediately awoke.

“Ruoyan, you’re awake?” Li Mo’s eyes were darkened, as if he had gone long days without sleeping. “You’re finally awake, Yan’er, oh, you’ve scared me so.”

“How long have I been asleep?” Yun Ruoyan asked, her voice surprisingly weak.

“Almost ten days.”

“Ten days!” Yun Ruoyan clutched her forehead. “Li Mo, help me up.”

Li Mo helped Yun Ruoyan up, at which point she immediately noticed something amiss. She opened her eyes wide as she glanced at her abdomen, which was, once again, flat.

The nightmare that she had had of losing her child suddenly flooded into her mind, causing her to panic. She clutched Li Mo’s arm with a deathly grip, her wide eyes turning even wider as she stared at Li Mo.

“Yan’er, don’t worry, listen to me.” Li Mo hugged her tightly and patted her back. “Our child’s alright. He’s doing fine.”

“Really?” She stared at Li Mo with her wide eyes, not daring to believe his words.

“Of course! When have I ever lied to you?” Only by omission... “He’s being breastfed by a wet nurse at the moment. Li Luo will bring him in when he’s finished. Look, that’s our baby’s crib!” Li Mo pointed at a crib by the side of the room.

“Our son’s really alright?” Yun Ruoyan finally took a deep breath and slumped into Li Mo’s arms. “Thank goodness.”

“With me around, neither of you will ever suffer,” Li Mo replied resolutely—but then his voice turned puzzled. “Yan’er, how did you know that our child was male?”

Yun Ruoyan smiled. “I had a dream with a little boy in it, and he called me Mother. His hair was black, and the most startling part about his appearance were his eyes: they could change color and go from black to blue to red. He’s very smart, and managed to learn swordflight within three days—oh, have you named him?”

“No, I’ve been waiting for you to help name him together,” Li Mo replied.

“I have a name in mind, but I’d like to listen to your ideas to see if our thoughts agree,” Yun Ruoyan murmured, before falling asleep again. When she awoke, she finally saw her child in reality.

Just like in her dreams, his head was a mop of black hair. His skin was white and tender, his eyes black but seemingly fixed in color. Li Mo told her that it was rare for bloodline abilities to manifest as a baby, and he likely had latent talents that were waiting to be discovered. Their baby was the first to possess both the silver and demonic dragon bloodlines in tandem, and he was almost certain to be exceptionally talented.

Yun Ruoyan and Li Mo wrote their proposed names for their baby boy on each other’s hands, only to find that they were identical. “Xun Moyan,” they read aloud. Li Mo thought that Yun Ruoyan would have made her child’s surname Li, the surname he was currently going by.

“Alright. Our boy will be Xun Moyan, and his nickname Li Yan.” Li Mo caressed Xun Moyan, who lay silently asleep in his mother’s arms.

Three days later, the physician pronounced Yun Ruoyan’s body hale and healthy, but she would still require copious amounts of rest.

“Ruoyan, Xi Lan and Peony have already knelt outside the house for two days and two nights. Have you thought of how to punish them?” Li Luo murmured, then took Li Yan away from her to change his diaper.

Yun Ruoyan stilled. “They’ve been kneeling outside for two whole days?”

Li Mo had forbidden his servants from informing Yun Ruoyan of the matter, and only Li Luo dared to tell her the news secretly. “Judging by His Highness’ personality, they would normally long be dead, but His Highness knew that you’re very fond of them. He’s been hesitating as to how to punish them—after all, they poisoned and almost killed you and Li Yan, but they did it from a position of ignorance, from having their own children threatened. They’re very regretful, and they both tried to kill themselves in repentance. If His Highness hadn’t restrained them in time, they would have committed suicide on the spot.”

Yun Ruoyan sighed. “Li Luo, please send them in.”