Xiao Clan, at a different courtyard.

Yun Wuxin raised the Profound Imagery Stone Chi Wuyao gave her and poured a small amount of profound energy into it. A recording immediately appeared beneath the night sky.

It was dark. Judging from the speed at which the space in the background was moving in one direction, the recording was probably set on a speedy profound ark.

There was a dark figure curled up in a tight corner of the ship. He looked like he was weathering the bitterest cold of the night.

His complexion was ashen-gray, and his half-lidded eyes looked as murky and hopeless as pools of stagnant water. The barest tinge of light in his pupils was the only thing that suggested that he was conscious at all.

Besides that, the man was rubbing the three Glazed Sound Stones she had created by her own hands again and again. The movement was mechanical and unconscious.

His lips were also parting and closing repeatedly as if he was muttering something again and again. His lightless eyes somehow managed to convey a pain that could only be described as soul-wrenching.

Yun Wuxin froze and instinctively covered her mouth with her palm.

“This recording was taken during your eighteenth birthday.”

Chi Wuyao was standing beside her before she realized it. The now Empress said while watching the man in the projection, “That day, he had killed the son of the man he hated the most, Zhou Xuzi, and driven him to the brink of collapse. You could never imagine how terrifying and monstrous he looked. He would never want you to see that side of him.”

Yun Wuxin: “...”

“Whenever you crossed his mind though, that side of him would vanish… and be replaced by this pitiful man before you.”

Chi Wuyao exhaled slowly. “I know that you harbor a lot of resentment toward him. He has missed you all these years and broken his promise to you again and again after all. However…”

“Please believe that there is no one in this world who loves you as much as he does.”

“You and everyone else may have been tormented by the most unbearable worry and impatience, but he… was cooked by the worst imaginable pain and despair. After all, he had witnessed the death of what he had believed to be his homeworld from the start until the end… there was no one in the world who could claim that they shared his pain. No one.”

“That...