"Brother Tao, hurry and try some. When you hadn't started cultivating, you were a southerner; I think you've never had this kind of street food."
"Don't be put off by the smell; it actually tastes amazing."
Having said that, the sprightly girl turned around to serve herself two bowls as well, and on top of that, she added several more steamed buns.
Without minding Tao Qian, she busied herself with eating heartily.
Around them, the street food stall owner, the passerby commoners, other street vendors, and many artisans all seemed very familiar with this lively girl, greeting her one after another.
Such an overwhelmingly strong mundane atmosphere instantly dispersed much of the "Immortal Qi" around Tao Qian.
Tao Qian was at first startled, then seemed to understand.
He smiled, and swiftly, the demeanor and poise that belonged to the Spirit Treasure True Inheritor, the First Heavenly Pride of the Daoist sect, also dissipated.
In its place was the ordinary Tao Qian, who followed Yuan Mingzhen in eagerly devouring his food.
When this transformation occurred in him, both Yunrong in his arms and Yuan Mingzhen opposite him revealed surprised expressions in their eyes.
It was as if they were seeing Tao Qian for the first time.
Yunrong was more curious, her interest piqued.
But for Yuan Mingzhen, it was as if she'd found a kindred spirit, and her face suddenly brightened.
Afterward, the surroundings of the snack stall began to change.
What followed was the reflection of the life of the Devil Concubine Yuan Mingzhen before him – brief, yet exceedingly complicated.
The first scene almost made Tao Qian choke on a mouthful of pig offal and fermented soybean drink.
It was the scene of Yuan Mingzhen's conception and birth:
A group of somber-faced Xie Family members had searched thoroughly through the clan and finally found three strands of hair in the young bedroom of Senior Sister Lingji. They then wrapped the hair around a genderless clay doll and doused it with True Dragon Blood obtained from an unknown source, before heading to the Outer Realm where they captured a Taiyin Heavenly Phoenix in a gloomy, desolate mountain cave.
They inserted the clay doll into the Phoenix's belly, and nuns from Guanyin Temple were casting spells night and day.
Ten months later, they cut open the belly of the Phoenix to retrieve a plump flesh cocoon.
One could tell at a glance that the strong cultivator who was the Xie Family Master took a Magic Sword and split it open, and upon seeing it was a girl child, his face immediately filled with wild joy.
But that quickly turned to displeasure, and he started shouting something.
The pretty girl who was eating stewed snacks and fermented soybean drink suddenly looked up, teasing with a gleeful tone:
"Old Man Xie was wholeheartedly convinced that with this method, they could cultivate a girl possessing both the supreme inspiration of the Lingji Fairy and the True Dragon Heavenly Phoenix Destiny to help their Xie Family skyrocket to the heavens, to stand on equal footing with the Xiu Family and the Si Family."
"The Xie Family was convinced that as there is Reincarnation in yin and yang, it was the Ancestor Dragon who obtained the Dao and established the Forbidden Techniques and set up the Barriers two thousand years ago."
"Now that the era of great strife has come again, the one who could achieve the same great feats ought to be an Empress."
"Especially with the birth of the Lingji Fairy who possessed supreme inspiration, it only proved this point further. Who would have thought that the Lingji Fairy would be taken away by Yunhua Immortal, who didn't hesitate to start a war just to have her, causing the Xie Family's plans of hundreds of years to be in vain."
"Until I, Yuan Mingzhen, was cultivated as a 'substitute' for the Lingji Fairy."
"Regrettably, with only three strands of hair and without the original heart's blood and Soul's True Spirit, I could not inherit the unfathomable inspiration of the Lingji Fairy. I was merely lucky to have the Taiyin Heavenly Phoenix Body. Ironically, when it was discovered that I lacked the Innate inspiration, Old Man Xie was so enraged that he wanted to chop me with a sword."
"Fortunately, at that time, a Xie Family Guest Elder named 'Yuan Tiangang' suggested that even though I lacked inspiration, I possessed another form of Karma. Given the Heavenly Phoenix Destiny, as long as I could be catalyzed by the True Dragon Fortune of the dynasty's last stages, I would immediately undergo a Transformation... That's how my life was saved."
...
Tao Qian had already known about Yuan Mingzhen's complex origin.
Yet witnessing the details firsthand, he was still shocked.
The actions of the Xie Family people were utterly ruthless.
Not to mention everything else, just to allow the offspring in the Phoenix's womb a potential to inherit the legal tradition.
Over the course of the ten-month pregnancy, the Xie Family had been quietly capturing bloodlines from imperial families of all dynasties within the Seventy-two provinces of the Longevity Heavenly Dynasty. Starting with the ancient families like the Si, Jiang, and Ying Families, all the way to the subsequent Liu, Li, Yang, Zhu Families... almost razing more than two thousand years worth of imperial families.
Without distinguishing between age or gender, they silently captured them, ground them into minced meat, and fed it to the enslaved Phoenix.
Then with Secret Techniques, the flesh returned to the Phoenix, but the bloodline was gradually transferred to Yuan Mingzhen, who was then still a fetus.
It was fortunate that the Xie Family's strength was not weak, and their actions were secret, so the alchemists remained unaware.
Otherwise, such an attempt to dig under the wall and follow would have been exposed, and a group of old monsters among the alchemists would probably have gone mad.
"At first, I thought that Aunt Yunhua's action of going to the Xie Family to set up an array and snatch people was somewhat overbearing."
"Now it seems that Aunt Yunhua had long seen through the crazed nature of the Xie Family and therefore intervened to rescue Senior Sister Lingji."
"No wonder Senior Sister Lingji's clone inside the Warm Jade warned me not to get close to the Xie Family members."
"With Sister's innate inspiration, those crazy and dirty thoughts of the Xie Family probably couldn't be hidden from her at all, it's hard to imagine what Sister endured as a child."
As Tao Qian was thinking this, he saw the pretty young girl in front of him forcibly trying to stay calm, hiding the sense of injustice in her eyes.
This appearance of hers must be her deeply hidden true personality.
Therefore, there was no Empress's majesty, and she wasn't particularly good at hiding it either.
She seemed to completely guess Tao Qian's thoughts and pursed her lips, saying:
"Lingji Fairy's blessing is extraordinary, she was snatched away by Yunhua Immortal to the Penglai Sea early on, and didn't suffer any hardships. I even heard that the Immortal dotes on her greatly, giving her whatever she wants, not only giving her an Immortal Island but also warned the Xie Family, and even the entire Cultivation World."
"Whoever dares to provoke Lingji Fairy, Yunhua will not stop until death. Brother Tao, as a disciple of the Spirit Treasure Sect, you must know how powerful this warning from Yunhua Immortal is. No one in this world dares to trouble the fairy, not even a Major Sect like the Demon Buddha Temple."
"Yet the hardships that the fairy should have experienced but did not, eventually all fell onto me."
As Yuan Mingzhen uttered these words,
The scenery around began to change again.
What reflected this time was everything Yuan Mingzhen went through from being an infant to growing up as a young girl.
Her Life Chart was set while she was still bundled up in swaddling clothes.
A tool!
A tool cultivated by the Xie Family to contend for supremacy over the world.
So-called fatherly love, motherly love, love of brothers and sisters, and even the love of relatives and friends were all non-existent.
From a young age, she was also fed various strange and unsightly foods to increase her bloodline concentration.
After that, she suffered through various brutal Cultivation practices, brainwashing, and other inhumane experiences, as well as some unspeakable, unbearable scenes.
Lingering death by a thousand cuts was but a swift ending.
Even if one was taken by an Evil Demon for Soul Refining, the pain could not begin to compare.
Even though they were only illusory scenes from the past, Tao Qian still felt a nameless rage welling up in his heart.
Yunrong, who originally had some hostility towards Yuan Mingzhen, at this moment couldn't help but soften and cast a sympathetic look at the pretty young girl.
This girl was indeed pitiable.
Ordinary people, even Tao Qian himself, if they had experienced this, would probably have gone mad.
Yet Yuan Mingzhen, although not mad, did have some sequela.
That cold and dignified, exceptionally intelligent Empress, was likely a persona she adopted to deal with the Xie Family and the outside world.
And this plain and pretty young girl was her true self that she struggled to maintain.
Tao Qian couldn't help wondering what kind of Blessing or Life Chart allowed her to retain her sanity under such torture.
As this thought arose, the girl in front of him immediately gave him the answer:
"Brother Tao, Mingzhen actually doesn't dislike Lingji Fairy."
"In fact, the reason I was able to maintain my sanity and not become Mutated or Fallen under such torture was because of the three strands of hair left by the fairy."
"Although I did not gain the fairy's innate inspiration, I also gained some benefits, which gave my Soul and True Spirit an extraordinary resistance to those disgusting deeds."
"Moreover, I have to thank the fairy, as the Xie Family unintentionally learned that the fairy was not completely dead and temporarily let me go, turning their attention to find the fairy instead."