In the courtyard, Xiao Se sat beside a clear spring, looking utterly lost.
It was not until a pebble flew into the pond before him. Yet it did not fall straight into the water; instead, it skipped up a string of ripples.
Xiao Se raised his head and saw the faintly smiling young man weighing the pebbles in his hand. "Xiao Se, want to play?"
"...Father?"
"This was something I loved playing with when I was little. I haven't played in ages, but it looks like my hand isn't too rusty."
Then Xiao Se took the pebble from Father's hand and copied his motion, but the pebble that left his hand could hardly linger on the water's surface before it sank, leaving only one spreading ripple behind.
"Does it still hurt? Your mother gets like this when her temper flares. Once she starts hitting, she doesn't know her own strength."
Xiao Yan tossed out another pebble as he could not help asking.
"I'm fine. Mother never planned to do anything serious to me anyway."
Xiao Se shook his head. Only, compared to the harm from that slap, there was more of a sense of loss.
"...Let's talk about some things from the past."
"The Forgotten Ruins was a small world created by the Eight Emperors in the past because they could not completely destroy the Spirit Devouring Saint King."
"Over tens of thousands of years, that small world underwent three cycles of reincarnation, each weaker than the last, until it gradually perished."
"And as that small world perished, the Spirit Devouring Saint King's Demon Fetus would be completely destroyed. From then on, it would no longer have any effect on the Dou Qi Continent."
"...It was only because your parents barged in there back then that they accidentally allowed that