Today's third update: Chapter 2053! 3/3!
After reading Yuanbao's memory fragments, Xu Kun fell into deep thought.
Yuanbao had been fortunate, yet unfortunate as well.
Her mother had died before her eyes, her clanspeople had become feed, and she had wandered from place to place, living a wretched life at the bottom.
She had survived desperate situations time and again. Every experience had been so hopeless; if her luck had been even slightly worse, she would have died long ago.
Her life had never been under her own control.
Even after undergoing the Yuan-Chu Ancestor's trial, when her life seemed to have reached its peak, she had still been nothing more than a puppet on strings, controlled by others.
"Grandma, what was the point of showing me all this?"
He had not expected an answer, but the Phoenix Lord's voice sounded in the depths of Xu Kun's soul. It had been wrapped within those memory fragments.
"If I told you that everything Yuanbao went through was arranged by my own hand, what would you think?"
Xu Kun froze. "Including her mother's death?"
The Phoenix Lord fell silent. At that moment, silence spoke louder than words.
"Don't you think... that was too cruel?" Xu Kun said, finding it hard to accept.
"In an age of great strife, reality will only be crueler. Under normal circumstances, Yuanbao would have become food for those Rock Feather Vile Vultures, or starved to death in that chicken coop."
"Who would care whether a Sandplain Chicken lived or died?"
"I was merely cultivating a new successor for the Yuan-Chu Nine Veins."
Those in control never created Something from Nothing; they merely pushed events along.
Without those experiences, even if Yuanbao had undergone the Yuan-Chu Ancestor's trial, she could not have become the candidate the Phoenix