At first, the young Jade Emperor felt as if he could no longer control his own body. His emotions surged like a drop of ink falling onto white paper, and scenes of bitterness from the hundreds of experiences he had lived through surfaced, like chisels stabbing into his mind and heart, making his emotions quake.
The faint influence left behind by his other selves over the past eight thousand years had blown straight through the young Jade Emperor's emotional threshold.
He couldn't control it, no matter how hard he tried.
Qi WuHuo asked in confusion, "Xiao Yu?"
"Or Xiaoyu?"
Empress Houtu's gaze swept past Qi Wuhuo and landed on the young Jade Emperor, who seemed utterly unable to control the emotions he'd carried from the past. The pupils of Empress Houtu, the Earthly Deity, contracted slightly. Her heart churned like a storm-tossed sea, but she forced herself to remain composed. Then she spoke gently. "...It seems this child arrived here utterly exhausted in mind and spirit. Since fate brought you together, it must be fate."
"WuHuo, please invite him inside."
The young Daoist had already been thinking the same thing, so he invited the boy in.
At that moment, the Jade Emperor finally managed to suppress the surging emotions in his heart and Primordial Spirit. He said, "I'm sorry you had to see that... I-I'm from Zhongzhou. My surname is Zhang, and my given name is Xiaoyu."
"The Xiao in my name is the 'Xiao' in 'clouds above.'"
Clouds above, pure jade.
Qi WuHuo looked at the boy before him, then instinctively glanced up at the sky.
Could it be...
An idea surfaced in Qi WuHuo's mind, but he quickly pressed it down.
No, that couldn't be it.
How could the Jade Emperor be a boy of only a dozen