How could he have imagined that Ao Ming would go treasure hunting in some obscure corner of the Great Qian Dynasty, only to be killed by the locals? There was nowhere he could even turn to argue the injustice of it.
Yet the woman with tear-filled eyes refused to let the matter rest.
She was tall and slender, her body covered in fine silver-gray scales that glimmered with a cold, ghostly moonlight in the dark.
"Twisting words to make excuses!"
Shen Wu clutched the Myriad Nether Palace Master's collar with both hands and said through gritted teeth:
"When I placed Ming'er in your care, why didn't you tell me you couldn't protect him?!"
"Shen Wu, as his father, I warned him many times not to pick fights while he was away. Whatever happened, he could wait for me to return and settle it for him."
Ao Changsheng's eyes dimmed, and his breathing grew a little hurried, but his voice remained steady.
"Each time, though, he brought you up to silence me. And since nothing had gone wrong for centuries, I stopped pressing the matter."
"I even had someone craft a spiritual artifact that an Extreme Realm cultivator could use, then put it on him myself."
"The palace treasury was always open to him, too. He could take whatever precious medicine he wanted—a privilege even the Grand Protector didn't have."
"And still I couldn't protect him. When I learned what had happened deep in the Nether Domain—"
"Enough!"
Shen Wu cut him off in a fury and shoved him away. The finger she pointed at his nose trembled uncontrollably.
"The Grand Protector, the Grand Protector! Always the Grand Protector! I don't want to hear about that dead successor of yours, and I don't want to dredge up our past!"
"I, Shen