The Crucial Point

Huo Yuhao's appearance was the turning point of the whole affair.

He rescued Dai Hao, but also kidnapped Xu Yunhan.

He didn't know at the time that Xu Yunhan was his son; he just needed a bargaining chip to force Ju Zi to back down.

No matter how strong Ju Zi's army was, it was impossible for them to continue fighting while the Empress Dowager and the Emperor were both captured.

Huo Yuhao had seized control of the Sun Moon Empire's lifeline; he thought Ju Zi would compromise.

Ju Zi did compromise, but the way she compromised stunned everyone.

She shouted out Xu Yunhan's background in front of both armies.

Yunhan is your son; you cannot harm him.

The moment those words were spoken, the atmosphere on the entire battlefield changed.

Huo Yuhao was stunned. The child in his hands had suddenly transformed from a bargaining chip into a responsibility he could never escape for the rest of his life.

The soldiers of the Sun Moon Empire exchanged bewildered glances. The fact that their emperor was a descendant of the enemy's strongest warrior was a shock to their morale more profound than any defeat.

Ju Zi knew better than anyone the price she would pay for saying those words.

Tang San had warned her long ago not to reveal the child's parentage.

Tang San's warning was not a casual remark; it carried a murderous intent.

If Ju Zi keeps quiet, Xu Yunhan can still grow up peacefully as the emperor of the Sun Moon Empire.

But once she speaks, Xu Yunhan's identity will be exposed, and Tang San will have enough reason to kill him to silence him.

But Ju Zi still spoke up.

She looked at Huo Yuhao, at the man she had loved her whole life, and revealed the secret she should never have said.

She was betting that Huo Yuhao wouldn't harm his own flesh and blood, and she was also betting that Tang San wouldn't kill a child in front of Huo Yuhao.

Tang San reacted quickly.

He personally intervened, ordering the Ju Zi Empire to withdraw its troops, return all the occupied land, and rename the Sun Moon Empire to the Heaven Dou Empire.

This series of orders effectively wiped out all the achievements of the Sun Moon Empire's years of expansion, and Tang San destroyed most of the wealth that Ju Zi had painstakingly accumulated with a single sentence. Was Tang San's action a violation of the rules of the Divine Realm?

The Divine Realm has explicit rules against interfering in the affairs of the mortal world, but Tang San, as an enforcer of the law, has intervened multiple times, long ago trampling on his own rules.

His intervention this time was less about maintaining order and more about silencing Ju Zi and preventing the further spread of Xu Yunhan's background.

In the original novel, Huo Yuhao explicitly stated that he would not acknowledge this son.

This statement sounds cold, but it's not hard to understand from his perspective.

Suddenly someone tells you that you have a son, and that the mother of this son is a woman who plotted against you; the existence of this son itself is the product of a conspiracy.

It would be difficult for anyone to accept this immediately.

Huo Yuhao doesn't acknowledge Xu Yunhan; his way of acknowledging him is through distance and silence.

He neither acknowledges nor denies the child; he simply distances himself from the matter. This approach has already been criticized, so I won't repeat it here.

To put it simply, Huo Yuhao's indifference in this matter, compared to his loyalty and righteousness in other things, is so stark that it's hard to believe they are the same person.

Ju Zi was quite clear-headed about Huo Yuhao's attitude. She didn't pester him or demand that Huo Yuhao take any responsibility.

She only said one thing: Yunhan was her child alone, and after that, he had no relation to Huo Yuhao.

This was Ju Zi's way of saving face for herself, and also a way out for Huo Yuhao. She knew Huo Yuhao wouldn't acknowledge this son, and she didn't intend to use the son to manipulate Huo Yuhao's feelings.

She did all this because she was blinded by love; she chose the wrong path, and in the end, she accepted it.

This resigned attitude makes the character of Ju Zi more human than Huo Yuhao.

She's not perfect; she's made mistakes, but at least she dares to take responsibility for them.

In the final episode, Ju Zi and the child retreated back to the Sun Moon Empire and, following Tang San's orders, changed the country's name to the Heaven Dou Empire.

This name change signifies the forced end of the Sun Moon Empire's history as an independent political entity.

From then on, Ju Zi served as Empress Dowager, assisting the young Xu Yunhan in governing the country diligently. In the third part of the Douluo Continent, later historical records referred to Xu Yunhan as a great ruler of his generation.

This assessment demonstrates that Xu Yunhan, under the nurturing of Ju Zi, grew into a qualified monarch. Although the Sun Moon Empire changed its name, it did not decline under the rule of this mother and son.

The ending for Ju Zi is indeed quite different from that for Bibi Dong.

Bibi Dong was the last Pope of the Spirit Hall. She was once only one step away from Godhood, but in the end, she died at the hands of Tang San, and all her cultivation and ambition vanished.

Ju Zi didn't become a god or reach the level of Titled Douluo, but she saved her life, her son, and her regent's power.

What she lost was Huo Yuhao's true love, but what she gained was a relatively complete life for the rest of her days. How to calculate this is a matter of opinion.

But at least Ju Zi is still alive, still doing what she wants to do, and still watching her only child grow up.

It's difficult for a person to have everything in life, and the story of the Ju Zi is probably the best illustration of this statement.

She gained power and a son, but missed out on Huo Yuhao's feelings.

She saved her life and status, but lost the opportunity to expand her territory.

She once had the chance to become the greatest empress dowager in the Sun Moon Empire, but Tang San's words brought her back to reality.

But she didn't go mad, she didn't give up on herself, and she didn't burn herself to ashes like Bibi Dong did.

She accepted the boundaries that fate had set for her, and within those boundaries, she did what she could do well, one by one.

[At this point, I'm much more forgiving of Ju Zi than I am of Huo Yuhao.]

Huo Yuhao had too many choices, but he chose the easiest one.

Ju Zi had no choice but to squeeze out a path from the cracks.

She doesn't deserve sympathy; she's done wrong, and her methods weren't clean. But she deserves a fair word.

She played a less-than-ideal hand to the best of her ability. Losing to Tang San isn't shameful; it's the difference between a god and a mortal, not a matter of ability.

Ju Zi sat in her dormitory at the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineering Academy and read the diary three times from beginning to end.

Lin Ye wrote her ending more gently than she had anticipated; in fact, she felt it was too gentle in some parts.

She knew what she had done, and she knew that those things were morally untenable.

But Lin Ye didn't dwell on those things; he focused on how she managed to protect herself and her son under Tang San's suppression.

Ju Zi leaned against the headboard. It was late at night, and all the other girls in the dormitory were asleep. She lay awake in the darkness, her mind replaying one sentence: Yunhan was her child alone, and had nothing to do with Huo Yuhao.

She hadn't said those words yet, but she already knew what she would say in the future. The things Lin Ye wrote about were still far removed from her, as distant as someone else's story.