My Mother Wasn't Dead! Her Own Father Threw Her into a Waterfall Cave for Twenty Years

"Level eighty-nine. Stuck there for six years."

Firelight illuminated his face. It was flat, so flat there was not a trace of an expectant father on it.

"An ordinary Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast—kill one, and the soul ring would not be pure enough. A Supreme Spirit Bone would be even more out of the question. But if a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast willingly sacrificed itself... ring, bone, origin—everything would be complete."

He added another stick of firewood to the flames.

"Where in the entire continent could I find another Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast willing to die for me? She delivered herself right to my door."

[I nearly threw up just listening to him.]

[Six years! He was stuck at level eighty-nine for six years. The child was the solution, and his wife was the material!]

[Da Ming and Er Ming even called her big sister... Until her death, she thought that man was protecting her.]

Above the Star Dou Great Forest, the Sky Azure Bull Python's enormous body stretched across the clouds. Its pressure pressed ripples across the lake's surface.

[Da Ming: When she left the forest back then, she said the Clear Sky Sect had a ritual. She said she wanted to become a complete person. So we saw her off.]

[Er Ming: So she went to become the ritual. She herself was the ritual.]

Deep beneath the lake in the Star Dou Great Forest, the icy-blue glow dimmed slightly. Two colossal shadows lay submerged below, while a patch of mist lingered unbroken over the lake.

[Da Ming: She said back then that the Clear Sky Sect had a ritual. She said she was going to seek a place in the human world for her unborn child.]

[Er Ming: She trusted him so much. She even concealed her Soul Power, afraid of frightening ordinary people.]

Without waiting for anyone to digest it, the Sky Screen directly began showing the day of the pursuit.

The image showed that famous stretch of hills. Tang Hao ran ahead with Ah Yin in his arms, while the Soul Power of three Titled Douluo behind them darkened the sky.

Someone in the comments had sharp eyes.

[Stop! Pause! That valley path on his left!]

The image rewound three seconds and froze. The valley path on the left was broad and led directly to the edge of the Star Dou Great Forest. Spirit Hall's tracking Soul Tools had a clear blind spot along that route. The Sky Screen even brought up Spirit Hall's internal marching map, where the markings were perfectly clear.

Tang Hao held Ah Yin and turned right.

To the right stood sheer cliffs—a dead end.

[He chose the dead end himself! The map was right there; he could see it!]

In the battle that followed, the Sky Screen marked every frame with golden annotations. For the Clear Sky Hammer's first strike, Tang Hao rammed his left ribs directly into the sword intent. The annotation read: Could evade, did not evade. For the second strike, his shoulder blade cracked. Annotation: Could block, did not block. By the third strike, he was kneeling on one knee, blood spraying from his mouth onto Ah Yin's face. Annotation: Injury level seventy-one percent, not fatal, near-death state was feigned.

"Ah Yin!" he roared heart-wrenchingly in the image. "Take the child and go! I'll hold them off!"

His roar struck the cliff walls, and echoes came from every direction. There was no way out.

Ah Yin stood in the pool of blood, tears falling one after another. She raised her hand, and blue-gold light shone from her heart. Her hundred-thousand-year origin transformed into a rain of light that filled the sky.

...And Tang Hao?

"Was that grief?"

[That was wild joy.]

[The level ninety barrier broke. All the breath he had been holding in at level eighty came pouring out at that moment.]

[I want to throw up even from this side of the screen.]

Inside the Clear Sky Sect's secret chamber, the Seventh Elder braced himself against the table, his legs trembling. Qian Daoliu rolled one prayer bead after another between his fingers. The smile had vanished from his face, replaced by a calm that was almost reverent.

"Using his lawful wife as a furnace and his own son as a sheath," the old man said softly. "With such a state of mind, no wonder he could smash Qian Xunji apart."

"Bullshit!" His voice cracked. "I was protecting her! Three Titled Douluo from Spirit Hall were surrounding and killing us. If I didn't take the hits, how could she survive? She was my wife! What do you people, watching for entertainment from behind a screen, know?!"

On the ninth strike of his hammer, the Sky Screen answered him.

[Playing: After the sacrifice.]

In the image, Tang Hao sat cross-legged in the pool of blood as waves of level ninety Soul Power surged outward. In his open palm lay a single seed left behind after Ah Yin's sacrifice—the Blue Silver Emperor's origin, the last trace of life remaining to her in this world.

The Sky Screen's words were calm. [The Blue Silver Emperor seed contains fragments of divine consciousness. If properly nurtured, she can reconstruct a physical body within five hundred years.]

Tang Hao glanced at the seed in the image.

Then he rose, put away his hammer, and walked out of the underground cavern. He casually tossed the seed into a cave behind a waterfall—dark, damp, and never seeing daylight year-round. The Sky Screen's timestamp jumped forward twenty years. Not a single person entered that cave during those twenty years.

[She could reconstruct a body within five hundred years... He casually threw her life into a cave.]

[He said he loved her. For twenty years, he kept saying he had pursued and protected his wife.]

[Even killing someone is less cruel than this. He could not even be bothered to pave her road to resurrection.]

Tang Hao's hammer stopped in midair. His mouth hung open, his chest rose and fell, but he could no longer roar out a single word.

The Sky Screen drove in another blade. [Playing: Sampled records of Tang Hao's drinking over the past twenty years.]

Scene after scene flashed past. In the underground cavern, wine jars shattered against stone walls. He pounded his chest and howled, blue-gold hundred-thousand-year Soul Power tangling with the Clear Sky Hammer's power inside his meridians, driving blood from his seven orifices.

[Conclusion: The sacrificial soul ring conflicted with the Body Martial Soul, and the hidden injuries worsened year by year. Drinking was a means of suppressing the rejection reaction. No records support the claim that he drank to drown his sorrows over his dead wife.]

"Even his pain was fake." This comment was pushed to the very top.

Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.

In that strange land at the bottom of the valley, the Sky Screen lowered a golden pillar of light. Its target was precise—the frail Blue Silver Grass growing from a crack between the rocks.

The instant the pillar fell, the entire plant shook violently. Its leaves curled one after another, withering and blackening. At the brink of its origin collapsing, it released a shrill cry of anguish. The cry did not pass through anyone's ears; it slammed directly into the spiritual seas of every living being within a thousand miles.

Tang San staggered in the underground cavern and clutched his head.

But the cry lasted only three breaths. Golden light peeled away the invisible mental restriction on the grass leaves, and the Sky Screen's judgment descended. [Tang Hao privately imposed a mental restriction, sealing the Blue Silver Emperor's divine consciousness for twenty years. Judgment: enslavement. Restriction lifted.]

The withering stopped.

Amid the charred grass leaves, a speck of blue-gold light brightened and slowly unfolded. A faint figure sat up from within the leaves, long hair cascading down. Her gentle brows and eyes were exactly like the face on that old wooden bed from twenty years ago.

She raised her hand and looked at her fingertips.

Then she spoke. Her voice scattered into the wind at the bottom of the valley, and the entire continent heard it.

"...So I did not die from illness in childbirth."

Tang San stood completely still in the underground cavern. He looked at his father's face on the light screen, then at the figure who had just awakened at the valley bottom. The pillar that had supported him through sixteen years shattered, inch by inch.

"Dad. My mother... is still alive."

Tang Hao stood with his back to him. The veins on the back of the hand gripping his hammer bulged, but he did not move.

At the valley bottom, Ah Yin slowly turned her head toward the Sunset Forest, toward the Sky Screen, and asked her second question.

"Where is he now?"