Ye Jun wasn’t actually sure what ca after Ruler Realm, but he had made a guess after hearing Song Liangxue’s grandfather’s title and also because of how Han Yuexin treated his existence.
He didn’t expect it to co true though. ihui had just confird it.
’Ruler Realm was already so far, and now there’s an entire major realm above it. As if that isn’t enough, there’s also Monarch Realm. Can’t say I didn’t expect this from a cultivation world. Who knows? Maybe there’s sothing after Monarch Realm too.’
Ruler Realm was the highest realm the public knew of and only the higher echelon knew about Saint Realm and the existence of those powerhouses at that realm.
And only the top echelon were aware of Monarch Realm. Judging from Song Liangxue’s reaction, he guessed that it was kept a secret even from her and that said a lot.
’They must be very dangerous if they can control the whole world at their fingertips. Even a Saint Realm powerhouse is afraid of them.’
He and Song Liangxue shared a glance before looking at ihui again.
"So, your na is Jiang ihui," Ye Jun smiled. "It’s a pretty na and to be honest, I didn’t expect ihui to be your real na."
"Why? Is it bad?"
"Certainly not," Ye Jun shook his head. "It’s just that I didn’t expect you to give your real na considering our relationship back then. Thought it was an alias to protect yourself too."
ihui’s eyes widened a bit, as she opened her mouth and closed it instantly. She looked away and kept her silence.
He was speechless. "You seriously didn’t think of that?"
"T-There are multiple ihuis," she tried to defend herself but her stuttering gave her embarrassnt away. "I’m sure there are."
"Might be, but blonde hair isn’t common in the North," Song Liangxue said. "So it isn’t hard to connect the dots."
"It actually isn’t..." ihui mumbled.
"What?"
She slowly looked up and said, "They won’t believe it’s even if they see these clues, especially if they find a man instead of a girl."
"I’m getting confused here." Ye Jun took her hand in his and asked, "Please explain all of it. I’m curious. We are curious."
She stared at their locked hands for a mont before starting her story.
"I was born as the third and last child of the Clan Head. And as you know, it’s very hard to get pregnant if the couple have high cultivation so I was already a miracle. There was no hope after , but it didn’t matter since I was an accident anyway."
Her eyes softened as she continued, "It didn’t an my family didn’t love though. Father, Mother, my two older siblings and even the Monarch often smiled at . I actually lived a life much better than most people."
"Then what changed?" Ye Jun asked softly.
"Nothing really," she responded in the sa voice. "Not everyone is perfect you know. Sa with my family. Born into a Clan which controls the world, the competition is very intense and I always felt suffocated in it. And my parents were no better as they always compared to my siblings. I tried to explain to them that I didn’t like it, but stubborn as they are, they still continued with it."
Ye Jun listened in silence, his fingers still moving against the back of her hand, and let her find her own pace.
"My siblings were both monsters in their own right," ihui continued. "My eldest brother condensed his Qi Vortexes at twelve and my second sister was even faster. By the standards of the outside world, what they did was impossible, the kind of thing entire dynasties would worship. And then there was ."
"You’re a prodigy too," Song Liangxue said quietly. "I’ve seen it myself."
"For the outside world, yes," ihui said with a faint, tired smile. "Inside the Jiang Clan, I was average. That word followed everywhere. Average. A genius anywhere else, and average at ho. My parents loved , I can never doubt that, but love and disappointnt can live in the sa person at the sa ti. They compared to my siblings constantly. Every breakthrough I made, they would smile and then ask why it had taken longer than my sister’s."
She pulled her hand free gently and wrapped both her arms around her knees.
"I tried so hard to impress them. I trained until I collapsed. I read every manual I could get my hands on. They controlled who I could talk to, where I could go, what I was allowed to learn, all of it wrapped in the word tradition. So the library beca the only place that was mine. I spent days in there, weeks perhaps. The books didn’t compare to anyone. They just let read."
Ye Jun felt sothing twist in his chest. It was a different shape of pain than the one he carried, gentler on the surface, but he recognized the bones of it. A child trying to be enough for people who had already decided what enough ant.
"One day I’d had enough," ihui said. "I blackmailed my second sister, used sothing she didn’t want our parents to know, and I left the clan in secret."
"Left?" Song Liangxue’s brow furrowed. "How does one simply leave a Monarch Clan?"
"The Five Ancient Clans don’t live in the world the way you do," ihui explained. "We reside in pocket dinsions, separate from the normal world. If I wanted to leave, I had to cross out of ours entirely and while I was out there, I stumbled into sothing I shouldn’t have. It was a ruined dinsion, dead and old... older than anything I’d ever felt."
Her expression grew distant, and her hand drifted up to her temple.
"I got sothing there. I don’t know what." A small frown of pain crossed her face. "Every ti I try to rember what happened inside, my head splits open and I can’t reach it. But whatever it was, it changed . After that, my talent soared. I surpassed both my siblings, truly surpassed them, not just in the eyes of the outside world but by the standards of the Jiang Clan itself."
Ye Jun’s eyes narrowed slightly, as he rembered experiencing sothing similar but didn’t say it yet.
"You hid it," he said instead. "From your family?"
"Of course I hid it." ihui let out a soft breath. "I was tired... tired of being asured. If I had shown them what I had beco, the comparisons would never stop, the expectations would only grow heavier. So I kept being average. I let them think I was still the slow one. It was easier to disappear inside their disappointnt than to live up to their pride."
"That’s why no one would suspect you," Song Liangxue said, the pieces clicking together. "Even with the clues, the blonde hair, the na. The Jiang Clan thinks their third child is diocre. They’d never imagine that diocre girl out here, hiding, surviving alone, strong enough to be mistaken for a top prodigy."
"Exactly." ihui nodded. "They’re looking for soone average, if they’re looking at all. And they certainly aren’t looking for a man."
Ye Jun chuckled at that. "The disguise really does work better than you would think."
"There’s more to that escape, isn’t there?" he asked, growing serious again. "You said you left in secret. But you were caught, right?"
ihui’s face softened with sothing complicated, half fondness and half old hurt.
"My brother told them," she said. "Not my sister, the one I blackmailed, but my eldest brother. He found out I had left sohow and told our parents where I had gone."
She saw the look on Ye Jun’s face and shook her head quickly. "He wasn’t betraying . He just did it because he was afraid. He didn’t think I could survive out there alone, and he would rather have dragged ho angry than dead sowhere he couldn’t reach. He loved . He just loved in the way that took my choices away."
"That’s the worst kind of love to be angry at," Ye Jun murmured. "The one that ans well."
"Yes." ihui smiled faintly. "I couldn’t even hate him properly for it."
She was quiet for a mont, gathering the next part.
"After they brought back, I stopped trying to leave openly. I trained in secret instead, kept my real strength hidden, and played the part of the average daughter so perfectly that no one questioned it. For a while, that was enough. I had my secret. I had the strength no one knew about. I told myself I could endure the cage if at least part of was free."
"But it wasn’t enough," Song Liangxue said.
"It’s never enough," ihui said softly. "A cage is still a cage, even a comfortable one. I wanted to see the world. The real one. The one outside our pocket dinsion, full of people who didn’t know what a Monarch Clan was, who lived and died without ever being asured against a sibling. I wanted to walk through a city where no one knew my na."
Her hands tightened around her knees.
"Then I t her," she said. "A girl from another Monarch Clan. We weren’t supposed to be close, the Five Ancient Clans keep careful distances from one another, but we found each other anyway at a gathering and sothing just fit. For the first ti in my life, I had a friend who understood exactly what my world was like. The suffocation, the expectations, the weight of a na you never asked for."
Ye Jun felt the shape of where this was going before she said it, and his expression sobered.
"I began to trust her," ihui went on, her voice growing quieter. "I told her my real wish, that I wanted to run. Truly run, far enough that even my clan couldn’t drag back."
She drew a slow breath.
"That was my mistake."
The room had gone very still, even Song Liangxue had stopped moving and the cool wind through the window seed to have paused.
Ye Jun reached out and took her hand again, firmly this ti.
"You don’t have to tell the rest tonight," he said gently. "Not if it hurts."
ihui looked at their joined hands for a long mont. Then she shook her head. "No. You should know. You both should."
Her purple-blue eyes lifted, and for the first ti there was sothing raw and unguarded in them. "Because the people who did this to , the ones who put in the state you found in, Ye Jun, they started with her."
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