The word hung in the air between them. Son.
Liang Chen's mind, capable of comprehending infinite cosmic laws, went utterly blank. Then, like a dam breaking, a memory—buried under millennia of conquest and cultivation—flooded in. It wasn't a gentle recollection. It was a visceral, brutal plunge.
One thousand, one hundred and twenty-three years ago.
The Ghost-Fang Caves.
The air was damp and stank of mold and demonic ichor. Liang Chen, then a Foundation Building disciple of the Verdant Sword Sect, leaned against a slimy cave wall, gasping. His sword arm trembled. Three Lesser Shadow-Stalkers lay dissolving into black smoke at his feet. He had been brash, overconfident, and had chased a fleeing stalker deep into an unexplored tunnel.
That's when it struck from a crevice above.
The Lust-Phantom Viper was the length of his arm, its scales shifting between colors like a sickly rainbow. Its bite wasn't painful at first. Just a pinprick on his neck.
Then the fire started.
It wasn't in his veins. It was in his cultivation. His carefully built qi pathways, the very foundation of his power, began to sizzle and burn. A heat wholly unrelated to temperature spread through his core, coiling in his dantian, clouding his mind with frantic, invasive want. His skin flushed. His breathing turned ragged. He stumbled, clawing at his robes, his thoughts dissolving into primal static. The venom wasn't just a poison; it was a corrosive, devouring desire that would burn out his cultivation and leave him a mindless husk.
"Liang Chen!"
The voice was sharp, laced with fear he'd never heard in it before. Xiao Ling, his junior martial sister—though she acted more like his stern, unforgiving master—skidded into the cavern, her sword gleaming with clean, white light. Her eyes, always so controlled, went wide at the sight of him writhing on the ground, the tell-tale rainbow sheen already creeping up his neck.
"The viper…" he choked out. "Phantom… Lust-Phantom…"
Her face paled. She knew. Every disciple learned about the demonic fauna. The antidote was the "Seven-Petal Chastity Blossom," which only grew on a peak three days' hard travel to the north. He would be dead, or worse, in three hours.
Her gaze swept the dead stalkers, the isolated cave. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. The clinical treatment entry in the bestiary scroll flashed in both their minds: 'In absence of antidote, only immediate Dual Cultivation (qi-synchronization method) can circulate and neutralize venom. Requires absolute trust and control. High risk of qi deviation for both parties.'
It was not described as romance. It was described as a medical procedure. A desperate, intimate surgery.
"No…" Liang Chen groaned, fighting the fog, shame warring with the venom's fire. "Senior Sister… you can't…"
"Be quiet," she snapped, her voice trembling only once. She sheathed her sword. Her movements were not gentle, but precise. She knelt beside him, her face a mask of rigid discipline. "This is not… This is to save your life and your cultivation. Do you understand? It is a technique. Nothing more."
He could only nod, agony etching his features.
What followed was not passion. It was tension, awkwardness, and a profound, terrifying intimacy. In the cold, dank cave, they followed the strict, clinical steps of the qi-synchronization method. It was about aligning breath, about directing the chaotic, poisoned energy in his body into a shared circuit where her pure, disciplined qi could help dissolve it.
It was her unwavering focus that guided them. Her hands, cool and steady on his burning skin, positioned him. Her voice, a low, stern murmur, counted breaths. "In. Hold. Cycle. Out."
He saw the struggle in her eyes—the violation of every principle of propriety she held dear, warring with her unshakeable duty to protect a fellow sect member. A tear escaped, tracing a clean line through the cave dust on her cheek, and that single, lost tear wounded him more deeply than any demon claw.
It took hours. The venom receded, leaving him weak, hollow, and seared with a shared vulnerability that was more binding than any vow. When it was done, they sat apart in the gloom, not looking at each other, the silence heavier than any mountain.
They never spoke of it. Not once. He, mortified and fueled by a new, frantic drive to prove himself, threw himself into cultivation. She retreated behind an even more impassable wall of stern mastery. Within two years, his talent exploded. He left the Verdant Sword Sect for wider horizons, then higher realms, chasing power, chasing ascension. He never looked back.
He never knew.
He never knew that in the silent weeks after he left, she discovered the change in her body. He never knew of her solitary choice, the whispers she silenced with icy stares, the story she crafted of a brave, fallen mortal father from another sect. He never knew of the years of raising a son who grew to look more like the ghost of a man she couldn't forget with every passing day.
The Present. The Silent Main Hall.
Liang Chen surfaced from the memory as if drowning. The cold stone under his feet, the smell of blood and incense—it all rushed back, now stained with the bitter truth of the past.
He looked at Xiao Ling. Really looked. He saw the young woman from the cave, now forged by a thousand years of silent strength. Her pride was her armor, but in her eyes, he finally saw the cost.
"You never said…" His voice was raw.
"Why would I?" Her words were quiet, firm. Not accusing, just factual. "You had your path. The heavens waited. Telling you would have been a chain on your ankle, a distraction. I did not need a distracted man. I needed a father for my son, or I needed nothing."
She took a steadying breath, the only sign of the storm within. "I do not tell you now for your pity, Liang Chen. I do not want your guilt. I tell you because he is in danger."
She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a fierce, urgent whisper. "His talent marks him. It screams of your legacy. Today, it was a greedy mortal alliance. Tomorrow? It could be a rival god. A demon sovereign. Anyone who seeks to strike at the Heavenly Emperor will look for a weakness. They will find him. They will use him, break him, or worse."
The truth of it hit Liang Chen with the force of a planetary impact. The siege… it wasn't just random mortal greed. His son had been the target. His existence was a vulnerability.
Then, a second, icier realization seeped through the shock, freezing his divine blood.
His youth. After the ascension, before the final omnipotence. He had been… adventurous. Reckless. Driven by curiosity, power, and yes, desire. He had traveled countless realms, met extraordinary women, faced life-and-death trials. In the heat of battle, in the thrill of discovery, in moments of shared danger or celebration… he had not always been careful. The concept of consequences like this had been irrelevant to an immortal being on the rise.
If there is one…
The thought was a ghost in his mind.
If there is one, from a single, desperate incident I had forgotten…
Could there be others?
The cold dread that filled him was not mortal fear. It was a cosmic horror. The scale of his own past ignorance yawned before him like an abyss.
"Others," he breathed the word, not meaning to say it aloud.
Xiao Ling's eyes sharpened. She saw the dawning terror on the face of the most powerful being she knew. She understood immediately. Her stern expression didn't change, but a flicker of something like grim sympathy passed through her eyes.
Liang Chen's hand rose almost of its own volition. He didn't need the elaborate technique he'd used on the battlefield. This was simpler, more profound. He closed his eyes and cast his divine sense inward, not outward, seeking the unique signature of his own bloodline, his own essence, as a reference point. Then, like a celestial sonar pulse, he sent that awareness out, not in a violent shockwave, but in a seeking thread, feeling for echoes.
Ping.
The first echo was bright and strong, standing right in front of him in spirit—Liang Jian.
Ping.
A second, fainter, more chaotic echo, from the direction of the smoldering Demon Realm to the south-west. Liang Mo.
Ping.
A third, a calm, steady pulse from the distant Alchemy Valleys. Liang Dan.
Ping. Ping. Pingpingpingping…
His eyes flew open. They were wide, unseeing, reflecting not the hall but a terrifying, constellation of faint, undeniable sparks lighting up across the dark map of the universe in his mind. Dozens of them. Scattered like stars. Some bright, some dim, some almost obscenely far away.
The color drained from his face. The Heavenly Emperor took an unsteady step backward.
The personal mystery was gone, shattered. In its place was a vast, terrifying, and undeniable reality.
It was no longer a question of if.
It was a count. And the number was not small.