Four brutal months passed in the Extreme North.
Outside the protective mountain ring, the winter storms had grown vicious, burying the wastelands under mountains of unforgiving ice. Inside the Celestial Fox valley, life carried on under the tense, temporary leadership of the Matriarch's younger sister. The entire clan held its breath, waiting for the day their Queen would finally deliver her child.
On one perfectly quiet afternoon, the silence of the Sacred Cave was violently shattered.
Deep within the gem-lit tunnels, Xiao Bai felt a sudden, agonizing spike of pain tear through her abdomen. It was not the normal, gradual pain of a natural birth. It felt as though she had swallowed a falling star, and it was now trying to burn its way out of her body.
"Ahhh!" Xiao Bai screamed instinctively. The sound was not a human cry, but the heaven-shaking roar of a Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox. The sheer force of her voice caused the entire mountain to tremble. The glowing sapphires and moonstones embedded in the cave walls cracked under the sonic pressure, raining sparkling dust down onto the stone floor.
Outside the cave, the guards immediately dropped to their knees, clutching their bleeding ears. The spiritual barrier surrounding the peak flared brightly, reacting to the Matriarch's sudden loss of control.
Within seconds, three figures blurred past the kneeling guards, moving so fast they looked like streaks of colored light.
They were the three supreme Healing Elders of the Celestial Fox Clan, all powerful cultivators in the late Shangqing (Supreme Pure) realm. Because the Celestial Fox Clan was made up of several different ancient lineages, the elders looked vastly different from one another.
One was an old woman with bue hair, representing the Aqua Fox lineage. The second was a tall, stern man with ash-gray hair from the Ghost Fox lineage. Both of them possessed five tails, a mark of high nobility.
Leading them was a exquisite beautiful woman with long, midnight-black hair that cascaded down her back like a waterfall. She possessed six spectral tails that flickered in and out of reality behind her. This was Xiao Chi, the Matriarch's younger sister, the temporary leader of the clan, and one of the most powerful illusionists in the world.
They rushed into the inner chamber and instantly understood the situation.
The room was a battlefield of clashing energies. The freezing Yin energy of the cave was violently colliding with waves of scorching, unnatural Yang energy radiating from Xiao Bai's massive, snow-white body. The spiritual pool in the center of the room was actually boiling, sending thick clouds of hot steam into the air.
"Sister!" Xiao Chi cried out, her black eyes wide with panic. "The time has come!"
Xiao Bai lay on her side on the jade bed, panting heavily. As a supreme beast of nature, her pride was absolute. Even in this moment of extreme vulnerability, she refused to shift into her weaker human form. She would bring her child into the world in her true, majestic, nine-tailed state.
"Stay... back!" Xiao Bai gritted her giant fangs, her voice echoing in their minds.
A sudden shockwave of heat erupted from her body. The two Five-Tailed elders had to quickly cross their arms and summon spiritual shields of ice just to keep their robes from catching fire.
"What is this terrifying Yang energy?" the Gray Fox elder gasped, struggling against the heat. "A fox cub should be born with the chill of the moon, not the fire of a volcano!"
"Focus!" Xiao Chi ordered sharply, rushing to her sister's side. She pushed through the burning heat, her love for her sister overriding her natural demonic weakness to fire.
With a final, earth-shattering roar that blew the boiling water out of the pool, the infant finally came into the world.
Xiao Bai's massive head collapsed onto the jade stones. Her nine tails, usually held high with arrogance, fell limp across the floor. She was completely drained, her spiritual energy nearly emptied by the monstrously difficult birth.
The child lay on the warm stones, covered in a mixture of blood and strange, golden-red spiritual residue.
The healers immediately sprang into action. The Blue and Gray Fox elders rushed to Xiao Bai's massive head, placing their hands on her snowy fur. They channeled pure, soothing Yin energy into her body, easing her massive pain and repairing her exhausted meridians.
Meanwhile, Xiao Chi dropped to her knees beside the newborn.
Her hands trembled slightly as she gently picked up her new little nephew. The infant was tiny, possessing the small, fragile body of a fox cub, complete with soft white fur and two tiny, pointed ears.
"Let me clean you, little one," Xiao Chi whispered softly.
She summoned a gentle stream of clear, cool water using her spiritual energy, washing away the blood. As she cleaned him, she carefully sent a thin thread of her spiritual sense into the infant's body to check his health.
Suddenly, Xiao Chi gasped and pulled her hand back as if she had been shocked.
"Elder Xiao Chi? What is wrong?" the Blue Fox elder asked anxiously. "Is the child deformed?"
"No..." Xiao Chi muttered, staring at the tiny cub in absolute disbelief. "His meridians... they are incredibly wide. And they are hot. It feels like touching a tiny furnace."
She cautiously picked the child back up, wrapping him securely in a soft silk cloth she had brought. As she held him close to her chest, she finally noticed something incredibly unnatural.
A normal infant—human or demon—would be screaming and crying, terrified of the cold air and the bright lights of the new world.
This child was completely silent.
The little fox cub had his eyes wide open. They were a striking, deep crimson red. But there was no fear in those eyes. The infant was looking around the glowing, gem-filled cavern with an expression of deep, calm curiosity. It was as if a very old, very wise soul was looking through the eyes of a newborn baby, silently analyzing his new surroundings.
Xiao Chi felt a strange shiver run down her spine. The child's gaze was too intelligent. Too heavy.
But a moment later, the heavy gaze faded. The exhaustion of being a newborn baby finally caught up to the tiny body. The crimson eyes slowly fluttered shut, and the infant fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, his tiny chest rising and falling with a strange, rhythmic breathing pattern.
Sighing in profound relief, Xiao Chi cradled the sleeping cub and walked over to her sister.
Xiao Bai had finally managed to shift. To conserve what little energy she had left, she had transformed from her giant beast form into her human shape. She lay on the jade bed as a breathtakingly beautiful woman with pale skin and long, pure white hair, covered modestly in a white silk blanket. She looked incredibly weak, but her eyes were filled with a fierce maternal light.
"Sister," Xiao Chi smiled warmly, kneeling beside the bed and holding the bundled infant forward. "Congratulations. It is a healthy boy. You have finally given us a male heir."
The two elders standing nearby bowed deeply, their faces shining with joy. "Congratulations, Matriarch! The heavens have blessed the Celestial Fox Clan today!"