Speaking of it, during the years Dragon Mother ruled the river waters, very few people ever dared mention her husband.
Because the Dragon King had never been her husband in the first place.
It was a subject no one normally dared discuss. Awkward, for one thing, and liable to cost you your life for another.
After all, she was called Dragon Mother not because she had married the Dragon King, but because she had, in fact… given birth to a dragon child.
A dragon has nine sons, and those nine sons naturally had nine mothers. Strictly speaking, every one of those women could be respectfully called a “Dragon Mother” by the people. This particular lady was simply a little more special because she was the mother of the eldest son, while King Yingde, the Yellow Dragon Sovereign, was himself one of the highest-ranking rulers among dragonkind.
But those nine sons had all been fathered by the Yellow Dragon. That did not mean the other Dragon Kings had no children.
No matter how questionable the other Dragon Kings’ personal conduct might have been, at least they had properly married their own Dragon Consorts and properly produced whole strings of true-dragon sons. Their palaces had never suffered any problems with rites or succession. Everything was quiet and stable.
Only the Yellow Dragon had made a complete mess of his romantic affairs. Unfortunately, he was also far too powerful and far too exalted, which gave this sovereign an overwhelming presence. The mixed-blood dragon children he sired likewise went on to have an enormous influence, easily stirring up storms throughout the world…
Every strange event that seemed utterly unreasonable was really the product of one tiny mistake after another, one accidental coincidence piled atop the next.
And so, muddling along all the way to the present day, this Dragon Mother who had never married a Dragon King had somehow ended up with both a divine position and worshippers, genuinely carving out a rich, substantial domain of her own. Among the public, her momentum had even grown greater than that of the Dragon Kings who had vanished from sight.
Inspiring, really. If she had not ignored law and morality, stolen Liang Ming Yue’s child, killed Liang Ming Yue’s partner, and for some inexplicable reason disliked Pei Zhao… Qin Shu could almost have sincerely respected her as a formidable warlord of chaotic times.
But since she had already done things devoid of all conscience, Qin Shu saw no reason to care about his own manners either.
If lacking the legitimate status of a Dragon Consort was a sore spot no one dared mention, then naturally he needed to jab that sore spot as hard as possible and sprinkle in a few extra irritants while he was at it, just to maximize the effect.
At this very moment, he was already carrying Dragon Mother’s palanquin. Several sharply cut gemstones dug into his shoulder, icy and painful, grinding into his flesh with an ache that bored straight through him.
The decorative layer of soft white-gold armor had quietly cracked long ago, allowing the brutally hard, magnificent gems to secretly leave Qin Shu with bruises that would take days to fade.
It was not only the luxurious white-jade palanquin that was absurdly heavy. Dragon Mother herself, seated behind the jeweled curtain, was absurdly heavy too.
Without changing expression, Qin Shu stood at the entrance to the main hall, listening to the prawn master of ceremonies deliver a ringing welcome and string together Dragon Mother’s chaotic collection of titles as though reciting a banquet menu. Following A-Dao’s pace, he slowly carried the palanquin forward.
Clearly, he was the only one suffering under the stones. Huang Yu Yuan was an ox yao with skin thick enough to be ridiculous; even after the soft armor beneath the load split, he felt nothing. The two seahorse ladies were professionals, with thick calluses on their shoulders. A few jewels and diamonds pressing down on them barely counted as an itch.
Qin Shu could even sense an emotion spreading from the house-sized palanquin that was not being concealed in the slightest… delight.
No wonder Dragon Mother had been willing to let him carry her. She clearly knew Qin Shu had no good intentions, yet had not driven him out on the spot. So she had wanted to make him suffer a little on purpose.
But wasn’t she afraid Qin Shu might take advantage of being this close and launch some unavoidable sneak attack?
Forget it. There was no point trying to understand Dragon Mother’s thoughts or logic. Qin Shu had already struck up conversations with plenty of yao cultivators inside the Dragon Palace and taken the chance to pry for information. From everyone’s evasive reactions, he had managed to piece together the basic pattern of Her Ladyship’s everyday behavior.
Summed up in one short sentence: she cared only about whatever she liked or hated right in front of her.
Her emotions came and went quickly. Whether rewarding or punishing someone, she descended on them like a violent squall, giving everyone else no time to react. Even while acting, she herself never seemed to stop and think for even half a moment…
Apparently, not long ago, she had been so delighted that she rewarded a palace alchemist with one of Qiuniu’s dragon horns. Two days later, she flew into a rage over the exact same thing, sobbing about her poor son, then had the alchemist who had dared accept the reward executed by slow slicing. He was stewed and eaten, and the fresh fish soup was distributed to the attendants around her on the spot.
To be fair, that alone was already a sign of a seriously abnormal mental state, especially in a ruler. Just hearing about it made people’s skin crawl.
At that thought, Qin Shu deliberately let out a low hiss. With practiced ease, he drew his brows together, let the color fade slightly from his lips, and intentionally showed his pain to help nurture Dragon Mother’s current delight.
If her emotions came fast and came mad, then he might as well make her a little madder.
The effect was spectacular. When the palanquin stopped beneath the throne, its crisp bead curtain suddenly swayed, and an exquisitely beautiful young woman poked her head out, lifted the curtain with one hand, and leapt lightly down.
“These huge sleeves are such a nuisance, hahaha!”
The girl’s voice rang clear as silver bells, her eyes dark and bright. She wore an elaborate ceremonial dress built from countless layers, its train made of iridescent jiao-dragon scales and ethereal bird feathers, dragging brilliant patterns of light across the gold-plated floor.
She tore off the overdecorated outer robe and casually tossed it over the master of ceremonies’ head, then bounced onto a throne far too large for her. Even after removing the robe, her entire body remained covered in jewels, and even her hair gleamed with the soft golden luster of extravagant wealth.
“Pay your respects to Dragon Mother…”
With the heavy robe still draped over his head, the master of ceremonies bent halfway over and drew out the announcement. Everyone rose to salute as though thoroughly accustomed to this and saw nothing remotely strange about it.
Qin Shu: …
This time Qin Shu was genuinely stunned. He had imagined all kinds of appearances for Dragon Mother, but not once had he expected her to make herself look like this.
It was Liang Ming Yue’s face.
Any born-and-raised Jiangcheng local would recognize it. This was exactly how Liang Ming Yue had looked when she returned to Youth TV and debuted as a host for the first time: young, lively, beautiful, vivid, washing away the image of her former child-star days and becoming an overnight sensation all over again as “Sister Ming Yue,” the idol of girls throughout Jiangcheng…
The face was identical. Even that long-vanished temperament and state of being were identical!
It was perverse. Freakish. The yao cultivators present might not know Liang Ming Yue, but any human cultivator who had lived into the modern era and watched a few days of television or scrolled short videos for a while would know at least something about who she was.
Liu Yang Yang, currently hiding behind the ox yao, recognized her immediately. He nearly jumped out of his skin and almost lost control of his expression.
Yet not a single person dared directly question why Dragon Mother, leader of the yao cultivators, had openly replicated the face of a human girl and even copied her mischievous, sparkling temperament. What exactly was she trying to do?
That was fine. Everyone else was too scared. Qin Shu was especially not.
Qin Shu sucked in a huge breath on the spot, his face filled with shock as he pointed a trembling finger at Dragon Mother. “S-Sister Ming Yue! Why are you here?!”
The instant the words left his mouth, there was a tremendous bang. The luxurious palanquin slipped from his shoulder and crashed heavily to the floor, smashing a huge chunk from one edge.
Huang Yu Yuan cooperated immediately, going limp and collapsing beneath the side he had been carrying. He started coughing blood and playing dead on the spot.
“Moooo! Blood! Blood, that’s blood! Something happened to A-Yuan!” The old yellow ox let out a terrified bellow the moment he saw blood, sounding as though he were about to die of fright. “Your Ladyship, please allow this humble subject to save my nephew! Your Ladyship!”
The old yellow ox wailed and cried without moving from his seat, while the herd of ox yao he had brought with him erupted first. Seeing Dragon Mother sitting there stiff-faced and silent, they actually mustered the courage to rush down from their places, fighting one another to lift the palanquin and rescue their fellow ox.
The two well-trained seahorses froze as well, but without an order from their master, they refused to bend down and lower the palanquin. So they ended up tugging back and forth with a herd of panicking ox yao… until they literally tore the palanquin apart.
It really broke. The recoil sent both sides flying, while the palanquin snapped in half and thundered to the floor. White-jade bricks shattered, jewels and diamonds clattered everywhere, and several large round pearls came loose from the base and rolled straight toward the guests’ seats.
Every guest stared dumbly at the wreckage. For a moment, the hall was utterly silent, to the point that even the cold sweat running down their foreheads seemed unusually loud.
The one who broke the silence was Yuxu.
Having quietly returned to her seat, Yuxu openly picked up one of the pearls and turned it over with interest before speaking gently. “What a fine pearl. Full, even color, beautifully translucent, soft and smooth as silk. Thank you for the treasure, Your Ladyship.”
Seeing this, Chang Liu Yi hurriedly picked one up as well, then casually grabbed a few pieces of jade suitable for artifact refining and stuffed them into her pocket.
Dragon Mother might not have been mentally stable, but the fine stones in the Dragon Palace were treasures impossible to find outside. Using them to build a palanquin was a criminal waste… so they might as well take as much as they could. Even Liu Yang Yang seized the chaos to steal one, hiding behind a large yellow ox who was fake-crying, his movements remarkably quick and discreet.
After pocketing the stones, Chang Liu Yi even added openly, “The Chang family of Fengqi Mountain thanks Your Ladyship for the treasure.”
Dragon Mother had remained silent the entire time, sitting on the oversized throne like a wooden statue. At the words “Fengqi Mountain,” her right eyelid twitched almost imperceptibly. Only then did she slowly give a stiff-faced snort. “Take them. They’re all broken anyway. What are you standing around for?”
“Thank you… thank you for the treasure, Your Ladyship…”
“Thank you for the treasure, Your Ladyship!”
The other guests could only join in picking through the wreckage. Some thought they had struck it rich; others felt as though they were being forced to crawl around on the floor collecting trash, which was rather damaging to their dignity… but Her Ladyship’s authority was too great. They dared to be angry, not to object, so they could only grit their teeth and thank her along with everyone else.
The chaotic order of the hall gradually returned to normal. The ox yao sniffled and carried Huang Yu Yuan into the rear hall, loudly demanding the very best palace physician so someone could immediately examine their A-Yuan’s injuries.
Those booming, vigorous shouts could be heard clearly even through the walls and roof between the two halls. Compared with the severe atmosphere in the main hall, it was all a little awkward, but they were Dragon Mother’s relatives and had always been used to considerable freedom… a bit of domineering behavior was normal.
A-Gui and A-Dao knew how to read the room. The moment Dragon Mother told everyone to divide up the wreckage, each grabbed several gemstones, dusted themselves off, saluted, and hurried away, practically desperate to escape.
And so, at that moment, Qin Shu was the only person who had not taken so much as a single stone. He still stood stiffly in the center of the main hall, wearing the soft white-gold armor the gemstones had sliced open while the other guests repeatedly stole glances at him.
Qin Shu did not care about their curious scrutiny. He focused entirely on Dragon Mother, scanning her from head to toe several times as quickly as possible, then looking again in careful detail. There was an enormous amount of information to take in.
Her hair had been treated with some sort of smoothing product ground from pearls. The pearls in her earrings were top-grade Eastern Pearls. The iridescent scale ornaments covering her ceremonial dress really were jiao-dragon scales, but the bird feathers used as accents came at best from rare ordinary birds and had nothing to do with divine birds such as phoenixes.
Cowhide and sheepskin, fine silk embroidery, plenty of real gold thread… luxurious, certainly, but not luxurious enough.
Aside from the limited-edition treasures that came from the sea, the rest of those decorative clothes could probably be produced by any reasonably wealthy mountain lord who lived on land.
The palanquin they had just smashed was more expensive than the outfit Dragon Mother was wearing. To be honest, that was completely backward. According to yao-cultivator etiquette, the rarest and most precious treasures ought to be worn on the body.
It looked as though Dragon Mother had spent all the best things in her private treasury buying Three Thousand Worlds. Her financial situation now seemed a little strained… Qin Shu thought, without missing the more important detail.
She was wearing human skin. A complete set, fitted seamlessly.
If the value of that human-skin coat was included, then her ensemble could just barely support the grandeur of a major birthday banquet. Jin Bi had once worn similarly sinister human-skin clothing, so sure enough, Dragon Mother possessed more than one skin.
And the one she wore herself was naturally the most exquisitely and expensively made, fashioned from the most substantial material and refined using the most… inhuman techniques.
The surface was soft and silky, the texture light as clouds. Its carefully tailored cut adhered closely to the flesh beneath it, perfectly wrapping the contours of her body while remaining flexible and breathable. It was genuinely an extraordinary artifact.
If Qin Shu had not already seen a low-quality version of a human-skin coat and if his eyesight were not unusually good, then even a careful inspection with spiritual consciousness alone might have struggled to find where the seams were.
Of course, something so close-fitting, flexible, and breathable also benefited Qin Shu. Right now, he could see that Dragon Mother’s stiff eyebrows had drawn together and lifted slightly, remaining frozen that way for quite some time.
She was afraid. Those dark pupils that did not belong to her had dilated too. But it was not only fear.
Her nostrils flared slightly and her lips pressed shut: anger. The skin at the bridge of her nose tightened, creating tiny folds between her eyes: extreme disgust.
Even if those reactions flashed by in an instant, to Qin Shu they were as clear as though time had slowed without limit. There was no hiding them.
Dragon Mother’s self-control was a little better than he had expected. She was enduring it with real difficulty. But since her emotions had already turned into a pot of boiling chaos, Qin Shu naturally intended to seize the opportunity and add fuel to the fire.
“Sister Ming Yue, where’s your boyfriend?” Qin Shu asked with complete curiosity, firmly treating her as Liang Ming Yue.
Strangely enough, Dragon Mother showed a very subtle mixture of conflicting emotions toward Qin Shu’s deliberate stupidity: a bizarre flicker of secret delight mixed with the anger of having her sore spot jabbed. Both vanished almost instantly.
“Little Friend Qin, what sort of nonsense are you talking about?” The girl’s clear voice was forcibly squeezed from Dragon Mother’s throat, once again imitating that lively, mischievous manner. “Considering how hard you worked carrying my palanquin, find yourself an empty seat and eat something… Here, this is seaweed stuffed with agar. It’s delicious.”
It was an extremely strange attitude, an utterly baffling reaction… and yet Qin Shu suddenly understood something.
She probably liked the feeling of being forcibly treated as Liang Ming Yue, but could not let that pleasure show too clearly, so she used it as an excuse to tolerate Qin Shu’s rudeness.
“Not eating it.” Qin Shu laughed. “Could you stop being disgusting? You’re thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years old, and you’re still stealing a young girl’s face. Aren’t you ashamed? Do all these loyal subordinates of yours know that you’re a yao who hates your own appearance so much you insist on imitating a human girl?”
The main hall had already been deathly silent. Now it became even quieter. Several highly respected old fish yao could no longer take the strain; their eyes rolled back and they fainted.
At the VIP seats, the Jiangcheng Mountain Lord, the tigress who had once shown Qin Shu one enormous eye in the ghost market and exchanged a few words with him, slowly exhaled with a pale face. She lowered her gaze to the white-jade wine cup in her hand and showed no intention whatsoever of rebuking Qin Shu on Dragon Mother’s behalf, as though she had long expected this day to come.
Her pitying gaze landed on the master of ceremonies. He was currently curled into a ball beneath the throne. His duties prevented him from fleeing, so with nowhere else to go, he simply began pretending to be dead.
Yuxu’s eyelid twitched. Qin Shu’s brazen provocation left even her somewhat speechless, yet she was still the calmest of the human guests present. The other human cultivators looked no better than anyone else, their breathing unstable as they unanimously copied the master of ceremonies and began pretending they were blind and deaf.
“You insolent…”
No human was willing to step forward and no yao dared take the lead, so Dragon Mother could only reprimand Qin Shu herself. Before she could finish, however, Qin Shu cut her off again with a rather rude little laugh.
“Oh, right. You killed the girl’s partner too. What was that about? Stealing her child and stealing her face still wasn’t enough, so you just had to kill the child’s biological father too? Could it be…”
Qin Shu deliberately paused there, then answered his own question in a ghostly drawl. “Could it be because your partner didn’t want you, and your child didn’t have a father either, so you came out to take revenge on society? No, no, that isn’t right. When have you ever even had a partner? You and King Yingde were nothing more than a passing affair. You weren’t even really an ex-girlfriend, yet the moment the owner of the house disappeared, you shamelessly moved into the Dragon Palace and started ordering around subordinates who were never yours. You really are an insolent madwoman with no regard for proper rites…”
“BOOM!”
Before he could finish, the broad expanse of gleaming golden floor tiles at the center of the main hall collapsed with a tremendous crash.
Qin Shu dodged with astonishing speed and jumped directly behind Yuxu, nearly making several nearby cultivators stop breathing from fright.
What remained in the collapsed center of the main hall was… a scene of horror difficult to put into words.
The edges of the golden tiles that had not fallen in formed the enormous imprint of a dragon claw, as though a majestic true dragon had descended from the heavens and struck down in rage, intending to crush Qin Shu to death on the spot as easily as an ant.
Qin Shu had not been crushed, but the force of that blow had crushed one of Dragon Mother’s own secrets straight out into the open.
An alchemy furnace was buried beneath the palace.
It was tiny and adorable, translucent as snowy jade, with a plump, rounded belly like a pearl with an opening at the top.
No one knew what it was. But Yuxu, who had lived for thousands of years, understood its significance at a glance.
“Insolent!”
Yuxu’s pupils contracted sharply. For the first time, genuine horror appeared on her face. “Dragon Mother, you actually dared… How dare you!”