After Marrying the Disabled Demon Lord as a Substitute, I Ran Away with His Child - Chapter 57

Chapter 57

Long Xiaotian gave careful thought to everything Zuo Siqiu had said over the past few days.

Although the previous actions of the Long family had chilled his heart, it was, after all, his clan. The disciples within were his kin; cutting ties completely was an impossibility. Naturally, he wished for the Long family to prosper. Despite being the premier cultivation family, they hadn’t seen a successful ascension in a thousand years. Ancestors either perished during the final tribulation or failed and became loose immortals. This was likely tied to his father and the elders’ desperate, unscrupulous pursuit of shortcuts, even dark paths to force an ascension. The Heavens do not permit such cultivators to enter the immortal realm.

Everything Zuo Siqiu proposed stirred him. If he became the Head, he would abolish these shortcuts. Even if they refined Tribulation-Transcendence pills, they should never disregard the lives of other cultivators.

The most pressing issue was: how could he actually take the seat?

Three days later, the small courtyard was completed with everyone’s combined efforts. Long Xiaotian spoke to Zuo Siqiu about the reality of the Long family. “Currently, it’s not as simple as me wanting to be the Head. My father holds a high level of support within the clan.”

Zuo Siqiu, satisfied after inspecting her new house, pulled Long Xiaotian to sit on the outdoor corridor. Looking at the distant green mountains and misty waters, she said with absolute confidence, “Eldest Senior Brother, believe me, if you want to be the Head, you will be. Others might fail, but you? Even if you stumble once or twice, you’ll succeed by the third or fourth try.”

Because you’re the male lead, she thought. You have the protagonist’s halo. Only someone like her, lacking such luck, would be caught by an acquaintance after only a few months of fleeing.

Long Xiaotian was touched by her unwavering trust. He smiled. “Why are you so sure? I’m only at the Nascent Soul stage. My father could kill me in a single strike.”

“Martial power and high cultivation don’t guarantee victory,” Zuo Siqiu replied. “Look at me—my combat strength is bottom-tier.” She gestured toward the soul puppets clearing the wasteland in front of the house. “Yet look at them. So many, and they obey my every whim. Do you think I used raw strength to turn them into puppets all at once?”

Of course not. Long Xiaotian was still puzzled as to how she had managed to enslave souls far stronger than her.

Zuo Siqiu recounted the events of that day and added, “I believe that in the Long family, not everyone wants to use those wicked shortcuts. There must be those who know that using cultivators as medicinal primers is too cruel that the Heavens won’t allow such people to ascend. They will support you. You should refine some offensive pills, but also some ‘Clear Heart’ pills. Let the disciples take them to banish their stray thoughts and rediscover the ‘beginner’s heart’ they had when they first entered the path.”

Long Xiaotian felt his head spinning. “You want me to refine ‘Clear Heart’ pills? I don’t have the formulas for those.”

“If there’s no formula, experiment!” Zuo Siqiu encouraged me. “I believe you can do it.”

You’ve got the halo, after all.

Long Xiaotian felt that listening to his junior sister was dangerous; her words made him feel like he could fly, pushing him to do things he’d never dared imagine. And he actually did it. He marked out a plot of land behind her house, set up a barrier and a Spirit-Gathering array, and began refining pills within.

Some materials he had; others, Zuo Siqiu provided. Her inventory was so vast it nearly blinded him. Her ability to create “Exploding Pig Pills” was clearly backed by a staggering wealth of resources few cultivators in the world possessed such a hoard.

…

The disfigured man Xuan Mo had been watching their interactions, his scarred face practically twitching with suppressed rage.

Zuo Siqiu not only trusted Long Xiaotian completely but supported his bid for power and shared her materials with him. Most of those materials came from the storage tool he had given her, or were new arrivals from the Black Shop charged to his account. Now, she was letting another man use them freely.

Even worse, since Long Xiaotian’s arrival, Zuo Siqiu hadn’t looked at him once. She was completely ignoring him!

Just destroy it all, he thought. Forget the child.

Refining new pills was no easy feat, especially in a place with sparse spiritual energy. Yet, to Long Xiaotian’s shock, his cultivation which had been bottlenecked for ages suddenly broke through and began to rise steadily. It was an unexpected boon. However, his refining speed was much slower than Zuo Siqiu’s. When she made the Exploding Pig and Freezing pills, she only needed a dozen days and a few trials. Long Xiaotian had been in seclusion for two months with no news.

Zuo Siqiu sat on a rocking chair in front of her house, eating fresh spirit fruit grown by the soul puppets with one hand and stroking her flat stomach with the other. Through her divine sense, she could see the child in her Dantian was growing well, likely to be born this month. The little girl was a chubby, beautiful ball of health.

Beyond her own anticipation, her sister and parents doted on her constantly. What surprised her more was that the “Disfigured Man” also seemed excessively worried, as if he, too, had taken a “Phantom Love Pill” and hallucinated that the child was his.

Either that, or he was trying to woo her.

Zuo Siqiu wasn’t being vain. The others who were repaying her life-saving debt were working hard in the fields, even trying to build a pond for lotus roots. The disfigured man, however, was a “mortal” whose labor couldn’t match the cultivators’. Instead of working, he spent his days hovering around the soul puppets’ fields, picking their best produce and bringing it to Zuo Siqiu with an air of entitlement, as if her fields were his private garden.

Today, he brought her strawberries. They weren’t spirit fruits, just ordinary strawberries, but they were plump and juicy. He had become quite adept at “borrowing flowers to offer to the Buddha.”

As Zuo Siqiu took them, he sat down on the wooden steps beside her, looking out at the working souls as if he owned the estate. She couldn’t help but give his knee a light kick. “Why are you just sitting here? Go practice!”

He responded with an angry glare.

Zuo Siqiu’s temper flared. You’re not the Great Villain Xuan Mo who wants to kill people every second. Why should I put up with you?

“A-Hei!” she snapped, calling him by the name she’d given him. “Why are you glaring at me? If you don’t practice, you’ll always be a mortal. You can’t even grow a strawberry; you have to snatch what others grew and lie to yourself that you contributed. Were you bullied because you lived in self-deception like this? Start practicing! I can’t take a mortal back to the cultivation world. If I leave you here and you get bullied again, no one will save you!”

A-Hei stared at her for a long time. The red burn scars on his left face looked terrifying in the sunlight, and his unblinking stare made Zuo Siqiu feel a momentary flashback to the Xuan Cloud Sect.

Just as she was about to tell him to take it or leave it, A-Hei spoke in his raspy voice: “You’re worried about me?”

Zuo Siqiu breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness he’s not Xuan Mo. She nodded earnestly. “Of course I am. I saved you, after all. I don’t want the person I rescued to end up as a weakling who can’t protect himself.”

“You’re worried I’ll be bullied, that I can’t protect myself, and that I’ll die after you leave?” A-Hei asked.

She nodded.

“Then… can’t you just keep me with you forever?”

Zuo Siqiu: “???”

“A-Hei, how can you think like that? As a man standing tall between heaven and earth, how can you dream of living under a woman’s protection? Am I supposed to carry you around for life and fight off anyone who picks on you? A man shouldn’t ‘eat soft rice’!”

A-Hei: “Oh.” Then he added, “If I practice and become very strong, will you still worry about me and protect me?”

Zuo Siqiu frowned, studying him. She felt like A-Hei was definitely trying to “eat soft rice” (live off her). Then, a sudden thought struck her. Her eyes widened, and the strawberry in her hand lost its appeal.

Does A-Hei… have a crush on me?

The more she thought, the more it made sense. He was beaten half to death, she saved him in novel terms, she was the light in his dark life. She didn’t abandon him; she healed him, gave him a home, gave him medicine, and pushed him to better himself. The light hadn’t gone out.

Zuo Siqiu had zero desire for any entanglement beyond “life-saving debt.” Technically, she was “married” (even if she fled). Plus, she was pregnant even if she didn’t know who the father was. She was not looking for a new romance.

It might have been her imagination, but after that thought, A-Hei’s gaze seemed to become even more intense. She cleared her throat, deciding to cut his hopes clean off with a sharp blade.

“A-Hei, you might not know this… but I’m going to be a mother this month.”

Do you understand? I’m ‘married,’ I have a child, no new relationship.

To her horror, after she said that, A-Hei’s eyes grew even brighter, and his gaze became even more scorching.

Zuo Siqiu: “???”

Don’t tell me you’re another one lining up to be the step-dad! You’ll have to get in line behind Zhu Jiechou!