"Oh, if you have nothing to do with him, then nothing to do with him," Ji Ziyan covered her mouth and laughed heartily. "In any case, my greatest wish in this life is to see you marry a suitable husband and live a peaceful life." She thought to herself, if there's nothing to do with him, why did you snatch his wife away?

"Mother, you have truly misunderstood," Ji Shuangshuang said helplessly. "Just use your Myriad Spirit Eyes to look at this woman, and you will understand."

Ji Ziyan was startled and indeed activated her Myriad Spirit Eyes, sweeping them over the unconscious Ding Wanyan. A deep astonishment flashed in her eyes. "This human woman is pregnant? And—what, a Heavenly Spirit Female Fetus? Such a dense aura of Primordial Chaos... This fetus's aptitude is probably extraordinary."

"See? That's exactly why I brought this woman back," Ji Shuangshuang sighed. "There were many powerful people present at the scene, and I feared delaying your important matters, so I used the Great Void Teleportation Jade Talisman to return forcefully. But this brat wouldn't let go and relentlessly pursued me, fighting me with all his might."

Ji Ziyan looked with some sympathy at Lei Dong, who lay in the crater surrounded by dense tribulation clouds. "This lad is indeed a man of deep affection and righteousness. He dared to chase after me even into such danger, and he wasn't shredded by the void tunnel—truly, his luck and strength are both considerable. A pity, such a pity."

"He's just a mere human, what's there to pity," Ji Shuangshuang pouted, saying it dismissively. But in reality, her heart held immense admiration for this mere human, Lei Dong. To disregard everything for his wife, not hesitating to sacrifice his own life.

"Stop saying 'human' all the time, Shuangshuang. You should also be clear that you possess half-human blood yourself," Ji Ziyan frowned slightly, sounding a touch displeased.

"Mother, I don't understand. You, being the purest bloodline of the Vermilion Bird divine beast, possessing the lineage of the Vermilion Bird Emperor, how could you have been with a human..." Ji Shuangshuang found this very difficult to comprehend, even harboring some resentment. Ever since she was small, she had been mocked and ridiculed countless times because of her half-human heritage. On top of that, she didn't even know who her father was.

"Shuangshuang, humans, like us, are all children of the Mother of Myriad Spirits; there is no inherent nobility or baseness between them," Ji Ziyan said with a soft sigh.

"But humans are the failed children of the great Mother of Myriad Spirits," Ji Shuangshuang pouted in rebuttal. "In the Ancient Desolation Era, they were so frail, stuck at the bottom of the food chain. They were prey for the great races. Other than their strong reproductive ability, what else is impressive about them? How could they be connected to our Vermilion Bird divine beast clan? It is said that even the great Mother of Myriad Spirits acknowledged the birth of humans was a failure."

"A failure? Not necessarily. When the great Mother of Myriad Spirits first nurtured the progenitors of all divine beasts, she then spent an extremely long time and vast life force to conceive and create humanity," Ji Ziyan disagreed. "The Mother of Myriad Spirits clearly held great confidence and affection for humanity. Because, among all the children she nurtured, only humans were truly born in her own image."

"Ah? This..." Ji Shuangshuang looked utterly disbelieving.

"It's quite simple. Just think about it. Why is it that divine beasts and demonic beasts, when they reach the Nascent Soul or Spirit Transformation stages and undergo corporeal manifestation, choose to take on the forms we possess now?" Ji Ziyan smiled faintly.

"Mother, are you suggesting that we are imitating humans?" Ji Shuangshuang's apricot eyes widened, filled with utter shock.

"No, we are imitating the image of the great Mother of Myriad Spirits," Ji Ziyan said with deep reverence. "Our ancestors, who were also hailed as the progenitors of the divine beasts, possessed mighty strength and considerable wisdom from birth. They revered, feared, and deeply loved the Mother of Myriad Spirits. However, they discovered their own forms bore a significant difference from the Great Mother's. Thus, they began learning corporeal manifestation, striving to make their appearance closer to that of the Great Mother. Over time, this method of manifestation spread and became a conventional law. Later, that pattern was imprinted into the bloodline itself. Even in races where the divine beast bloodline is thin and distant, the latent influence of the bloodline teaches them to manifest, and they do so in the image of the Mother of Myriad Spirits."

"It's fortunate we didn't truly manifest in the form of the human race," Ji Shuangshuang still looked down on humans, curling her lip dismissively. "Otherwise, I would rather have remained in my Vermilion Bird form forever."

"Excessive pride is just self-loathing, my child," Ji Ziyan advised solemnly. "You have been scorned by some unimportant people, and so you desperately reject the half-human blood flowing within you, constantly believing humans are lowly. Like many divine beast families, your thinking is rigid and stuck in the Ancient Desolation Era. But you don't know that while most humans are indeed weak, many incredibly powerful individuals have emerged from them since ancient times. At least a dozen whose strength is no less than mine. And three whose power has far surpassed mine, reaching the Supreme Realm."

"Impossible!" Ji Shuangshuang cried out in utter horror. "The strongest human in our Demonic Spirit Realm is said to only be at the Void Refinement level, never even reaching the Integration stage. Humans living in the Immortal and Demonic Realms also hold low status, merely a third-rate race. With human aptitude and potential, how could they possibly reach the heights of the Ten Great Experts like Mother? Even, even the Supreme..."

"History is often fabricated by the victors," Ji Ziyan said lightly. "You are still young and haven't heard many secret histories. Moreover, as the young mistress of the Vermilion Bird clan, being proud and exclusionary towards humans, no one would dare gossip in front of you. In fact, if you think carefully, you might have heard of the three Supremes born from humanity. They are: the Nether God who mastered the Law of Reincarnation and created the Ghost Race, and the supreme expert who mastered the Law of Immortality, the Nether King. The last one, the most terrifying, mastered both the Law of Annihilation and the Law of Immortality—the Demon Emperor. Especially this last Demon Emperor, tens of thousands of years ago, he stirred up a torrent of blood and slaughter across the Three Realms, striking fear into the hearts of countless Three Realm powerhouses. Previously, in our Demonic Spirit Realm, the first figure besides the Mother of Myriad Spirits, known as the Immortal and Indestructible, capable of transforming into countless avatars, the Blood River Ancestor, was annihilated by a single finger from the Demon Emperor. To this day, Blood Boy, who inherited the legacy of Ancestor Blood, must rely on the Dragon Emperor."

"Mother, could it be, could it be that those three were all of human origin?" Ji Shuangshuang was extremely shocked, finding it hard to believe. In her perception, humans were incredibly weak. Also cunning, treacherous, and untrustworthy.

"I tell you this now not to elevate the status of humanity. It is merely because I do not wish to see you walk further and further down the path of self-contempt for your own bloodline," Ji Ziyan truly cared for her daughter, patting her long hair with a touch of pity.

"Then my father, my father is..." As expected, many knots in Ji Shuangshuang's heart immediately dissolved.

"Boom!"

The heavenly lightning, which had been brewing for a long time, finally descended. Both mother and daughter had their attention drawn to it.

Lei Dong, lying in the crater, was clearly in a state of chaos, his entire being slipping into a semi-comatose, semi-blurred state. That bolt of heavenly lightning struck his body without mercy. His only defense was the Black Emperor Armor, covered in various profound defensive runes.

However, without the infusion of true essence, the defensive capabilities of the Black Emperor Armor were not truly heaven-defying. The heavenly lightning pierced directly through the armor, delivering more than half of its power into Lei Dong's body. The ferocious power of the lightning, mixed with a trace of the Law of Annihilation, nearly blasted apart every life factor in Lei Dong's body. Even his soul was almost scattered into smoke by the shockwave.

Just one more strike, and with that second bolt of heavenly lightning, Lei Dong's body and soul would be utterly destroyed. Simultaneously, the perfect Emperor Demon Seed on Lei Dong's forehead was flashing wildly. Streams of profound inheritance began pouring into Lei Dong's mind at a tidal pace.

As his consciousness and life factors were being obliterated, the Nether King Body Tempering Art that Lei Dong had once learned began to operate automatically. The so-called Nether King Body Tempering Art was a process of destruction and rebirth. When the Nether King first created this art, he integrated the Law of Immortality he mastered with the Dao of Heaven into the technique.

The Law of Immortality didn't just mean extremely strong defense, capable of withstanding all manner of violent attacks. In fact, the deepest meaning contained within the Law of Immortality was rebirth. If one could master the Law of Immortality to its extreme, even if only a single life factor remained, one could use it to regrow an entire body. And that body would be stronger than before the destruction.

Of course, the Nether King Body Tempering Art required a massive amount of energy to sustain its operation. Fortunately, Lei Dong had previously swallowed over a hundred innate Spirit Gathering Pills, plus several Chaos Crystals. The medicinal energy produced by these items was immense. Even after fighting fiercely with Ji Shuangshuang for a long time, only a little more than half had been consumed. The remainder lingered within Lei Dong's body, providing energy for his evolution.

In fact, the heavenly lightning arrived at the perfect moment, shattering Lei Dong's life factors and part of his divine soul. The power that was on the verge of bursting Lei Dong's body, which was evolving towards the Void Refinement stage, began to flow ceaselessly into the automatically operating Nether King Body Tempering Art as energy.

Countless life factors were being reborn at an extremely rapid pace under the influence of the Law of Immortality contained within the Nether King Body Tempering Art, rapidly repairing Lei Dong's physical form. And every newly born life factor became even more robust.

But this process had only just begun when another bolt of heavenly lightning descended.

"Damn it," a fierce female voice cried out in Lei Dong's mind. "I just helped you block the crushing power of the void tunnel, and now I have to block the heavenly lightning for you too?"