The cold night air was particularly bone-chilling.
Si Zhizhi retracted her protective energy, suppressing her physical senses to that of an ordinary person. She immediately broke into a shiver.
It was cold.
She wanted to get back into her warm bed right away.
The little girl clearly wouldn’t admit that she had just gone through such complex deliberation only to give herself an excuse to return to her mother’s side as quickly as possible.
Si Zhizhi was in a fairly good mood.
She at least had a lead regarding her mother’s problem; she wouldn’t be running around like a headless fly anymore.
Standing in the sky, she looked down at the complex of buildings below.
It was the palace belonging to the First Elder.
Named the Heavenly Dragon Palace.
Deep inside the main hall, a silhouette was faintly visible behind the bed curtains.
the young girl slowly sat up from the bed, staring at the empty side beside her. The sadness and loss in the depths of her eyes were gradually filling her entire gaze.
A strong sense of suffocation in her chest caused her fingertips to gradually clench into her flesh.
She looked at the sheets on one side, her thin body seemingly frozen. She didn’t look away for a long time.
After a long while.
She closed her heavy eyelids, her body curling up as if resigned to her fate.
‘Baby.’
‘You—’
‘You really were hiding something from me…’
The scenes from the day kept replaying before her eyes, and her daughter’s smiling face seemed to linger in her ears.
The young girl hugged her knees helplessly, her already petite body shrinking further.
Finally, she turned into a small ball.
The sadness in her eyes was beyond words, her figure looking as if it were about to shatter. Tears flowed silently down her cheeks.
‘Baby.’
She muttered to herself repeatedly.
‘How… how did things turn out like this?’
She had imagined countless possibilities, but she had never considered that her daughter would deceive her.
The daughter she had given her heart and soul to, whom she saw as her life and her everything, was already capable of smiling while lying to her…
The words spoken with such certainty were like a heavy hammer smashing against the young girl’s heart.
Suddenly, she acted as if she were grasping at one last straw.
‘Maybe my daughter just went out because she had something to do.’
‘It has nothing to do with what was said today.’
‘It’s normal for children to like playing a bit.’
‘Maybe she just went out to clear her head.’
The young girl repeated these words constantly, her body still trembling.
She was forcing herself to believe. The fear of being deceived was like being forcibly abandoned, making it impossible for her to breathe normally for a time. After thinking of a reason that could barely convince her, she repeated it in her heart without any logical thought. Finally, it became words she firmly believed in amidst her trembling.
“Yes, it must be that way.”
The young girl looked quite wretched at this moment, her small hands constantly wiping the corners of her eyes.
Since her daughter didn’t want her to know.
Then she would pretend she didn’t know anything.
She… had nothing left to lose.
The tips of her nails had long since pierced the skin of her palms, and a faint scent of blood diffused into the air.
Whether it was family or love.
When a person gives everything and loves deeply, once there are traces of a break in that bond, the pain becomes so great that they cannot breathe.
It was like the torture before withdrawal.
Even though she had found a reason and there was no need to worry, the young girl gently wiped her face, yet she could not wipe it clean.
She was like a drowning person in the deep sea, gasping for breath in a pathetic state after surfacing.
Si Zhizhi had been gone for a long time.
So long that the young girl had already adjusted her emotions, pretending nothing had happened as she lay back down on the soft bed.
Her body remained motionless, and her breathing trended toward stability.
However, her heartbeat remained somewhat disordered.
Exactly how much use those self-convincing words had could be judged by the wounds remaining on the young girl’s palms.
Just as she was thinking, she suddenly sniffed and bit her lip hard to keep herself from losing control of her emotions again.
Although she had said she was grown up many times.
When it came to matters involving her daughter.
She was still as fragile as a little girl, unable to withstand the beating of any wind or rain.
How many mothers, when facing their daughter’s deception for the first time, could remain calm and act as if nothing had happened…
The pain of family ties is not weaker than the pain of love.
And how many people, through repeated hurts from their children and countless nights of weeping, eventually fall into total disappointment?
Suddenly.
A ball of light appeared in the room without making a sound.
The light quickly faded into darkness.
The breathing of the sleeping young girl did not change, but her body stiffened for a momentary flash. Through the words she had emphasized and repeated countless times, she completely convinced herself to treat this with a calm heart.
‘Yes, my daughter definitely has her reasons.’
‘She probably just went out to play.’
‘If I don’t believe it, I can ask her personally tomorrow.’
‘Anyway, there are countless ways to resolve this.’
Si Zhizhi sensed her mother’s breathing frequency.
She never used true divine powers on Si Xinyan; this layer of sensing was just a subconscious reaction, close to the level of an ordinary cultivator.
It was completely different from a divine sense scan.
Even so, she still sensed a beat of disorder in the deep breathing rhythm.
This was a disorder based on changes in heart rate.
Built upon physical stiffness.
Therefore, she immediately knew that her mother had been awake for a long time.
Si Zhizhi’s heart skipped a beat.
She had thought her mother was a light sleeper, but she hadn’t expected her to be this light.
She could understand it if she thought about it carefully.
What new mother wouldn’t react at all if the baby sleeping next to her disappeared?
Even if she didn’t react at first.
Once things felt wrong later, she would quickly wake up from her dream.
Many novice mothers become so anxious they can’t speak if their baby just leaves their sight for a moment, let alone if the baby is gone in the middle of the night.
“Mom,” Si Zhizhi said as she stood a few feet away from the head of the bed. She kept her head lowered, like a child who had done something wrong and was waiting for a scolding.
Matters needed to be resolved immediately.
She didn’t want to be misunderstood by her mother.
Even if it meant her mother might find out about her goals.
But if she didn’t resolve it, wouldn’t her mother just be unhappy?
Wouldn’t that be an even stupider decision?
Si Zhizhi had read novels where many plots were driven by people being unwilling to speak up about small risks, leading to larger and larger misunderstandings.
When she read them back then, she had sworn in her heart that she would never let her mother misunderstand her even once.
Therefore, she directly and bravely admitted it.
I slowly opened my eyes and rolled over. Looking at my daughter before me, the complexity in the depths of my eyes did not fade for a long time.
I didn’t speak easily, and Si Zhizhi didn’t know what she should say either. Her gaze fixed on the figure in front of her. The moment she noticed a detail, the fluctuations in her eyes flickered constantly. Then, she suddenly lunged forward, hugging her mother’s cold, trembling body, wanting to use her own body temperature to settle her mother’s uneasy heart.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” Si Zhizhi cried out. “Waaaah, I shouldn’t have snuck out alone without telling you. I shouldn’t have failed to realize that this would make Mom scared.”
I slowly lifted my daughter’s small face. Looking at her teary eyes, I ultimately couldn’t bear it. I reached out with my trembling thumb to wipe them. “Can you tell Mom what you went out to do?”
My voice paused for a second before I asked about my pain.
“Are you—are you lying to Mom about something?”
Si Zhizhi was just about to answer the previous topic, but hearing those final words, her small body stiffened completely.
The silent, wordless air was causing my blood to gradually freeze.
Terrified, Si Zhizhi immediately grabbed my arm, her voice pouring out like beans from a tube. “I just went out to find Su Liumeng. Zhizhi has no intention of deceiving Mom. It’s just that I have a plan with her that I can’t let Mom know about for now.”
“Because I didn’t want you to think too much, that’s why… that’s why I snuck out at night.”
“Mom, you should hit me.”
“Zhizhi really knows she was wrong. I shouldn’t have done such a foolish thing. Even if there’s something I can’t let you know for the time being, I could have said so in advance. Mom would definitely understand me. Instead, I made the decision alone and slipped out at night. That only makes Mom worried and feel unsafe.”