Yes!

Everything had been because of himself — so why throw such a heavy burden onto a woman’s shoulders instead?

Did he have any idea how many people throughout the world had been investigating Mu Ci?!

If Mu Ci had still been alive, how dangerous would that have been for her?

Startled by Ziqing’s fierce accusation, Jue Mingzi finally recovered somewhat from his grief, looking at her without a word.

“Say something! Why! Do you have any idea how much suffering my mother endured over all those years? Do you have any idea she was still being disturbed, even after her death?”

“A grown man like you, hiding away here? As a Lonely Isle orphan yourself, did you ever even search for the Lonely Isle? Did you ever search for your own people?”

…

Ziqing’s grief and fury were beyond her control, mixed even with a flicker of joy at having finally found family!

She simply couldn’t accept that she had a father like this — a father so utterly irresponsible!

“No… no… it’s not like that at all!” Jue Mingzi kept shaking his head repeatedly.

“Then how was it?” Ziqing shot back, closing the distance between them abruptly.

Jue Mingzi only retreated, backing up until he was pressed flat against the rock wall, his entire body flush against the stone, still shaking his head over and over, all trace of his earlier sharpness gone. In the face of this woman’s relentless pressure, all that remained was weariness, was defeat.

“Say something! I want you to give my mother an explanation!” Ziqing shouted furiously, slamming her fist violently into the wall!

Jun Beiyue, standing nearby, watched with a deeply furrowed brow, wanting to speak, yet saying nothing at all — this was Ziqing’s own matter to settle.

Baili Weisheng, meanwhile, wore a complicated expression, seemingly lost in his own thoughts once again.

Finally, under Ziqing’s relentless pressing, Jue Mingzi murmured, “Girl… what… what’s your name?”

“You still haven’t answered my question!” Ziqing was nearly driven mad with frustration.

“I… girl… I didn’t know you existed, just as I didn’t know your name…” Jue Mingzi choked, his voice breaking. “Girl… back then, I had no idea Mu Ci was pregnant!”

The moment he said this, everyone froze in shock. Ziqing’s fist, still pressed against the wall, slowly slid down, as she stared at Jue Mingzi in complete disbelief.

He hadn’t even known about this?!

“I am the sole heir of the Lonely Isle’s direct royal bloodline, and also the direct successor of the musician who composed the Song of Parting Sorrow. Back then, when that musician was killed, my great-grandfather, still just a child at the time, fled to Liuxian Island carrying the Song of Parting Sorrow and the two demon zithers, concealing his true identity, passing the song and the instruments down through the generations until they finally reached my hands…”

Jue Mingzi had only just begun recounting the past, but that very first sentence alone left all three of them utterly dumbstruck!

How could this be!

None of them had ever imagined it would turn out to be that very musician!

Ziqing had once suspected that Mu Ci was a Lonely Isle orphan — that she might have been rescued by the sea after escaping from the Lonely Isle itself!

But everything unfolding now was entirely beyond what she had ever imagined — she could never have guessed that her own bloodline traced back to that very musician’s lineage from Nanzhao!

“My ancestor was that divine musician, who spent his entire life hiding his true identity while secretly investigating the destruction of the Lonely Isle. To protect himself, and to protect his family, he hid this secret within the Song of Parting Sorrow and the two demon zithers, passing it down from the temple all the way to my great-grandfather’s hands. Back then, the Nanzhao royal family would rather kill a thousand innocents than let a single guilty one escape — if he hadn’t resorted to this method, there would have been no way to guarantee the secret could ever be passed down… because a person could be killed at any moment.”

Jue Mingzi spoke quietly, his head bowed the entire time, and none of them dared interrupt him.

If they hadn’t encountered Jue Mingzi, they would never have had any way of learning secrets like these!

These secrets were, if anything, even harder to uncover than the Lonely Isle itself.

“By hiding the secret within the zithers and the musical score, it also ensured that only someone of Lonely Isle blood could ever uncover it, guarding against those who cultivate human Gu. My ancestor’s foresight was truly painstaking — but… but… but after my ancestor’s generation, no one else was ever born with the musical talent needed to unravel the secret of the Song of Parting Sorrow!”

At this point, Jue Mingzi slowly raised his head to look at Ziqing, his eyes filled with nothing but self-reproach — so much so that even Ziqing, furious as she was, couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy.

She understood all too well how unbearable that kind of self-blame could be — carrying the weight of an entire family’s responsibility, yet utterly powerless to fulfill it.

Suppressing that uncontrollable wave of sympathy, Ziqing demanded coldly, “So when you met Mu Ci, someone with such extraordinary musical talent, you simply threw everything onto her instead?”

“No!” Jue Mingzi immediately denied it. “No, I never threw everything onto her. I only… I only told her everything, but helplessly, she couldn’t unravel it either. I had originally planned for us to stay on Liuxian Island together, forever, living a peaceful life away from the world’s troubles. But… but she wanted a child…”

At this, everyone fell silent, unable to understand — what could possibly be wrong with wanting a child?

“I didn’t want one. I had already decided, long ago, that the direct bloodline of the Lonely Isle would end with me. The secret of the Song of Parting Sorrow was already difficult enough to bear, and the direct bloodline of the Lonely Isle was destined to bring nothing but disaster! I myself carry the yang-type human-Gu constitution — my own children would never escape that same fate either…”

“You’re being far too selfish! How could you possibly know that the direct bloodline would bring disaster?” Ziqing suddenly cut him off sharply.

Jue Mingzi was clearly taken aback by his daughter’s fierce rebuke, but his stance remained firm nonetheless. “The Nanzhao royal family destroyed the Lonely Isle back then precisely because of this human-Gu constitution — everything, all of it, was because of this constitution. What good would it do to find the Lonely Isle again? The people of the Lonely Isle would only become targets, hunted and slaughtered by the entire world all over again!”

“You—”

Ziqing choked with anger. “Have you even heard the Song of Parting Sorrow? Have you heard the anguish of that musician, all those years ago? All of this was a conspiracy — every bit of it, a conspiracy! Why did the Nanzhao royal family, so famed for their benevolent, compassionate rule, resort to slaughtering the entire Lonely Isle clan the very moment they learned the secret of the human Gu? Why didn’t they ever consider finding a way to resolve it instead?”

Confronted with this question, Jue Mingzi froze completely. He truly had never once considered this before — all this time, he had only ever placed the blame on that Great Gu Master, the one who had devised the method of cultivating human Gu in the first place.

“Because the moment the Lonely Isle possessed Gu-cultivated humans, it would pose a direct threat to the Nanzhao royal family’s rule. And what’s more, back then, the Great Gu Master genuinely did harbor that very ambition. The place where the human Gu were cultivated, the Poison Beast World — it was, in fact, a Universe Poison Pouch, one capable of infinite expansion, one that could be carried anywhere at will. If enough poisonous beasts were raised within the Poison Beast World, and all of them could be fully commanded, then the threat posed by Nanzhao’s beast clans would become utterly negligible. And a Gu immune to all poisons would be the natural enemy of the Medicine Clan — do you understand what that means?”

Ziqing’s fury was beyond words, while Jue Mingzi stood utterly dumbstruck, having just caught the critical point of what she’d said.

He stared at her, stunned, then suddenly lunged forward, gripping her shoulders, exclaiming in shock, “A solution… have you all found a way to resolve the human-Gu constitution?”

Ziqing looked at him, breathing hard, thoroughly worked up — but at this, she finally managed to calm herself somewhat, and said flatly, “You still haven’t told me how my mother died.”

Only then did Jue Mingzi release her, saying quietly, “It was because of this very matter that we argued, over and over. She didn’t like the still, stagnant life of Qinse Valley — she loved excitement, loved music. But… I didn’t understand music at all, only medicine. Gradually, we ran out of things to talk about, and one day, she said she wanted to leave.”

“And then?” Ziqing asked, considerably calmer now, her voice quiet. She knew there was more to the story. Mu Ci had left Liuxian Island and lived for a time in the capital before eventually marrying into the prime minister’s household. She had given birth to Ziqing while living in the Han Prime Minister’s residence.

If it weren’t for the Lonely Isle bloodline, perhaps only Mu Ci herself would have known who Ziqing’s birth father truly was — but that bloodline made it absolutely certain that the man standing before her now had to be her father.