As long as people immune to all poisons existed, danger would always exist!

That was why the Nanzhao royal family had to resort to the most extreme measures—sealing off the Poison Beast World wasn’t enough; they had to make the people of the Isolated Island vanish from this world forever!

Ziqing and the great beast Zizhu looked at each other, both pairs of eyes filled with complicated emotion.

What Zizhu worried about was that if someone wanted to cultivate a human Gu and sent a person immune to all poisons into the Poison Beast World, it would be a disaster for that world!

What Ziqing worried about was the child…

This was something both she and Jun Beiyue had thought about.

Jun Beiyue, again—why did everything always come back to that man?

He had said that no matter what, they should find the truth first. Even if the truth turned out to be that she was becoming a human Gu, they would surely find a way to solve it!

He had said he wanted the child!

He didn’t mind if his bloodline carried the blood of the Isolated Island!

He wasn’t afraid!

He had once told her, with unwavering certainty, that there would definitely be a way to solve it, that the poison scar on her face would surely heal!

Sinking unconsciously into memory, unable to control the feeling, Ziqing pressed her fingers to her brow, trying to calm herself, trying not to think about it!

Often she couldn’t tell whether it was resentment, sorrow, or a longing she couldn’t suppress!

How could she long for him!

She had always been someone who drew clear lines between love and hate—love was love, betrayal meant hatred. How could she still long for him!

She pressed her head tightly between her hands, and after a long, long while, she finally spoke, forcing herself calm, saying flatly, “Zizhu, is there really no way to break this terrifying constitution?”

How would Zizhu know? “Master, perhaps… perhaps there really isn’t.”

If there were a way, why would the Nanzhao royal family have gone to such lengths in the first place? Why would generations of kings have guarded this secret so painstakingly?

Ziqing understood all this. What she didn’t understand was herself. “Zizhu, then what about me? Aren’t I an exception?”

Zizhu looked at Ziqing, not knowing what to say.

How was she an exception? In its eyes, she was a monster!

Every normal rule had been overturned where she was concerned. Zizhu stared at her, and staring, suddenly understood something. “There is a way! You’re proof of that—if there’s an exception, that means there’s a way!”

“Because I can control my own mind?” Ziqing asked seriously. “And there’s something else—why did the medicinal poison-blood stop affecting me even before I fought the poison beasts, and even seep into my body! I was poisoned by that medicine before, it lingered in me for a long time, and it flared up several times!”

“What!”

Zizhu was shocked. “The medicinal poison-blood had no effect on you even before you fought the poison beasts?”

Ziqing nodded. Though the body was her own, she truly no longer understood it.

Zizhu stared at Ziqing with suspicion, and after a long while asked timidly, “Master, your face… has it always been this beautiful?”

Ziqing’s brows furrowed sharply, and she slowly tore away the thin layer of human-skin mask on her cheek. “No, there’s a poison scar here, it’s always been ugly.”

She had hidden behind the human-skin mask for so long that she had nearly forgotten what her real face looked like!

But Zizhu looked left, looked right, and simply couldn’t make sense of it. “Where’s the poison scar?”

Ziqing’s heart lurched. She hurriedly touched her face, and the smooth, delicate skin beneath her fingers left her stunned. “It’s gone…”

It had been there before—why was it gone now?

“Master, you’re too strange. People immune to all poisons always appear in pairs, one man and one woman—the man is yang, the woman is yin. Both will have poison wounds on their faces. Once they’re cultivated into a Gu, the poison scar disappears, but that only happens once the Gu cultivation begins—that is, once they start fighting the beast horde—and even then, immunity to the medicinal poison-blood builds gradually, not all at once!”

If Ziqing wasn’t a human Gu, then why had the poison wound on her face vanished, and why did she have no reaction to the medicinal poison at all—truly immune to every poison?

But if Ziqing was a human Gu, why wasn’t her body like a real human Gu’s—impervious to blade and spear, a walking corpse?

What was going on?

Zizhu couldn’t figure it out either, its round eyes widening as it stared at Ziqing.

Ziqing felt her skin crawl under that stare; she couldn’t puzzle it out herself!

As for the matter of her having crossed over into this world, she wouldn’t speak of that. At first she too had wondered if it was connected. But now it seemed these changes were all changes in her body, and had little direct connection to her soul!

Ziqing rested one hand gently on her belly, the other pressed against her brow, unable to make sense of it.

But one thing was certain—if the cause lay in her body, then there must be a way to break the immune-to-all-poisons constitution!

Thinking of this, Ziqing unconsciously lowered her eyes to her already somewhat swollen belly, and suddenly gave a start, sucking in a cold breath.

Could it be because of this baby?

She didn’t know when the poison scar on her face had started to disappear, nor when exactly she had begun developing immunity to the medicinal poison.

She only knew that this child was three months along now, and in these three months, before coming to the Poison Beast World, she hadn’t once removed her human-skin mask, nor had she been in contact with any medicinal poison.

If her body had undergone any notable change, it was becoming pregnant!

Ziqing could only hope that the old Gu-cultivating nanny would arrive soon. Since the old nanny knew so many secrets, perhaps she could explain why.

Having reached no conclusion, Ziqing said no more to Zizhu about it. With things still unclear, she certainly wouldn’t recklessly mention the child.

More than ten days later, the great clumsy bear finally woke, and the nine-tailed fox found Wuzheng too. Ziqing settled into the cave, occasionally going out for walks, but spending most of her time in the cave puzzling over the song Lishang.

She wrote down the entire piece from memory, and every day she did nothing but play the zither and study the score.

Day after day passed. With the great clumsy bear around, there was never a shortage of laughter, and with four top-tier poison beasts in attendance, there was never a shortage of nourishing, delicious food.

With such careful care, Ziqing’s health improved steadily, and her belly grew larger and larger. Everything was peaceful.

Only, sometimes, Ziqing would drift off—sitting alone on the cliff’s edge, staring blankly at the horizon, as if trapped in her own world, sitting there for two or three days at a stretch. Even the great clumsy bear couldn’t wake her, and could only sit obediently beside her, shielding her from the wind.

The great clumsy bear had no idea about all the affairs of the Isolated Island, let alone the matter of the human Gu. It kept thinking—was she thinking about the baby’s father? Was she waiting for the baby’s father to come take her home?

Thinking of this, the bear worried silently, wondering whether the baby’s father would be willing to take it along too, as the child’s godfather.

Alas—at this moment, the child’s father didn’t even know the child existed yet!

Time slipped by. It had been over three months since the peace conference. It was now late spring turning to early summer, the finest season in the Da Zhou capital. Even the usually cold imperial palace was full of vitality.

Ever since being rescued from Xijing, Jun Beiyue had been staying in the palace, and had not returned to the Prince Yao residence.