Volume 5, Chapter 102 – Mother and Son, Ruins

When he woke again, Meng Qiaosheng felt as though something had him firmly bound. He could not lift either his hands or his feet.

He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a sealed chamber. He seemed to have been confined inside a recovery pod filled with nutrient fluid, and his limbs really had been locked fast in place by metal restraints.

The pod was computer-controlled. Sensing that he was awake, the liquid inside drained away, the metal rings opened, and the hatch rose upward with a series of clicks.

Meng Qiaosheng immediately stepped out. At a glance, he recognized the place as the core of the guild: the control room of the “Silver Sea.”

The “Silver Sea” was one of the guild’s only five war flying vessels, and the control room’s authority belonged to only one person.

He turned his head and, sure enough, saw his mother, Meng Wanyu, standing before the star chart, seemingly completely unaware that he had already awakened.

“Mother.” Meng Qiaosheng walked over with a dark expression. “You need to give me an explanation for everything that’s happened during this time.”

He was furious, because he had realized it: the reason Meng Wanyu had restrained him and made him vanish from the outside world was to make it easier for her to do the things she had always wanted to do and that he had always refused to let her do.

“So that’s what you think?” Meng Wanyu did not turn around. She kept staring at the star chart, her fingers pinching a flying vessel model formed from light and shadow, carefully nudging it forward through the void.

“What else am I supposed to think?” Meng Qiaosheng’s voice was thick with anger.

This was no longer a matter of trust or distrust. Rather, he felt that he had been betrayed.

Why had he defied Meng Wanyu’s orders before the Void Tribulation descended and gone all in to support the Xia Emperor?

Because he had seen the Xia Emperor’s potential! They had not known each other long, but he had a feeling that if he missed this chance to bet on her, he would definitely regret it. The entire Silver Sea Merchant Guild would regret it for the rest of its days!

And his gamble had indeed brought the guild rich returns. It had not been easy for the two sides to build this kind of trust. So why had Meng Wanyu done all this?

Before the Void Tribulation, the Xia Emperor had not truly risen yet. If Meng Wanyu had failed to see the situation clearly and made a bad judgment then, that could still be understood.

But now? The Xia Emperor had already returned. Meng Wanyu had done nothing throughout that ten-year gap, yet the moment the woman came back, she started causing trouble?

Meng Qiaosheng could not understand what his mother was thinking. He felt that Meng Wanyu was simply messing around blindly.

“You don’t understand.” Meng Wanyu still did not raise her head.

The star chart gave off a faint blue glow that fell across her face, illuminating a weary countenance etched with deep nasolabial lines.

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Whether one cultivated qi methods or Dao-Void Methods, it was fairly easy for a woman to smooth away wrinkles.

But Meng Wanyu had never done that. She wanted to use those traces left by time to remind herself that some things mattered more than that.

“You want to know why I’m doing this. The reason is simple. There are two main reasons.”

“First, she is far too cold to the Bai family.”

Meng Qiaosheng frowned. “What does this have to do with the Bai family?”

And how was she being cold?

Bai Zhuqing was still serving as an Imperial Court high official, and the Bai family was practically half the imperial clan. Their status was already so exalted, and that was still cold? What exactly was his mother talking about?

“Haven’t you noticed that the Bai family’s status has declined?” Meng Wanyu’s eyes flickered slightly. “Before she returned, great power rested in her younger sister’s hands. Back then, the Bai family truly was ‘half the imperial clan.’”

“But after she came back, a great deal of that authority was taken back. Her younger sister suddenly had someone above her for no reason at all, and on top of that, she made no further gesture at all. In other words, she gave no additional reward to the rest of the Bai family. Many officials’ attitudes toward the Bai family have already become rather subtle.”

“And that’s a problem?” Meng Qiaosheng did not understand.

The Bai family itself had said nothing. Her younger sister had said nothing. So what exactly was his mother dissatisfied with?

“…If she can treat even the kin who raised her like that, and even her own birth mother like that, can’t you see where the problem lies?”

Meng Wanyu suddenly turned and glared at him.

“The people of this generation in the Silver Sea Merchant Guild are living under your blessing and under hers. But time will not stay frozen at this moment. What about your descendants? And their descendants? What are they supposed to do? Have you thought about that?”

“I understand now.” Meng Qiaosheng closed his eyes and let out a sigh. “It’s still the same old thing with you. You think that her kind of… ‘model’ is worse for the guild than those sects.”

“What do you mean, my same old thing?” Meng Wanyu’s tone turned extremely severe. “Who do you think I’m doing this for? For myself?”

“Think about it. If she can be ruthless even to her own kin and birth mother, do you really think she’ll treat you differently and spare you when you commit some grave mistake, just because you helped her once?”

“What, are you going to marry her or something? Do you have that kind of ability? That kind of worth?”

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“Can you guarantee that under her rule, you won’t make a single mistake?”

Meng Qiaosheng shook his head. “As long as I steadily do things the way she wants, why would I make mistakes?”

“Then would the guild still be yours?” Meng Wanyu squeezed the words out darkly. “Whom are you living for, exactly? I think you still haven’t figured that out.”

“Mother… Mom! This is just…”

“You don’t need to say any more.” Meng Wanyu lowered her head and continued looking at the star chart. “That’s only one of the reasons. There’s a second as well, and that is that she is destined to fail. I cannot just sit back and let you ruin the guild.”

“I don’t think she’ll fail!”

“That is exactly why I brought you here.”

Meng Wanyu did not even lift her head. Only her voice continued drifting over.

“What I injected you with was the highest-grade awakening serum. You should be starting to feel a little sleepy now.”

Wha…

Meng Qiaosheng was shocked and enraged. Instinctively, he tried to circulate qi to resist, but dizziness was already washing over his brain in waves, and his eyelids felt as heavy as mountains.

Of course he knew what an “awakening serum” was. Even as his body had already dropped to its knees, even half-collapsing onto the floor, he still forced his mouth open and said, “No… I won’t. I won’t become one of the Sacred Weapon Clan!”

“Whether you want to or not is not up to you.”

His mother’s voice was icy cold.

“You’ve already been bewitched by that woman. All you can see is her and her country. There’s no room in your eyes for yourself, or for me.”

Meng Qiaosheng practically wanted to curse out loud.

What the hell? Since when had he been interested in the Xia Emperor?

Not long ago, he had even asked out a female student from Xia Capital University. Wasn’t his life perfectly enjoyable as it was? Why would he go looking for suffering?

“Mother would never hurt you.”

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At that point, Meng Wanyu’s tone softened.

“There is something fundamentally wrong with her way of thinking.”

“Under her rule, the people who receive the most attention will always be those refugees and lowborn wretches.”

“Not only is she unwilling to share any of her privilege with us, she keeps stripping away what was originally ours and handing it over to those filthy maggots.”

“If this continues, then in as little as a hundred years, or as much as a thousand, the Silver Sea Merchant Guild will disappear. It will be completely plundered away by them.”

“And the most important thing is that what she is doing is utterly meaningless.”

“She may think that by doing this she can change certain rules that have been passed down from time immemorial to today. She may think those maggots will thank her, will revere her.”

“But how could that be possible…?”

“Ten thousand years, a hundred million years!”

“If those rules were really so easy to change, if the human heart were really so easy to change, then how could it be that only when it came to her would it finally be realized?”

“Just wait and see… she will not be respected, and those who profit from her will not thank her either.”

“Because people are base. Sapient beings are base. Savagery and greed are the marrow that Loss of Order carved into intelligence. They will never be satisfied. Even if no immortals or Buddhas returned, she would still fail in the future.”

“And I…” Meng Wanyu paused. “…I cannot allow that to happen without trying to stop it.”

“So go to sleep.”

“When you wake up, you’ll understand that I’m the one who is truly good to you, and that what I’ve said is the real truth.”

Meng Qiaosheng could not understand her.

He felt that Meng Wanyu had truly fallen into madness.

But he no longer had the strength to resist. The awakening serum was taking effect. He felt more and more exhausted, and in the end he could not hold on. He lay on the floor and fell asleep.

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“Has the second batch returned?”

Meng Wanyu paid no attention to what was behind her. Her eyes remained fixed on the star chart as she watched a battered Silver-Shuttle Vessel fly out of a tiny crack, while that miniature crack began to “blur” the moment the vessel emerged, as though it had become extremely unstable.

At once, Meng Wanyu slapped her chest and spat out a mouthful of heart-blood onto the star chart, where it spread into a cloud of blood mist and was absorbed.

After absorbing it, the star chart immediately released a faint wisp of blood aura. The blood aura wrapped around the blurry crack, and after it flashed and vanished, it quickly guided out its new coordinates.

“The ruins of Jinguang Temple… they’re truly hard to excavate.”

Wiping at her lips, Meng Wanyu’s face darkened slightly.

“Di Xiang knows these coordinates too.”

“Though with her arrogance, after trading for these coordinates back then, she would never have paid attention to this place again, but the situation is different now from what it was then. I have to guard against her reaching for this place.”

“And besides, there’s no telling whether one of Jinguang Temple’s great powers has awakened.”

“We need to speed things up here.”

Beep, beep, beep.

The communicator rang.

A communication from Xuanxia?

Meng Wanyu glanced at it and chose to accept.

No one spoke on the other end. A single line of text merely appeared on the photonic screen.

[Tell me everything you have on the ruins.]

Meng Wanyu frowned and typed: [Why should I?]

The other side quickly replied: [Because I can help you speed up the breaking of the ruins’ seals.]