*"Leave."*
The word rang out between heaven and earth, and as the sky returned to calm, the small bundle in Ethan's arms stirred.
Sera's clear eyes swept upward, studying him with an expression that didn't belong on a baby's face.
Her cheap father, it seemed, was no easy opponent.
The blade aura just now had been aimed directly at her. Its power was modest — but it was a heavenly tribulation, called down by the act of disrespecting an ascendant emperor. And her cheap father had dissolved it with a single word.
That made her reconsider him entirely.
To rebuke a heavenly tribulation with one word — he was certainly no ordinary lower realm cultivator.
Could it be…
A terrifying thought flickered through her mind.
*Is he an ascendant?*
She was quietly stunned.
Meanwhile, Ethan gently stroked her head and smiled. *"It's alright. Just some naughty clouds. Nothing to be scared of."*
…
Sera's mouth twitched.
Ethan paid no attention to whatever was going through the little person's head. He reached into his storage space and pulled out the string of marshmallows the System had just rewarded him with.
He'd examined them before. They weren't ordinary marshmallows.
As the saying went — what the System produced was always a quality product.
These looked completely unremarkable, but for children especially, they had a remarkable function: warming the meridians and tempering the physical body. Very suitable for young cultivators.
Sera stared at the fluffy white things that had appeared in his hand.
*What… is that?*
They looked like little clouds. Were they clouds?
Curiosity won out. She reached over, tugged at the string with her small fingers, tore a piece loose, and put it in her mouth.
Soft.
Sweet.
It dissolved instantly.
And then — a sensation unlike anything she had ever felt before flooded through her entire body. Her meridians opened and filled with warmth. The spiritual energy within her expanded to more than double its previous volume.
*"This… this is equivalent to a full night of hard cultivation!"*
She hadn't expected something like this to exist in the lower realm. She hadn't expected her seemingly ordinary father to be capable of obtaining it either.
Which meant her guess was probably right.
Even her mother — Empress Seraphine Ashveil of the Aurewyn Empire — struggled to acquire meridian-nourishing items. Such things were rare even in the High Realm. And yet here was an entire string of them, right beside her, gentle enough to absorb without any adverse reaction.
Sera's wide, watery eyes fixed on the marshmallows. Then she looked at Ethan's smiling face. Then back at the marshmallows. Her two chubby hands began pulling insistently at the string.
Ethan understood immediately.
Children liked sweets. How completely normal.
*"Easy, easy — you can't have too many at once…"*
He tore off an appropriate portion, handed it to her, and with a casual wave of his hand, tucked the rest back into storage.
Sera watched the string disappear.
Something inside Eternal Lord Vael went cold.
*My marshmallows. MY marshmallows. Give this King ALL of them—*
Ethan, unbothered, thought only of one simple truth he'd carried from his previous life as a perfectly ordinary young man of the modern world.
Children shouldn't eat too much sugar. Their teeth would rot.
He did not consider, even briefly, that his daughter appeared to have no teeth yet.
And so, without ceremony, Ethan Grey's journey of raising a child officially began.
---
Seasons turned. Years slipped past like water.
Ethan and his daughter lived a quiet, secluded, deeply comfortable life tucked away in the mountains — a retirement in all but name. Here, Eternal Lord Vael, reincarnated from the High Realm, grew steadily.
The world outside the mountains was a different story.
Empress Seraphine Ashveil of the Aurewyn Empire had launched a full counter-offensive against the three rival empires with a power and resolve that left no room for doubt. Wars erupted across every front.
In just two years, she annihilated all three empires. The Aurewyn Empire, under her rule, rose toward a height it had never before reached.
The aftermath of war — the losses, the remnants, the internal cleansing — would take far longer to resolve. Seraphine was relentlessly busy.
It was, in every way, the opposite of Ethan's life.
Three years passed in a flash.
---
Ethan stood in the courtyard, setting up a large iron pot with practiced ease, ladling in oil with a long-handled spoon. Beside him, a fire serpent was bound in place, trembling as it watched.
Today was his daughter's fourth birthday.
It was also the day of her physique awakening.
*Host, may I ask — are you trying to boil your daughter?*
*"Leave."*
How ignorant. He was preparing the materials for her physique awakening. Everything inside that pot was divine beast essence blood, gathered at no small effort.
During these three years, though Ethan still could not leave these mountains, a sign-in reward had granted him something extraordinary — a one-day pass to the High Realm.
Through the System's guidance, he had also learned that his daughter was approaching awakening age, and that the process required a substantial quantity of beast essence blood as a medicinal catalyst. The stronger the physique, the stronger the essence blood needed to unlock it.
His daughter possessed an innate dao body. Destined, the System said, to become a Saint.
So he had gone to the High Realm and borrowed a little divine beast essence blood.
Not much. Just a little.
Everything for his daughter.
Light footsteps approached from behind.
*"Father, what are you doing?"*
Sera had just finished her morning cultivation. She stepped into the courtyard to find a very handsome man wielding an oversized ladle over an enormous iron pot, looking thoroughly domestic and completely unbothered by any of it.
She stared.
*Strange. Will observe further.*
*"Ah, it's nothing,"* Ethan said cheerfully. *"Today's your birthday, isn't it? Father's making you soup!"*
Soup.
*Soup.*
She had seen soup made in small pots before. She had never seen it made in anything like this.
*You're not trying to boil me, are you?*
*Who could even finish all of that?*
She kept these thoughts firmly to herself. Whatever else he was, Ethan Grey was her father in this life. And however ordinary his daily habits and routines appeared — however completely devoid of any air of hidden power — the fact of their relationship was already set in stone.
Besides.
Her father in this life was, in truth, utterly outrageous.
Even if he hadn't shown it in years.
Every day he just slept and lazed about and — no, wait. She was getting distracted from the important matter.
She had come to speak with him. Today was her physique awakening. Based on everything she could sense from her previous life's experience, there was an extraordinary force dormant within her body — a physique so powerful it surpassed even her old Celestial Spirit Physique. Awakening it would require materials far beyond anything she could obtain on her own.
But she had to awaken it. To return to the High Realm and take her revenge, she had no other choice.
At any cost.
And with her current cultivation, she couldn't do it alone. She needed her seemingly impossibly powerful father.
*"Father…"*
She drew close, the word barely leaving her lips — and stopped.
An aura of tremendous force erupted from the iron pot.
Sera stumbled back, nearly sitting down hard on the ground from shock.
*Heavenly phoenix.*
That was the aura of a heavenly phoenix.
A phantom shimmered above the pot — vast, blazing, its presence enough to make the air itself feel sharp. Sera's eyes went wide.
*"This is… this is the essence blood of the Sky Demon Phoenix Clan!"*
*How is this possible?*
Heavenly phoenixes were fiercely, legendarily protective of their bloodline. Even in death, they would incinerate every drop of their own essence blood before allowing it to be taken. The weakest member of the Sky Demon Phoenix Clan stood at the eternal lord realm. The strongest were incomprehensible.
And the aura rising from that phantom — it had already surpassed an eternal lord by a considerable margin.