Chapter 236

Being stabbed in the back by the person closest to you can almost be considered the most cruel thing in this world.

No wonder Li Qingying never wanted to mention her background.

But today, to comfort me, she personally tore open her own wound to empathize with me.

My eye sockets instantly moistened, I rested my head on her shoulder, and listened quietly.

"Back then I truly believed that the hopes of our entire clan rested on my shoulders; they looked at me with such fervent longing, and I thought they were all proud of me."

I practiced over and over; no matter how high or perilous the platform, waterfall, or ring of fire, I felt no fear, thus I got hurt again and again, but I wasn't afraid—I wanted to become the pride of the entire clan.

Speaking of this, Li Qingying's voice trembled with sobs: "I really thought I would become their pride, but why did they treat me like this?!"

"They… what they wanted was never just for me alone to leap the Dragon Gate, become a dragon, and protect the whole clan; they wanted to create a god! To forge a god for the entire clan!"

Li Qingying cried.

She is not someone who cries easily.

But at this moment, she truly spoke from the heart of her sorrow.

I gently patted her back, my heart filled with pain and confusion.

I heard Li Qingying crying as she said: "It turns out that from the moment I grew my sharp horn, the clan chief had already gone through the ancestral clan records again."

The clan records state: "Cut off the bifurcated horn, roast it, grind it into powder, mix it with blood and ingest it; it can cleanse the blood relatives' tendons and bones, helping them grow horns."

Hearing this, I finally understood completely.

Back then, Li Qingying had been waiting for the opportunity for a carp to leap the Dragon Gate, but her siblings had set their sights on her horn.

When her horn split and she was about to leap the Dragon Gate, the clansmen cut off the bifurcated horn, drew her blood, and fed it to her siblings.

In order to create a god, they cruelly destroyed Li Qingying!

"In a single night, my horn was gone, the tendons in both my hands were severed, they abandoned me at the edge of the Linghai Sea; due to excessive blood loss, I nearly died!"

"No one cared for me; they discarded me like worn-out sandals. I was tossed and rolled by the waves in the seawater, churned and scrubbed, sinking and rising many times, striking rocks repeatedly, yet I even lost the most basic sense of pain..."

Li Qingying spoke while crying, and I cried along with her.

"I don't know how many days I drifted like that; perhaps my resentment was too deep, so I held onto my last breath and didn't die."

It was that very breath that let me hold on until Seventh Lord arrived; he fished me out of the sea, infused me with true qi, and sent people to look after me.

When I just regained consciousness, I couldn't lift either hand; the toes of both feet had been gnawed by fish and shrimp down to the bone, and the tip of my nose, where my horn had been cut off, kept bleeding.

Seventh Lord found a healer to help me stop the bleeding, gave me medicine, and after over a month of care I could finally walk again; though my body was improving, the wound in my heart was not something a healer could mend.

I became extremely world-weary; I needed someone to feed me each meal, otherwise I'd go hungry, once dropping to only seventy pounds, staggering when I walked, utterly like a walking corpse.

I tightly embraced Li Qingying.

I had thought she had a rough past, but I never imagined it could be this bad.

It's hard to imagine how she managed to endure all the way to the end.

No wonder, when she first came to Dang Pu, she repeatedly warned me that if I betrayed Liu Junyan, she would do… whatever to me.

No wonder her demeanor at first seemed somewhat unapproachable, but soon she became the best to me in the world.

In fact, she is inherently an extremely kind person.

It's only after being betrayed by the person closest to her that she armored herself with a cold exterior.

If she hadn't met Liu Junyan back then, she might have already been buried in the Linghai Sea, or in a fish's belly.

Her most desperate days were those when Liu Junyan found people to care for her and kept her company.

It's obvious that what Liu Junyan did for her goes far beyond that.

"Seventh Lord is very busy; he told me to take good care of my body and not give up cultivation, but every time he finished his affairs and returned to the Linghai Dragon Palace, he'd stop by to see me and always found my condition not good."

He scolded me several times, urging me to pull myself together; I really did try, but having lost my horn and having my hand tendons severed, I simply cannot cultivate anymore.

Thus I muddled through a few years, almost shutting myself off in that tiny space, turning myself into a useless wreck.

Later, one day out of the blue, Seventh Lord told me that the Red Carp clan again had someone preparing to leap the Dragon Gate, asking if I wanted to go watch; I immediately shook my head and said no.

Seventh Lord didn't press me; he just told me the time of the Dragon Gate leap. At first I didn't care, but as the date approached, I grew increasingly restless.

At this point, our emotions had somewhat stabilized, and I asked: "You ended up going, didn't you?"

"Yes." Li Qingying said in a daze: "How could I not go?"

I know the Red Carp clan too well; among them, only I possessed such talent. In just a few years, they couldn't possibly cultivate even one more Dragon Gate leaper through normal means, so this time's leap must be by those who ate the horn powder mixed with my fresh blood.

I need to go see whether they truly succeeded in washing the marrow and achieving a rebirth.

"That day I saw the legendary Dragon Gate; it was truly majestic, towering high into the clouds, the water column seeming to pour down from the heavens, constantly scouring the Linghai Sea Surface, countless fish leaping on the water, my dozen or so brothers and sisters, each with horns on their heads, full of pride, standing against the current, one after another forming a long dragon."

I hid in a corner and saw the clan chief, the various elders, and my former family members… They were all cheering for those dozen or so siblings, but who still remembered that a few years ago there was a girl named Li Qingying who almost made it to the Dragon Gate?

No, in their eyes I had already died years ago, buried in a fish's belly.

As she said this, Li Qingying's voice trembled again with sobs, and she paused.

And at that very moment, I unintentionally noticed a person standing by the door.

Hui Moqiong didn't know when he had arrived, nor how much he had heard.

But seeing his red-rimmed eyes, I knew he must have heard it all.

I instinctively opened my mouth, but Hui Moqiong immediately raised a finger, making a silencing gesture before his lips.

Then he bowed his fists to me and pointed at Li Qingying.

Then he turned and left.

He knew Li Qingying didn't want to bring up this past with too many people.

He felt pity for her and also respected her.

I tightly held Li Qingying's icy hands and tentatively asked: "Did they succeed?"

"Success?" Li Qingying suddenly laughed, but that smile was even uglier than her tears: "At noon, sunlight poured down, enveloping the entire Dragon Gate, as if gilding it with a layer of gold, or as if igniting a blaze."

My dozen or so brothers and sisters, amid the clan's expectations and cheers, leapt one after another toward the Dragon Gate.

Such a high Dragon Gate, such a surging water-column waterfall, I watched them jump up one by one, leap over that gate one by one, and then... one by one disappear...

I said in disbelief: "All disappeared? They all leapt over the Dragon Gate, truly transformed into dragons?"