Chapter 672

Within big families, struggles for status have always been prone to bloodshed and loss of life.

My father is the fifth-generation Chief; I had three older brothers before me, all of whom died while following Father on his eastern and western campaigns; I am his late-born daughter… oh, no, his late-born son.

Such a person who has struggled in the graveyard, not only knowledgeable but also holding many good things, how could he possibly let the chief position he secured with the lives of his three sons be given away just because of me, this little girl?!

So, he fed me a bit of something good.

She laughed.

She laughed maniacally.

But soon, she suddenly restrained her smile, tightly staring at my eyes, gritting her teeth and said: 'Do you know? The first thing I took in after birth wasn't milk, but I was forcibly fed a merfolk pearl gouged from a dead person's mouth!'

It is said that merfolk pearl has the effect of transferring a fetus; the woman who died holding that pearl did so to transmute her eight-month-old female fetus into a male, dying from blood loss, and my father, disregarding my life or death, forcibly used that pearl to change my sex.

I, damned wretch, survived the ordeal that even adults couldn't endure; my body successfully transformed from female to male, and down there grew what they wanted—hahaha, hahaha...

She laughed maniacally again.

From the moment she appeared, our surroundings changed.

The cage that held me disappeared, and the seawater around us receded in all directions, forming a dry space in the middle.

With her laughter, I could clearly see the tremors in the surrounding water flow.

I was also shocked: what kind of merfolk pearl could actually turn a baby girl into a baby boy?

At least I can confirm that the merfolk pearl I absorbed does not have such an effect.

Bái Sōnglán once said that merfolk are entirely treasure; even the sweat they excrete is a precious medicinal guide, and some merfolk, as the legends say, shed tears that are pearls.

Thus, the merfolk pearls of different merfolk have different effects.

I cautiously asked: 'So, are you male or female now?'

"Me?" the woman said, bewildered, 'Am I male or female?'

I furrowed my brows; is this question hard to answer?

I changed my phrasing: 'When you were one month old, you indeed became a boy, right?'

"Of course!" she said, 'Otherwise, how could I rightfully become the sixth-generation heir of the Chief?'

I said: 'For your family, isn't this a good thing?'

"For my father, of course it's a good thing." Her face turned ferocious, 'But he ruined my life!'

You wouldn't think that the merfolk pearl turned me into a boy and that I've truly become a boy ever since, would you?

I asked: 'Isn't that the case?'

"The merfolk pearl's mana is limited." She continued, 'As time passes, my masculine symbol keeps shrinking while my feminine symbol becomes more apparent; fortunately, when I was ten, my father obtained another pearl with the same effect and forced me to take it, stabilizing my body.'

"Thus, after a few more years, when I faced regression to female again, my father had grown old, he could no longer strive, he could not find a suitable merfolk pearl for me, so he placed his hopes on my next generation."

I frowned: 'He wants you to marry and have children?'

"Marry and have children?" she scoffed, 'I'm not a real man; I lack the ability to get a woman pregnant, I can only think of ways to bear children myself, and ironically, ordinary men look down on me, so the ones they pick for me are all men of status and position.'

Two lines of clear tears slid down her face without warning, as if she had thought of something extremely sorrowful.

She looked at me miserably and said: 'Do you know what kind of days I've lived through those years?'

"I was forced to sleep with one man after another, becoming pregnant again and again, but whenever a certain time arrived, he would have his aide take my pulse; suspecting a girl, he would immediately abort, and before my body had recovered, he would nonstop look for the next candidate."

"From the initial four months, to his doubting the aide's medical skill, it was extended to six months..."

She said: 'Shi Rou, you have lost a child of such months; you should understand my pain—those bloody Little Guy were laid before me, and I endured the pain to lift their little legs to check their sex...'

"I dreamed night after night: in the dream, a dozen or so big and small girls held hands, calling me 'Mom' over and over, asking why I didn't want them..."

She choked up several times, tears streaming down uncontrollably.

I listened to her words, watched her tears burst forth, thought of my unborn son and daughter, and felt a resonance with her, also unable to hold back my tears.

At that moment, she was very close to me, her whole person showing an indescribable sense of brokenness; I even wanted to reach out and hug her, to comfort her.

"Shi Rou, I don't not want them; they are flesh that fell from my body, how could I not love them?"

Yes, they are flesh that fell from my own body; how could a mother not love them, not want to bring them into this world?

If I had had the right to choose back then, even with a one-in-ten-thousand hope, I would not have abandoned them.

My emotions were stirred by the Chief; at that time my mind was filled with mine, hers, all the unborn children… I immersed myself in it, initially unaware that we had gotten too close, too close.

Her body leaned forward toward me, blocking my view downward.

Until a sudden cramp struck my belly, I only then jerked out of that emotional state, one hand supporting my belly, I lowered my head to look down.

Upon seeing that, I was greatly shocked.

I don't know what caused it, nor when it started, but between me and the Chief there appeared a scattering of specks of light.

Those lights emanated from my belly, continuously streaming into the Chief's body...

She was absorbing the power from what was in my belly!

Realizing this, I immediately kicked at the Chief, trying to sever our connecting bond.

The Chief, being a Xiūwéi person, anticipated my reaction and stepped back several steps in succession, putting distance between us.

Yet that speckled connecting bond did not break because of that.

As that energy kept being drawn away by her, I could feel my life ebbing away.

Having achieved her goal, the Chief saw no need to hide: 'Foolish wretch, you actually empathized with me so easily—no waste of me letting Shi Yin ambush in the Shi Family for so many years of painstaking effort, nor waste of me exerting myself to tell you this story...'