Chapter 666: The Unknown Truth
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 666: The Unknown Truth
Outside the window, the sky had already turned black. The time Sister Bai and I had spent here was far longer than we had anticipated.
The original owners of this house had returned one after another. As expected, the mother returned from taking the child to work, while the father came home even later.
"They just leave the child here like this and ignore her?"
Sister Bai and I went to the nursery—which was really just a bedroom with a crib tucked inside.
"One starts cooking the moment she's through the door... the other just sits there brooding and smoking as soon as he gets home. Heh."
Sister Bai and I watched the two of them, then looked at the baby girl in the crib. We couldn't help but feel a sense of pity for the hardships this girl would face in the future.
Sister Bai looked at the infant with great curiosity. If the baby hadn't been asleep, she probably would have reached out to play with her.
I leaned against the edge of the crib, watching the few-months-old infant. She wasn't crying or making a fuss, sleeping peacefully in her bed.
Logically, this should have been near the end of the mother's maternity leave. I hadn't expected her to return to work so soon...
But the infant was innocent. No matter how much I loathed this family, I couldn't bring myself to hate a newborn.
Subconsciously, I used the Ley Line Identification Art on her. I didn't use Ley Line Timeline Regression, but rather Information Manifestation.
I simply wanted to know how much this child had suffered while following these parents during this time.
During maternity leave, they should have taken good care of her... at least that would prove they were capable of being decent parents for a time.
As the information from the Ley Line Identification Art continued to reveal itself, the compiled data surfaced. When a key piece of information appeared, the hand I had resting on the crib trembled violently.
"Xiao Han? What’s wrong?"
Following Sister Bai’s concerned inquiry, my sudden tremor shook the child awake. The infant’s piercing cry acted like a fuse, detonating the final tension in this household.
"Hey, go check on her!"
"Dammit... why don't you go! And stop calling me 'the kid's dad'!"
"Why shouldn't I? I'm cooking, don't you know that? If the food burns, you aren't eating anything tonight!"
"..."
The shouting continued. It was as if they weren't even arguing about the child anymore, but simply venting the pent-up frustration of their day.
"Xiao Han..."
I looked at Sister Bai and shook my head, cutting her off. I merely turned back with a complicated gaze to look at the child, who was now crying with all her might.
In the end, I did nothing. I took Sister Bai’s hand and left the place entirely via spatial teleportation.
But as the baby's cries echoed pointlessly, they served only to trigger yet another domestic dispute.
* * *
Inside Sister Bai’s house, a teleportation channel opened, and I stepped out, pulling Sister Bai with me.
"Xiao Han, what exactly happened?" Sister Bai asked with concern. Everything had happened so fast. It wasn't that she couldn't react, but rather that the parents' reactions had shattered her understanding of normalcy. She couldn't comprehend it...
Why, when a baby cried, was their first instinct to argue rather than comfort her?
Whether it was the mother complaining about the cooking or the father locking himself away to smoke—from the moment that first "go check on her" was uttered, everything was wrong. After that, no one was in the right.
The mother, at the end of her recovery period, faced the pressure of work and had to cook upon returning home, leaving her no time for the child. The father smoked, perhaps nursing his own silent grudges; reeking of tobacco, he was in no state to care for a baby. No one was strictly "wrong," yet no one was "right." They had simply turned their lives into a daily cycle of conflict.
"Something happened... something I can hardly believe myself," I said, shaking my head.
"Then... is it convenient to tell me?" Sister Bai softened her tone, asking gently.
Something must have happened—something shocking enough to make Xiao Han, a Body Cultivator, lose control of her physical stability.
If one traced the source of the baby's crying, it was nothing more than Xiao Han’s unintentional tremor.
"That baby girl... she isn't their biological child," I said.
"What?!"
"That child... isn't theirs. But... that woman... she definitely was pregnant." I tried to steady my mindset.
This reminded me of what Yao Beijuan had told me back then... that I wasn't biological either. I hadn't verified it at the time. Even after I gained the Ley Line Identification Art, I had subconsciously ignored using it on myself. I felt I had said goodbye to the past, so whether it was true or not didn't matter anymore.
But now, here was another one.
"Not biological? Did the woman have an affair?" Sister Bai still hadn't fully processed it. Or rather... she hadn't imagined someone could be that wicked.
"The child isn't the woman's biological daughter either... Do you remember what he said? 'Stop calling me the kid's dad.' That sentence..."
My words left Sister Bai stunned. She couldn't wrap her head around the 'why.' Accepting the thoughts of others is the most difficult thing, especially when they fall outside the scope of one's own cognition.
A heavy silence lingered for a long time. I was the first to snap out of it; perhaps I had simply dealt with too much nonsense in my life...
"Sister Bai... accompany me to two places," I said, standing up.
"Alright, I'll go with you." Sister Bai nodded. Though she didn't know where we were going, since Xiao Han had a goal, she was willing to stay by her side.
"You aren't even going to ask where?"
"No matter where you go, I will be with you."
"Thank you, Sister Bai..." I hugged her arm, clinging to the only sense of security I had left. "I... I want to go to the nearby Holy Light Church... and... the hospital."
"Mhm. Let's go then." Sister Bai nodded. It wasn't a surprise. Going to these two places was simply a way to uncover the truth, much like the regression we had performed earlier.
Our first destination, the Holy Light Church, wasn't far, so Sister Bai walked with me.
The night sky was pitch black, illuminated only by the warm yellow glow of the streetlights. As we strolled along, my sense of urgency faded. Perhaps I was becoming at peace with it?
After all, what has happened cannot be changed. We were merely carrying the truth to witness the facts.
The Holy Light Church at night sat in the most prosperous part of the district.
It stood there, its mere exterior projecting a sense of grandeur and majesty. Even at night, it was the most beautiful sight in the area.
The architectural style blended the most mainstream historical elements of the Holy Light Church. The undulating facade produced a stunning play of light and shadow under the radiance of the Holy Light. The soaring spires pointed toward the heavens, encircled by rings of light that resembled the halos of Holy Angels. This was the greatest Holy Light Miracle the church displayed at night, guiding and blessing every believer and ascetic.
As Sister Bai and I drew closer, we saw the exquisite white jade carvings on the outer walls. They used the most intricate craftsmanship to bring the stories of the Holy Light Maxims and the images of Holy Angels to life.
Under the glow of the Holy Light, the building took on a sacred aura that compelled one to pray.
Even at this hour, many believers dressed in identical, pure white garments and devout ascetics were gathered here. They moved across the plaza in front of the church, whether arriving or leaving, carrying an air of sincere piety.
And this was my destination.
Sister Bai and I looked at each other. Even without Heartfelt Resonance, our joined hands seemed to signal a mutual understanding of what came next.
The people around us ignored how out of place we were. With every step Sister Bai and I took forward, the scenes in our eyes receded a moment into the past.
The pitch-black night gradually brightened. The long-faded sunset became the morning light rising in the west.
We stepped onto the path of the past once more. A massive influx of information hit me instantly, but I wasn't as overwhelmed as I had been the first time.
I continued to walk forward firmly, seeking to understand what had once transpired.
However, this was the Holy Light Church, not that "home." In a way, this made the search easier. Once I anchored the information of that family, any moment they intersected with this place would be a moment for us to stop and watch.
But I discovered that the first intersection wasn't that family, but the relationship between my name and this Holy Light Church.
Since we were tracing backward against the flow of time, this represented the most recent events.
"They learned my name, recognized my strength, and understood how terrifying I am... and they happened to find out about my family, my parents, and my... brother."
Before that, I also learned why that "mother," who should have been recovering from childbirth, was so energetic. The Holy Light Church had used healing divine arts to help her—a method of demonstrating miracles.
"How interesting... Since they can't get you, they've set their sights on your brother." Sister Bai watched the fast-forwarding images beside me.
The joy of the Holy Light Church higher-ups, acting as if they had found a treasure, and the promises they made, made Sister Bai chuckle with a hint of mockery.
"Yeah, they moved fast..."
I shook my head and continued to trace further back. Things happened exactly as I had predicted. Further back was the period when the Holy Light Church didn't yet know that this family was the one I had come from. Back then, the church people simply used them as a textbook example of those protected by the Holy Light for their propaganda.
They stood firmly against "evil" Transcendent Academies like the Lesser Demon Academy, resolutely defending every child's right to choose their own academy.
The images traced back until they reached a point where the family had no intersection with the church. Only then did I return to a specific node...
"Xiao Han, this is..."
"They were essentially a pair of pseudo-believers. To cooperate with the church for more exposure and to get more benefits, they would reluctantly come here on weekends to pray and confess..."
"Do you think they were actually confessing, Xiao Han?"
"I don't know. But... there is too much Ley Line information. Without more precise retrieval methods, I can't summarize and obtain the truths they didn't speak aloud..."
Of course, I was doing this... just to know one thing: whether they recognized their own crimes under the Holy Light.
But soon... through various instances of confession and jumping time periods, they didn't confess their actions as I had expected. Instead, many segments involved them complaining, as if questioning the Holy Light as to why it gave them such miserable lives.
"It's all your fault for saying there was no rush... Now that family has moved away, where are we supposed to find them?"
"That little curse of a child—did you really expect her family to be anything good? A bunch of lunatics. Good riddance that they're gone."
"But what about my biological daughter! We traded her for that little brat, will we ever find her again?"
"Our daughter is probably off enjoying a life of luxury somewhere, you don't need to worry about her..."
Looking at the dialogue floating above the phantoms of the past, those few short sentences laid the reality bare.
"Xiao Han..."
"Let's go. There's no point in staying here anymore." I took Sister Bai’s hand. "Sister Bai, don't overthink it. Witnessing the diversity of biological life is also part of the Ordinary Subject."
"It's like how some birds in nature like to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and let them raise their young," I told her. "This world is terminally ill. People at the very bottom who are desperate to change their lives see children as their scratch-off lottery tickets. They know their own children have low odds of 'winning,' but the children of 'good' families might be different."
"...Why? Why would it turn out like this..." Facing such a truth was a massive shock to Sister Bai’s worldview.
If this had nothing to do with her, she might have just been moved by it. But because this happened to Xiao Han, the person she cared about most, she couldn't ignore it.
For a moment, she almost lost control of her Life pressure. The life-level of a Transcendent, akin to the wrath of a god, swept through the entire Holy Light Church.
Countless believers and ascetics fell prostrate on the spot, praying for the Holy Light’s anger to subside.
That moment lasted only a fraction of a second, like a hallucination. But it was impossible for everyone to hallucinate at the same time. The ignorant believers and ascetics simply took it as the descent of another miracle, believing that someone currently confessing had committed an unforgivable sin.
"Giving your own child to others to raise, and then letting someone else's child carry your family to success... the more of a failure a life is, the more it breeds distorted perceptions. I thought I had already sufficiently underestimated the oppression of the bottom tier of this world, thinking that viewing childbirth as an investment was the baseline of human behavior. I didn't expect..."
I thought back to the structures of those Transcendent families. In those wealthy and powerful clans, even the most mediocre child had a floor that ordinary people in the outside world could never reach in a lifetime. The failure of a family doesn't distinguish between a child's bloodline; ignorant parents cannot raise a genius capable of saving them.
Because of their ignorance, stinginess, arrogance, and desire for control... even if the whole world praised their child as the smartest person alive, they would never admit the child was the smartest person in the family.
Even if given ten thousand chances, they would never learn how to let go. In a failed education, the most problematic person in the family is never the child, but the parents—because they simply will not admit that they are the ones who are wrong.
"Sister Bai, let's go to the hospital." After calming my emotions, I forced a small smile and looked at her.
"Mhm." Sister Bai nodded. She didn't ask any more questions—not whether I went to the hospital to find the truth or to find my real parents.
She only knew that right now, Xiao Han needed her company.
By this point, many truths had already been laid bare, many regrets had faded, many lessons had been learned, and many obsessions had been let go.
This trip wasn't about seeking a turning point in the story, but witnessing the repetition of the truth with my own eyes.
This was a completion of life experience, a return to missing experiences, and nourishment for a strong heart. It was the persistence of philosophy and conviction, the dissipation of regret and the past, the growth of spirit and soul, and... the rebirth of self and cognition.