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"Larkin, it was high time someone made you suffer a little."
Norman sighed, and with strained patience he explained.
"Larkin, you all misjudge the demon clan. Not every one of them is wicked. Moira is kind-hearted, kinder and sweeter than a great many of the fairies."
"Once you spend more time together, you'll come to understand her—"
I couldn't stop myself from laughing coldly.
He'd been bewitched clean out of his wits. Norman was truly beyond saving.
"Norman, don't be so harsh with little Larkin."
Moira leaned in close, amused, and tipped my chin up.
"You've got nerve, I'll give you that. Failed once, and still you came back to try to kill me a second time."
There was a trace of admiration and interest in the way she looked at me.
"If you were among the demon clan, a little thing like you, I'd fight to have you for my own."
"Pity you're too fiery as you are now. That temper still needs grinding down."
She said that one day, when I'd come to my senses, she would take me on as a serving maid.
To cultivate at her side.
Norman only knit his brows a little, and agreed.
"Take her away. Down to the water dungeon. Torment her thoroughly, and grind that temper out of her."
From that day on, I became a condemned deity of the Ninefold Heaven.
No home to return to, a blood debt I couldn't repay, and on top of it all, their torment and humiliation.
Worse still, Moira seemed to make a game of tormenting me.
Whenever there was a palace banquet in the Ninefold Heaven, she had me brought out to watch.
To watch how she reigned above every deity, how she trod the War God's own betrothed beneath her heel, how she basked in a glory unmatched.
I endured it, numb and humiliated, one thought alone in my head. Stay alive.
Only if I lived could I have my revenge!
Then, at one banquet, Moira grew merry from all the flattery and drank two cups, and I saw two ram's horns break through the top of her head!
Only for an instant, and then everything was as it had been.
But beneath the hem of her skirt, those dainty bound feet had become a ram's hooves!
Back in the water dungeon, I used the puppet-substitution technique my parents had quietly taught me, and made my way to the phoenix clan.
The moment they saw me, their mouths fell open in shock. "You, you, you—" they stammered on and on.
"You... you're actually the young heir of our phoenix clan!"
"The young heir has returned..."
"Quiet! Don't breathe a word of this."
It was also five years ago, when I returned from my mortal trials, that the phoenix clan discovered my existence by chance.
The Phoenix Sovereign came to see me herself, and only then did they learn I was the very phoenix egg she had carelessly lost five hundred years ago.
But if my true identity were made known, both the Rivers water clan and the phoenix clan would be thrown into upheaval.
All I wanted now was to avenge my parents and my sister. I had no wish to return to the phoenix clan, so I would say what I'd come to say and be quick about it.
"I've heard the phoenix clan holds a Wordless Celestial Scroll that can unravel every mystery under heaven. I'd like to borrow it."
Before this, I had asked friends among the beast clans to look into Moira's origins.
But they searched and searched and turned up nothing.
It wasn't until I came to the phoenix clan and opened the Wordless Celestial Scroll that I found my answer.
"You said... her name is Moira?"
"Yes."
"Moira. It means a woman of the ram."
The little figure the Wordless Celestial Scroll conjured told me this with perfect gravity.
"She is no ordinary ram spirit."
"She is what the ancient records name a four-legged, man-eating beast, shaped like a ram yet no ram at all. She is called Tulou."
Creatures like the Tulou had existed for no one knew how many thousands, tens of thousands of years.
Everyone had believed them sealed away and extinct long ago.
Yet they had gone on shedding their skins, even wearing painted hides to hide their true forms.
Behind it all they carried out every kind of vile scheme, raising their own power through every manner of dark cultivation.
Having told me all this, the Wordless Celestial Scroll looked at me with pity.
"Larkin, your enemy is a Tulou. Such a monster is craftier and more troublesome than the rest of the demon clan."
"A thousand years ago they devoured people without end. Raw human flesh."
"But now their ambition grows ever larger. They mean to devour the god clans too, and rise in a single step to godhood."
"And from what you say, she has the War God Norman to shield her. If you mean to take your revenge, I'm afraid it will be harder still. I can only wish you luck."
My heart sank to the bottom, and I very nearly ground my teeth to dust.
Devouring humans, and now wanting to devour the god clans...
Then my parents and my sister had never had their inner cores torn out by her at all!
No wonder I could catch not a breath of their presence...
I left the phoenix clan and, in a daze, set out to return to the water dungeon of the Ninefold Heaven.
But I had barely passed the Southern Heaven Gate when I heard the palace servants, bright with joy, hurrying to spread the word.
"Have you heard? That Moira woman the War God brought back is with child!"
