In the Void Realm, on the Time Continent, three sorcerers drove their car out of a vassal spider-dragon nest, leaving behind a burning pit.
It had been a flawless raid: the cave entrance happened to be just large enough to fit the sports car, so they had driven straight inside, running down and killing five juvenile vassal spider-dragons before deploying poison gas to smoke out the remaining twenty-four.
Finally, when facing the consort spider-dragon—an overlord creature whose home had been shattered and kin exterminated—they accorded it the highest respect: first setting it ablaze, then ganging up on it to give the family a proper, orderly burial.
Environmental kills, fire attacks, and gang-beating—they had grown utterly adept at this routine, gradually refining arduous combat into mob-grinding slaughter. It was enough to make even Diya feel a bit sentimental: "If there's a god in the Void Realm who protects knowledge creatures, shouldn't we pray to Him to forgive our sins?"
"If such a god really existed, He should be the one praying to us," Sonia said, pressing down Diya's little cowlick. "Praying not to be found by sorcerers."
"Come to think of it, I once read a fairy tale picture book. One of the stories was called *Don't Let the Sorcerers Find You*. The protagonist was a sorcery spirit doing everything it could to escape the grasp of sorcerers..."
"Did it succeed?"
"Nope, it was caught and dragged back."
"Then that's indeed a fine fairy tale."
Just as the two best friends were bonding over idle chatter, a man's annoying voice suddenly cut in: "Do you two think your mothers are normal, decent moms?"
Hearing Yaxiu's out-of-the-blue question, Sonia was not polite in the least: "What else would they be? Was your mother bought wholesale?"
After trading insults with Yaxiu the previous night, the dynamic between them had grown increasingly casual, not to mention that Yaxiu had dared to touch upon another soft spot in Sonia's heart. It was only because the Witch was beside them that Sonia's retort had been so refined.
"No, I was just reflecting because of what happened recently," Yaxiu said. "Different societies, different regions, different cultural traditions, and different people all bear different fruits of kinship."
*Mother, kinship, what happened recently?*
Diya's ears twitched as she observed Yaxiu through the rearview mirror.
"If a relationship is like a cup of seasoning, then my relationship with my mother is probably a dry dipping mix: three spoonfuls of sugar, five chili peppers, a small cup of bitter melon juice, a slice of lemon, plus a few marshmallows stirred together. Whenever I'm about to go through hard times, dipping into this dry mix lets me bite the bullet and power through."
Hmm...
Wait, what?!
Both the Witch and the Sword Princess looked at the Watcher with subtle expressions—*hold on, you have a mother too?*
Though everyone had a mother, in Sonia and Diya's minds, the Watcher was an ancient relic who had been sealed for thousands of years and only recently pushed open his coffin lid to rise again. In the span of his immense lifespan, shouldn't his childhood spent with parents be nothing more than negligible specks of dust in his memories?
Still, they couldn't be sure. After all, they were just young girls around twenty years old; how could they possibly fathom the mindset of someone who had lived hundreds or thousands of years? Perhaps this mellow, vintage nostalgia was simply the norm among immortals.
Sonia thought for a moment. "My relationship with my mother is probably two spoonfuls of sugar, one spoonful of vinegar, one spoonful of soy sauce, drizzled with sizzling hot oil to release the aroma..."
"Why hot oil?"
"I'd like to ask why there's hot oil too," Sonia said faintly. "Fate is truly a chef who plays by no rules."
Then both of them looked at the Witch. Diya hesitated. "I... I've never met my mother."
After a brief silence, Sonia asked, "Which resource point should we head to next?"
"Let me check," Yaxiu said. "We're close to heading back into the Star Hall territory where we have a detailed map. But there's nothing unmissable on the outskirts of the Star Hall region anyway, so let's keep moving forward and see if there's anywhere worth looting..."
Though her two teammates were considerate enough to change the subject immediately, Diya didn't want to leave it at that. "Watcher, why are you suddenly reflecting on kinship? Did something happen in reality?"
"Nothing much, really," Yaxiu said after a moment's thought. "Just that after going through some recent events, I realized that between a child and an adult, besides blood ties, there can also be a naked alliance of interests."
"Ohh." Diya's eyes widened more and more, her body instinctively leaning forward slightly. "What a strange relationship."
"I even saw the child threaten the adult with benefits, forcing the adult into compliance."
"Whoa, anything else?"
"There's no foundation of trust between the adult and child at all. To them, a contract is far more trustworthy than affection."
As the similarities piled up, Diya's body couldn't help trembling; her suspicion seemed to be getting confirmed piece by piece. Forcing down the turmoil within her, the Witch pretended to ask casually, "That's truly the first time I've ever heard of such a thing... By the way, Watcher, how old is this child you're talking about?"
Yaxiu thought for a moment. "Hmm... around eight years old, I think?"
The Witch froze. "Only eight?"
"I haven't asked for the specifics, but probably eight?" Yaxiu wasn't too sure either.
Diya instantly deflated like a punctured balloon and lost all interest. Stopping herself from bothering the driver, she buried her head into the Sword Princess's embrace in deep thought.
Although Diya and her sisters had watched the entire spectacle unfold from within the mirror, they too had been shaken by the bizarre mother-daughter relationship between Qinna and Annan, discussing it endlessly in Lisi's mind.
Now that the Watcher had entered the Void Realm and taken the initiative to bring up mothers, Diya naturally made a peculiar connection—
*Could the Watcher actually be Yaxiu?*
Her suspicion hadn't appeared out of thin air; it had accumulated over all these days.
After all, Lisi spent her days with Yaxiu, and Diya spent her nights with the Watcher. Even if she hadn't considered it at first, as time passed, a bizarre sense of déjà vu had crept in: Do both of your brains have a hole in the exact same spot? How can your thought processes be so identical, like a full 360-degree rotation?
What's more, both of you wear the exact same dark red coat!
More importantly, during the fight against the Family Ruin Agency last night, the sisters had caught a glimpse of Yaxiu casting a warm-yellow barrier to protect Annan.
And the Sword Body Barrier the Watcher used most frequently just happened to be a warm-yellow barrier as well!
Of course, the vast majority of defensive miracles involving the earth sorcery faction had yellow as their dominant color, but as coincidences and déjà vu piled up and fermented, catalyzed by this conversational trigger about mothers, Diya's suspicion that "the Watcher is Yaxiu" had fully taken shape—which was why she had slyly prodded about the Watcher's reality.
At first, she thought the Watcher was referring to Annan and Qinna, but he had mentioned an eight-year-old child, and Annan was obviously nowhere near that young. Evidently, Diya had guessed wrong.
Diya nuzzled into the Sword Princess's embrace, carefully pondering: Why had she associated Yaxiu with the Watcher in the first place?
It was mainly because of that dark red trench coat.
Without looking at the front, Yaxiu's back in the trench coat was virtually identical to the Watcher's back.
The thing was, Yaxiu's dark red trench coat was a gift bought for him by Lisi! And Lisi had only bought that present because she thought the Watcher looked cool wearing a dark red trench coat, so she bought a matching one for Yaxiu.
Coming full circle, it was actually Lisi who had intentionally dressed Yaxiu in the Watcher's image. Of course Yaxiu would look like the Watcher!
As for their thought processes and speaking styles, on second thought, they weren't really all that similar.
After all, the Watcher spoke with utter abandon, frequently mocked her, and occasionally traded dirty jokes with the Sword Princess that she couldn't understand—though thanks to explanations from the White Queen and Black Butler, Diya now understood what dirty jokes were.
In contrast, while Yaxiu could be nonchalant and irreverent, his demeanor was comparatively gentle and his conduct was far more upright. He almost never cracked dirty jokes in front of Lisi, and whenever Harvey and Igola brought up something terrifying, he would instantly cover Lisi's ears. He was very caring.
As for the warm-yellow defensive miracle... it really had to be a coincidence!
Once she separated the Watcher from Yaxiu, Diya found this made much more sense: The Watcher was already capable of observing her anytime and anywhere, so what need was there for him to disguise himself as Yaxiu and lurk by her side? Not to mention, Yaxiu was a contractor chosen by Lisi herself—the Watcher couldn't possibly have calculated that far ahead, right?
Although Diya hadn't known the Watcher for long, she knew he wasn't someone who liked to lie. Since the daughter the Watcher spoke of was only eight years old, he definitely wasn't talking about Annan, but recounting the story of some other parent and child she didn't know.
...
*Lisi is around eight, right?*
Only when the Witch brought it up did Yaxiu realize he didn't actually know his freebie daughter's age. Still, Lisi's appearance was indeed very deceptive: her teeth were even neater than Yaxiu's, making it hard to tell whether she hadn't lost her baby teeth yet or had already grown permanent ones; her height was about the same as a fire hydrant, making her look under ten, though that could also be malnutrition.
Indeed, Yaxiu was actually speaking from the heart because witnessing the twisted mother-daughter dynamic between Annan and Qinna had reminded him of his own peculiar situation with Lisi.
The focus had been himself, not Annan.
After all, Yaxiu knew where he stood: when a capitalist boss and her feudal noble mother got into a conflict of interests, what did that have to do with a lowly wage slave like him? Initially, when Annan was being beaten so brutally by Qinna, Yaxiu had felt a bit sympathetic, but he never expected the daughter had been the first to plot against the mother. Bronze-rank Yaxiu had no intention of entangling himself in their Challenger-tier match.
Once mother and daughter reached a consensus, Qinna settled them—or rather, confined them—in Fanmula's upper-tier city. Only then did Yaxiu and the others realize that the upper tier of Fanmula had been divided into six sectors by design, conveniently allowing each Emblem family to occupy its own area.
In anime, whenever some star city had Three Great Families, it was at least a combination of "a family elite minority" and "a civilian majority." But Fanmula was comprised strictly of the Six Great Families—there was literally no one in the city outside the six clans. Everyone within a given sector belonged to the same family, sharing the closest bloodline affinity among individuals while fiercely rejecting outsiders.
Rather than a city, it was more like a continent formed by merging six nationalist states.
Chapter 296