Li Yu floated in the dark water, his mind struggling to process the old man’s final, shocking declaration of who Lirael would be to him. ‘Great-grandchild?’ The words echoed in his mind but it seemed like they were echoing from the entire sea around them.

This powerful eccentric man shouldn’t be an enemy then; he was a desperate family member searching for his kin. Li Yu’s caution was lowered a bit and a new sudden wave of sympathy came to life for this old man. It could be seen on his face that he wasn’t lying, that heartache was real.

Li Yu was about to try and speak, to ask for more information to be sure about what his instincts were telling him. Before he could ask or decide what to do next, the space beside him shimmered with an all too familiar energy.

A portal of swirling, iridescent water opened, and from its depths a magnificent creature emerged. The Koi Sanctuary had opened on its own, and Lireal appeared. Li Yu was taken back from seeing the portal. ‘No! Don’t come out now, it could be a trap!’ he desperately thought, trying to send a warning to her through their bond, but his mind was still too battered to form a coherent spiritual message. His worry was not needed however.

Lireal emerged in her original beast form, a majestic deep-sea naga, but she was a bit different now compared to when Li Yu last saw her. She had grown a bit. Her scales were a deeper, more vibrant shade of azure, and her aura was more powerful. She had advanced in her cultivation, now a Rank 7 beast, her strength roughly equivalent to that of an early Foundation Establishment cultivator.

As soon as she appeared, the old man who had been waiting with breathless anticipation gasped with excitement. All doubt and all uncertainty vanished from his face. It was replaced by a torrent of raw, unrestrained emotion. He was shedding tears. “Yes… YES!!!” he cried, his voice thick with a joy so profound it was painful.

“I have finally found you, you poor child! I have done you and our family a great injustice. It is all my fault that you and our family had to suffer so much!” He then looked at his long-lost kin, his voice trembling as he finally gave his name. “I am Zephyr, Grand General of the Naga armies from the kingdom you came from. I am also your great-grandfather.” The emotion on his face was raw and unrestrained, it all came flowing out after all these years.

Lireal had emerged because she sensed something familiar but was frozen by the information she just received. She looked at the weeping old man, and she felt it instantly—an undeniable, resonant hum deep within her soul and bloodline.

She could feel his connection to her through her bloodline and he sensed it through his. This wasn’t a trick by the old man. This was her true family. She knew he was the real deal. The connection was not from the ancient royal bloodline she had inherited from the heart that Li Yu gave her, but from her own personal bloodline, the one she was born with.

With a shimmer of light, she changed to her human form. She was still an elegant young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. She was not a peerless, heaven-defying beauty, but she possessed a profound, quiet grace that was more captivating than any simple physical perfection.

Even though there was some awkwardness from just meeting the first time, they embraced one another. Floating above the dark ocean, a reunion that was centuries in the making was occurring. This left Li Yu as the third wheel to their happy reunion, still floating there to watch in silence.

He was still unable to move, a paralyzed observer to this incredibly emotional scene. While he felt happy for them, a large part of his mind couldn’t help but drift to his own injuries, he couldn’t remember a time he had been this badly hurt, his body a broken mess. ‘What the heck is this old man,’ he thought, his anger completely eclipsed by sheer strength of the man’s power.

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The two embraced each other for a long while, shedding tears of joy to finally find family. The silence of the sea is broken only by their quiet sobs. Afterwards, they remembered that Li Yu was still here, a silent, broken figure watching them with a somewhat awkward face.

Lireal, seeing that Li Yu hurt so badly that he could only lay there, was saddened by his injuries. She has also never seen him so hurt before. She turned to her great-grandfather, her expression a mixture of joy for their reunion and concern for her master.

She began to explain. “Great-grandfather, this is Li Yu. He was the one that ended up with my egg, he hatched me and has raised me ever since. He is the reason I was able to receive a heart from the ancient naga race, which gave me memories of our ancient kingdom, though they are all in bits and pieces.”

Zephyr’s gaze fell upon Li Yu, a new understanding dawning in his eyes. “No wonder I could sense another noble bloodline in you,” he said to Lireal. He then clarified, “Our family was a side branch of the royal family. So, in a sense, you did inherit your own deeper family bloodline through that heart. It has awakened the royal lineage that lay dormant within you.”

He then looked at Li Yu with gratitude in his eyes that was a stark contrast to his earlier aggression. He now truly felt sorry that he had attacked the person that has helped his great granddaughter. His mood quickly again as though it didn’t really matter that he attacked Li Yu, he’s still alive isn’t he? Li Yu saw the quick changes to the man’s expression again and could only sigh to himself, this man is too much!

Zephyr then began to tell his own story to Lirael, a tale of tragedy that stretched back for ages.

“I was one of the highest-ranking generals of the kingdom,” he began, his voice heavy with sorrow. “But I was out with our main armies, leading a campaign against an old enemy in a distant sea. That was when it happened. The kingdom was betrayed from within, and by our closest allies. A disaster of unimaginable scale.”

His face hardened. “I am hoping that my… our family, your great-grandmother and grandparents, were able to escape but they were all set adrift at sea, scattered to the winds. My army was also destroyed, caught in a brutal ambush from the betrayal of our allies, with only small remnants left. I was greatly injured in the ambush, and it took me a very long time to heal while I remained in hiding.”

“By the time I was able to get back to the kingdom, everything was already destroyed. A complete ruin. A graveyard. They didn’t even attack to capture our lands, they only destroyed everything we had ever known.”

His voice was a low whisper, haunted by the ghosts of his past. “I then went on a search to find our family members, hoping with all my soul that there were any survivors. It’s been a very, very long time since then. Hundreds and hundreds of years. I have never found anyone from our family.

I ran into a few others from our race through my travels but they had given up on rebuilding the kingdom, now just living their life however they can. I had given up hope a long time ago, so I just wandered the seas, killing random groups of my enemies when I ran into them, a ghost seeking vengeance with no home to return to.”

He finally brought the story to the present. “By pure chance, I was passing through this region and sensed the chaotic energy of the sea creatures. I saw how they were acting, and I went to investigate. And that’s when I ran into your friend Li Yu here. I wanted to quickly subdue him and soul search him to get information on the current human world in this area and what was going on around here. It all… it all led to this.” He looked at the paralyzed Li Yu with a deep, sincere regret again before fading again just as fast.

“What a sad journey and what a misunderstanding towards the end.” Li Yu could only laugh internally at his own bad luck to be in this situation. But even as his body ached with an agony he had never known, he was still extremely happy for Lireal, who had finally found a family member after being alone in the world for so long.

It would seem that this man’s family, Lireal’s family, was able to have at least some people escape and were living somewhere after the attack. They must have lived through the generations and somehow her egg ended up with the Elder Quan at Sunken Treasure City. What happened during that time currently no one knows.

Were they still alive? Did they meet with disaster? Did an accident happen that Lirael’s egg was somehow lost? Those were the questions going through the minds of the three people currently present.