I was born a god, the son of the Demon Lord.

Xu Nanyi called out in her mind, "[Sister Tongzi? What exactly is going on with the steel?]"

[You've converted countless demonic souls in the entire Demon City and withstood the first wave of attacks from the Ten Demonic Immortal Realms. Now, sense your current cultivation level.]

Only then did Xu Nanyi belatedly examine the meridians throughout her body.

Within his dantian, spiritual energy surged like a vast ocean, and his meridians expanded more than ten times over.

Her level of attainment...

boom.

A crack appeared in the barrier of the peak of the Nascent Soul Realm, and spiritual energy broke through the threshold of the Void Refinement Realm like a flood.

Xu Nanyi lay blankly in her mother's arms, her eyes wide open.

It should be noted that Xu Nanyi has only been alive for a year at most.

A one-year-old Void Refinement Realm cultivator!

The Taiyuan Realm is the first of its kind in history.

Seeing that she was stunned and didn't speak, Xu Yuan waved her hand in front of her in a hurry, her voice trembling with tears, but she didn't dare to speak too loudly, for fear of scaring her.

"Yiyi? Yiyi, are you feeling unwell? You need to tell me, where does it hurt? Does your head hurt? Is there anything wrong with your body—"

Xu Nanyi's face turned red from being strangled by her mother. She scratched at Xu Yuan's arm with her paws and said something in a muffled voice.

"...I can't breathe."

Xu Yuan quickly let go, looked down at the little girl's face, tears streaming down her face, yet she was smiling.

"It's alright, it's alright..."

Shen Jiuyuan came over, squatted down beside her, looked at Xu Nanyi's bewildered little face, remained silent for a while, and then gently rubbed the top of her head.

"Little Phoenix".

Lin Qingyue walked over, leaning on the gun barrel, glanced down at Xu Nanyi, and reached out to remove a blade of grass stuck to her hair.

"Alright, don't scare the child."

Xu Nanyi blinked, looking at the three faces surrounding her—some crying, some laughing, and some pretending to be calm—and buried her face in Xu Yuan's warm neck, letting out a muffled "Mmm."

Forget it.

forget about it.

Anyway, my parents, younger brother, and aunts are still alive.

……

Inside the Hall of Reincarnation.

The candles burned eternally, their pale blue flames flickering quietly in the twelve bronze lamps.

In the center of the hall, a woman knelt on an astrological altar.

With silver hair and purple eyes, she wore an elaborate high priest's robe, the cuffs and collar embroidered with star trails in silver thread, and the layers of the robe spread out like a ghostly flower blooming in the night.

But at that moment, his face only showed anxiety.

Wu Qiyue made hand seals, with twelve jade divination sticks suspended between her fingertips. The divination sticks were arranged and scattered in her palms, but she could never piece them together into a complete hexagram.

She bit her lip, finally managing to bring a little color to it.

"No...nothing's right..."

She spent the whole day divining, but the secrets of heaven were like a pool of water that had been stirred up, and she couldn't see anything clearly.

Wu Qiyue was both anxious and afraid.

Suddenly, all twelve bronze lamps in the hall went dark at the same time.

An immense aura, so powerful it made one's soul tremble, appeared out of nowhere in front of the astrological table.

A thin crack appeared in the void, and a figure stepped out from it.

With jet-black hair and crimson eyes, dressed in a blood-red dress, her face was exquisitely beautiful, and her brows and eyes held an aloofness that looked down upon all things.

Xu Nanyi's figure solidified, and she exhaled a breath of stale air.

Wu Qiyue turned around abruptly, the divination slips scattering all over the ground, and ran over.

"Your Majesty! Where have you been...?"

Xu Nanyi looked down at her, her bloodshot eyes reflecting Wu Qiyue's tearful face. "I... am fine."

"I just went to see the happy version of myself that those people talked about."

Wu Qiyue was stunned for a moment. The tears in her purple eyes finally couldn't be held back and slid down her cheeks. She reached out and took Xu Nanyi's hand, which was hanging by her side, and held it tightly.

"Your Majesty... I am also your family."

If it weren't for the inescapable will of Heaven...

If it weren't for the nine cycles of reincarnation trials that ground down her seven emotions and six desires into a thin, empty shell...

My Majesty must be the happiest person in the world.

Wu Qiyue closed her eyes and gently pressed her forehead against Xu Nanyi's hand. Tears fell onto the other's cold fingertips, burning hot.

Xu Nanyi did not pull her hand away.

She simply stood there quietly, letting her minister and close friend, who had been with her for thousands of years, hold her hand and weep.

……

That year, let's talk about it.

At that time, Xu Nanyi was not yet the Lord of the Nine Netherworlds, but merely a remnant soul of a phoenix that had died in the womb, drifting on the River of Oblivion.

Blood flowed freely, white ghosts surged, and the bottom of the River of Oblivion was filled with countless vengeful spirits and malevolent souls accumulated over billions of years. Every inch of the river was permeated with death and despair.

Almost no soul can survive in the River of Oblivion. Those remnant souls that enter it will be devoured by resentment within three breaths, leaving them no chance to be reincarnated.

The tiny soul struggled desperately to rise, breaking free inch by inch whenever it was entangled by resentment. Its limbs were gnawed and pieced back together, pieced back together and gnawed again, refusing to sink no matter what.

The high priests of the witch clan stood on the shore.

For three thousand years, the Nine Netherworlds have been without a master, the cycle of reincarnation has been disrupted, and resentment soars to the heavens on the River of Oblivion, leaving countless souls unable to find peace.

They divined day and night, prayed to heaven, but all they received was disappointment.

Until that day.

The old priest, tears streaming down his face, pointed with trembling hands to the center of the river: "...Bring her up."

They retrieved the remnant souls and sent them to the Tower of Reincarnation.

The Nine Trials of Reincarnation have been passed down for thousands of years, with fewer than a hundred people managing to survive the third.

The Wu Clan has sent countless geniuses into the tower, but those who emerged were either mentally challenged or insane, and many didn't even have the chance to come out, their souls scattered within the tower.

No one had high hopes for that remaining soul.

She was so small that she couldn't even be seen as human; she was just a ball of golden light.

The first trial was to be transformed into a lame puppy and thrown into the pit of beasts.

In the abyss, millions of beast souls roared and pounced.

Her right forepaw was bitten off, her left eye was slashed open by sharp claws, and a long gash was torn open in her abdomen, with her intestines dragging in the mud, covered in gravel and blood. She crawled and used her hind paws to pull them back, trembling with pain but not stopping.

Her bestial instincts, like an invisible hand, were tearing at her memories.

She began to forget who she was, where she came from, and why she was climbing—

Only instinct remained: forward. Forward. Forward.

Day 49.

She climbed to the altar.

On the altar lay a bowl of water that symbolized forgetting worries, emanating an aura that soothed the soul.

Drinking it will erase all pain, dispel the animalistic nature, and transform one into a true beast soul to rest in the Pit of Ten Thousand Beasts... but that means failure.

She looked at the bowl of water, lowered her head, and sniffed it.

With a push of its hind legs, it leaped over the rim of the bowl and crashed headfirst into the light of the altar.

Golden light burst forth.

From that day on, she became the Lord of the Nine Netherworlds, whom the entire Nine Netherworlds had been eagerly awaiting.