If previously Ji Xiuning had only felt slightly uneasy, at this moment she was truly terrified.
Because there was a strange movement coming from inside her abdomen.
At first, she thought it was merely an illusion, but then the repeated movements clearly told her that it was not an illusion.
She… she was carrying a new life inside her.
Of course, at this point, the little life inside her was still only an embryo. An ordinary woman would not be able to sense it, but who was Ji Xiuning? The moment another life appeared inside her body, she could immediately feel it.
She was pregnant…
At this moment, no words could describe the terror in Ji Xiuning’s heart. Her mind had gone completely blank, her entire body had turned cold, and she seemed to have almost lost all warmth.
“What… what exactly have you done to me?” Ji Xiuning asked tremblingly.
Little Witch Lan Mei sneered. “What else could we have done? Of course, we had you attacked by a group of barbarian men. You have no idea how terrible you looked at the time. You were covered in blood and completely filthy. I vomited after seeing you once…”
Of course, Little Witch Lan Mei was lying, because it was difficult to find even one man within the territory of the Witch Nation, let alone a hundred.
However, when Little Witch Lan Mei lied, nobody could tell.
Ji Xiuning immediately remembered the dream she had, and her delicate body trembled violently again.
She had dreamed that she was being violated by an ancient god and demon, again and again…
She was an absolutely pure and chaste woman. She had never had a relationship with a man, and no man had ever touched her.
She was the Saintess of the Divine Dragon Holy Temple, and she had extremely strict standards of personal purity.
Moreover, this absolute purity was her hallmark and something she was proud of.
She had never thought about marrying in her entire life. She had no interest whatsoever in romantic relationships between men and women.
She simply could not understand why some women became obsessed with relationships, such as her aunt Ji Yingsha.
There were so many meaningful things to do in this world, yet some women chose to waste their time on relationships. It was simply ridiculous.
Was there anything more boring than romantic relationships?
As the Saintess of the Divine Dragon Holy Temple, she had long since severed herself from ordinary emotions and desires. No matter what man she faced, she would never experience any emotional or romantic attraction.
Zhiyan had cultivated a certain martial art. Not only had the Divine Dragon Holy Temple suppressed her emotions, it had also suppressed her romantic desires. It was only after she was affected by the Dragon’s Dream of Corruption that she regained such desires.
As the Saintess of the Divine Dragon Holy Temple, Ji Xiuning naturally had not received the same treatment. No one had forcibly suppressed her.
However… she had suppressed herself.
Both physically and psychologically, she had severed her emotional attachments and desires.
She had deliberately cultivated certain techniques, so she did not even have menstrual periods.
But…
Now, she was pregnant.
She had been violated, and according to what the young girl in front of her said, it had involved more than one man.
Ji Xiuning immediately began retching.
She wanted to wash herself, to somehow remove the feeling from her body, even though she knew that no amount of washing could erase what had happened.
A nightmare, a nightmare straight from hell!
For Ji Xiuning, this news was almost more painful than death.
However…
Even this pain only affected Ji Xiuning for a brief moment.
Soon, reason returned to her mind.
She began thinking about the consequences of losing her purity.
The consequences were extremely serious. Once she lost her chastity, she would automatically lose her qualifications to remain the Saintess of the Divine Dragon Holy Temple.
Finding a sorcerer to restore her physical condition would be useless. It might deceive a future husband, but it could not deceive the Divine Dragon Holy Temple.
Even more seriously, Ji Xiuning was pregnant with a child of the demon race. This was an even greater crime.
Of course, she would absolutely not keep this child.
But that could not change the fact that she had lost her chastity. Perhaps someone might say that she had been forced and had not chosen it willingly, and that she remained pure in her heart.
But in the Divine Dragon Holy Temple, even involuntary loss of chastity was considered a serious failure.
Because according to the Divine Dragon Holy Temple, if someone was too weak to protect herself, how could she serve as a Saintess? If she could not protect her own chastity, how could she protect her position as Saintess? It was absurd.
The higher ranks of the Divine Dragon Holy Temple were extremely cold, realistic, and ruthless.
Losing her qualification as Saintess meant that she would permanently lose the opportunity to become a Sky Priest.
This consequence almost made Ji Xiuning faint repeatedly.
In her view, there was only one true pinnacle in this world, and that was becoming a Sky Priest.
Generally speaking, there were only six Sky Priests in the entire world.
Every Sky Priest stood almost above the kings, including her father, the Flame Emperor Lord.
When she had been very young, Ji Xiuning had sworn that she would reach the peak of the world in this lifetime, standing at the very top of the world’s hierarchy. Everything else had to make way for this goal.
To achieve this, she had cultivated martial arts that suppressed her emotions and desires.
Yet now… everything had been ruined.
At this moment, she truly hated the Witch Nation. Why had they been so stubborn? They clearly knew how powerful the Divine Dragon Holy Temple was, yet they had still acted so recklessly. They had not only killed the Heavenly Guardian Knights, but had also humiliated her.
Of course, the Divine Dragon Holy Temple would certainly retaliate.
But even if every witch in the Blue Sea Banner were killed, it would not restore what Ji Xiuning had lost.
Her life’s goal had been destroyed.
From now on, her best possible future would be to marry the Young Lord of the Nether Society or the Young Lord of Yaizhou.
Of course, having lost her chastity, she would be looked down upon to some extent.
However, both of these men were deeply infatuated with Ji Xiuning, so perhaps they would not care about what had happened to her.
Just as Huai Bingyi still wanted to marry Zhiyan even though he knew that she had previously been with Lian Ling many times.
…
“Lady Lan Qi, your actions will bring disaster upon your Blue Sea Banner,” Ji Xiuning said coldly. “If you are rational enough, you should cut your losses and release me immediately. Otherwise, the price you will pay will be ten times, a hundred times greater.”
Banner Lord Lan Qi said, “Unfortunately, I have never known what rationality means.”
Little Witch Lan Mei’s eyes flashed with an evil light. “Do you know? I have been waiting for you to wake up for a long time, because I have already come up with more than ten ways to torment you, and I intend to try them one by one. For example, the first is to throw you into a volcano for a day and a night. The second is to throw you into the waste of a giant magical beast. There is a giant serpent that is one of the defensive magical beasts of our Witch Nation, and it can spray poison. Its waste is extremely corrosive. I really want to know what would happen if you were thrown into it. The third is to use a particularly strange demon beast to experiment on you. I wonder what the result would be.”
The more excited she became, the more animated Little Witch Lan Mei became.
“And your feet. I don’t like them either. I want to replace them with demonic hooves. In short, I want to modify every part of your body that can be changed. I want to see what kind of witch I can create. I am extremely interested in demon biology, but unfortunately, I have never found a suitable experimental subject. In my eyes, you are the perfect one…”
Hearing this, Ji Xiuning almost felt unable to breathe.
She wanted to threaten them and tried to persuade them.
But… a rebellious young girl like Lan Mei was fearless, and threats had no effect on her.
Ji Xiuning immediately looked towards Banner Lord Lan Qi and said coldly, “Lady Lan Qi, I can swear that if you release me now, I will pretend that nothing happened. But if you truly continue to humiliate me as she says, I swear that I will wipe out your entire Blue Sea Banner and destroy your people.”
Banner Lord Lan Qi looked at Ji Xiuning and said, “Perhaps you think I was chosen as Banner Lord because I know how to consider the bigger picture and possess the qualities of a leader. Then you are completely mistaken. I was chosen as Banner Lord because I am the most obsessive. We witches have always been wilful, ruthless, and cold blooded.”
She was not wrong.
Among the eight great demon races, the Witch Nation had always been completely independent.
Back then, when the seven great demon races signed a treaty with the Divine Dragon Holy Temple, the Witch Nation directly withdrew from the demon alliance.
This time, in order to deal with the threat of the Sky Fiend Race, King Rakshasa summoned the other demon races to a meeting, hoping to establish the seven race alliance once again.
The Witch Nation’s Queen simply did not attend. She did not even send an envoy, nor did she give any reason.
That was how wilful they were.
“Tormenting you may have very serious consequences… but we can deal with that when it happens. Right now, I only want revenge!” Banner Lord Lan Qi said. “Little Lan Mei, begin.”
Little Lan Mei giggled, grabbed Ji Xiuning, mounted a phoenix, and flew away.
At this moment, Ji Xiuning had no clothes on and was completely exposed to the air.
Lan Mei carried Ji Xiuning eastwards, flying over the sea. Not far ahead was a volcano, with lava extending deep into its depths.
They flew above the crater.
Little Witch Lan Mei directly threw Ji Xiuning down.
“Splash…” Ji Xiuning’s beautiful body fell directly into the extremely hot lava.
…
At the very centre of the Southern Wilderness stood the Heaven Reaching Peak.
It was the highest mountain in the entire Southern Wilderness, with an altitude of more than 27,000 metres.
Moreover, the final three thousand metres of the mountain were almost entirely made of metal.
Lightning and thunder were present here all year round.
Every year, the mountain endured more than one hundred thousand lightning strikes.
Of course, ninety nine percent of these lightning strikes were ordinary lightning. Only one percent was blood coloured lightning, which was known as Hell Lightning.
And Lian Ling had come here to comprehend Hell Lightning.
How could he comprehend it?
He did not know.
The Mirror Demon King had not explained it, and nobody had taught him.
Lian Ling was a Demon Emperor. Everything had to depend on his own comprehension.
Lian Ling’s choice was to wear a pair of insulating shoes and, when the weather was clear, have the three headed Chimera Beast carry him to the summit of Heaven Reaching Peak, where he would wait for the lightning to arrive.
Heaven Reaching Peak had no shortage of lightning. Lightning appeared every day.
Sure enough, after Lian Ling had stood at the summit for only one hour, dark clouds began to gather in the sky.
A quarter of an hour later, the thick clouds began to collide.
“Boom, boom, boom…”
Thunderous roars echoed as enormous bolts of lightning repeatedly struck the summit of Heaven Reaching Peak.
Lian Ling had never witnessed such a magnificent sight.
He had never seen so much lightning.
Each bolt of lightning was truly like a fire dragon, appearing suddenly and disappearing just as suddenly, one after another, like countless roaming dragons.
A single bolt of lightning was often tens of thousands of metres long and dozens of metres thick.
In such an environment, anyone would have been terrified.
It was simply too frightening.
In the face of such immense power from heaven and earth, anyone would feel how insignificant they were.
Fortunately, Lian Ling’s shoes were made from a special crystal that was almost completely non conductive.
Even when it rained, Lian Ling would release an energy shield to repel the rain.
Otherwise, Lian Ling firmly believed that even as a five star Demon Sect expert, he would be reduced to ashes if struck by such terrifying lightning.
When the lightning arrived, Lian Ling closed his eyes and began sensing its power.
He allowed his spiritual power to leave his body and enter the terrifying lightning, sensing its energy properties.
Lian Ling’s spiritual power continued to penetrate deeper and deeper.
Eventually, it even entered the interior of the lightning, sensing every electrical energy particle within it.
His spiritual power travelled through the lightning, observing every different bolt.
Not only that, his spiritual power also extended into the dark clouds, sensing the moment when the clouds collided and the instant when the lightning emerged.
Thus, he comprehended it every day.
Every day, he studied the internal energy patterns of the power of heaven and earth, as well as the moment when lightning was produced.
Time passed day by day.
Ten days, half a month, twenty days passed.
…
During these days, Ji Xiuning endured torment that felt like hell.
She was thrown into the volcanic lava for a day and a night.
She watched as her body repeatedly suffered severe damage and then recovered.
Endless pain overwhelmed her.
At that time, even if she wanted to lose consciousness, she could not.
The second day.
Her body was thrown into a sea of highly corrosive and poisonous liquid produced by a giant serpent.
She watched as her body was repeatedly destroyed until only her bones remained, before recovering again and again.
Most terrifying of all was that, despite such torment, the child in her womb continued to grow healthily.
Whether in the lava or in the corrosive liquid, the child inside her seemed to grow even faster, becoming increasingly active.
Only then did she realise that the reason she had lost her martial power was also because of this child.
All her energy was being used to protect the child. In Ji Xiuning’s vision of dragon power, it seemed that this child’s importance had surpassed even her own.
The third day.
Little Witch Lan Mei took Ji Xiuning to an altitude of more than ten thousand metres and then dropped her directly onto the ground.
“Bang…”
Almost instantly, Ji Xiuning, who had lost her martial power, suffered severe injuries from the fall.
The torment continued for ten days.
They were ten days during which Ji Xiuning suffered unbearable pain and felt as though life itself had become worse than death.
Little Witch Lan Mei finally grew tired of this kind of torment.
She raised her plan to another level. She wanted to modify Ji Xiuning’s body and establish her own demonic laboratory.
That was what frightened Ji Xiuning the most.
The previous torment had been extremely painful, but at least it had not permanently changed her.
But what if they modified her body?
Images of a demonic laboratory immediately appeared in Ji Xiuning’s mind, truly making her shudder.
And on this very day…
The Heaven Holy Temple finally sent people.
The envoy went directly to Witch City and asked about the whereabouts of Ji Xiuning and the Heavenly Guardian Knights.
Ji Xiuning finally saw a glimmer of hope that she might be rescued.
P.s: Lian Ling is Lan Ling.