Years after that passed and she started to hear even more intriguing information. The Phoenix King had not only begun to personally train the girl, even feeding her with precious Magical Herbs and corpses of powerful creatures, but he had also begun to make abnormal disappearances with her.

The official statement was that he had taken her to secluded places where she could fight powerful Beasts (but of course not too powerful) without distraction, and although many many people had believed that in the beginning, herself included, things changed when people around the King began to notice changes in his personality.

Before, his entire demeanour carried the razor sharp edge of resentment and suppressed rage that made the people around him feel wary. As a Phoenix, he was innately graceful so it wasn’t too bad, but back then, Chad was truly a wild card that would blow up at the most random of times.

But then one day, he came back from who knows where with a blue haired humanoid girl in his arms and a wide smile on his face!

Naturally, the first thing that shocked everyone was the smile. Apparently he hadn’t smiled in years and the sight of it caused the many Phoenixes to be dazed, but she didn’t care about that. The next thing that caused everyone to be shocked was that he was carrying a female in his arms and that they were clearly intimate.

This was great news to them, after all, ever since Chad’s previous mates had died, he had had not only discarded all the female birds he had been impregnating in hopes of increasing his Phoenix army, but he had also completely stopped having relations with females. But obviously, with a female in his arms and a wide smile on his face it was a sign that things were about to change and they were glad, they didn’t even care that the female, with her big blue wings on her back, was clearly an Ice Phoenix. The King’s happiness was their happiness.

But she didn’t care about that information either, whether Chad would sulk for eternity or not was none of her concern.

It was the next piece of information that stunned not only her, but everyone else on the Continent. And that was the fact that the identity of that female was none other than the slave girl, the daughter of the so-called Despicable Brother. But although that was quite a bit surprising, quite a few people had suspected the relationship between her and the King and weren’t too surprised. The ACTUAL shocking factor was the fact that…

She… SHE WAS IN THE 2ND REALM! How could a mere Spirit Beast POSSIBLY access the Enlightened Form of an Enlightened Beast?!

That simply wasn’t possible!

Or at least, it was supposed to be.

But here the girl was in the flesh, glaring at her like an anxious mother as she clutched Chad’s side with her very humanoid fingers. Even now, despite the fact that she had met with the girl multiple times since the event, she still felt a little of the shock that she felt back when she first found out.

And even now, despite being pressured from all sides, Chad had absolutely refused to reveal how it happened... Sometimes, she really wanted to kill him.

In any case, after that event, although their relationship wasn’t immediately revealed, the treatment of all Ice Phoenixes across the Continent had improved drastically, being treated no different from the Pure Phoenixes. Even the slaves that she had captured or bought with resources had to be returned to the Pure Society without harm, or there was the promise of war.

That threat from the King even sent a chill down her own spine, talk less of others. Not that she wasn’t afraid of him, but even she did not want a repeat of the great war that spanned across the entire Continent. Actually, something like that would be very beneficial to her cultivation, after all, she was still half Monster, a Demon King at that, and that came with benefits that could be fully excavated by the act of killing.

But she wasn’t fully a Monster anymore and… she had descendants that she… cared about. So she decided to give back the Ice Phoenixes without making too much of a fuss. Of course, as the strongest being on the Continent, she wasn’t someone that could be bullied or threatened into doing anything, so she made him pay for those Ice Phoenixes in resources. Thankfully, after a few complaints about the price and rude name-callings that she almost punched him for, he paid and that was that.

It had to be said that initially she wanted the secrets of Aliana’s transformation, but the response was that if she kept pressing about it, he would kidnap those Ice Phoenixes forcefully, ignite their Mana Core’s so that they were destined to explode, and throw them right back at her, turning the entire Purgatory Forest into a frozen wasteland whether she survived or not. And that that would be the start of the war.

What a personality shift that was. Hehe, it was kind of exciting thinking back on it. But she hadn’t found it so funny back then, so she had to admit, she was actually cowed into stepping back and asking for resources instead. Hmph, it wasn’t that she was scared, it was just that although she herself didn’t need to fear exploding Phoenixes too much, the same could not be said for her territory and the people within.

In fact, even if she could somehow perfectly protect her descendants, just the thought of multiple exploding ice phoenixes rearranging the topography of her Forest and turning it into an icy wasteland was enough to make her make concessions.

Normally, such a thing was not a worry. After all, even the Despicable Brother didn’t dare to do such a heinous thing. And even if he did, he definitely would not be sacrificing the amount needed to turn the Purgatory Forest into a wasteland, it was just too big of a cost. But there was something in Chad’s eyes, something that she would notice in his eyes each time something threatened his so-called ‘one true mate’, that made her believe him.

And that was one of the best decisions she had ever made because in the future, there was an event that ended up causing very severe harm to Aliana, so much so that she almost became a cripple. Hahaha… This resulted in a 5, not 1, not 2, not 3, but a 5 year long lesson that the entire Continent would never forget.

Heh, in any case, years had passed since then and here they were. She, the 9 Flame Queen, did not dare to touch this mad King’s mate. What was he dancing around for?