4 Chapter 4: Inheritance part 1

When Ying Yue came to and opened her eyes, what she saw completely stunned her. No longer was she in the shabby room that was meant to be her home. Instead, she stood in a vast field of flowers, and a small log cabin could be seen in the distance. There was even a small pond by the cabin. The area she was now in looked serene and peaceful, the kind of place that she would have loved to visit on vacation in her previous life.

Once Ying Yue had finally come to terms with her new surroundings, she was startled once again when a small body tackled her, knocking her onto her butt.

"Wah! Master! Why didn't you come to visit me for so long!"

Hearing this cry, Ying Yue looked to see a small body hugging her tightly. It was a little boy who looked to be maybe four or five years of age. He had copper hair and adorable wide eyes. A small button nose, with a spattering of freckles across. If it wasn't for his bright red eyes that made one think of a demon, Ying Yue would have mistaken him for a child model. Of course, at the moment, the little demon was shedding many tears and hugging her tightly, spouting some nonsense that she couldn't make heads or tails of.

"Who the hell are you?" Ying Yue asked, as she tried to pry the small boy off her body. Unfortunately, this just caused the small child to cling on to Ying Yue even tighter, as his wails became even more insistent.

"Wah wah! Master has forgotten all about pitiful old me! Do you not remember Jun Huang! Wah!!!" The child looked at Ying Yue like he was extremely hurt, much like a kid that had been abandoned by its mother.

Ying Yue looked at Jun Huang and sighed. She really had no idea who this kid was, or what she had done to get herself him in the first place. All she could remember was inspecting that stupid gem, followed by pain and then nothing. Now she was here, with no idea what was going on. "Don't tell me I died and reincarnated again," she thought, "No, that doesn't seem likely. Otherwise, shouldn't I no longer be in this body?" Looking down at her hands, Ying Yue could tell she was still in the body that she reincarnated in. Then, she spotted the ring on her middle finger. "Ah, that makes sense now," she thought, "since there is such a thing as cultivation in this world, spiritual artifacts must exist. That gem should have been a spiritual artifact, and it has now taken the shape of a ring on my finger."

Ying Yue's skills of deduction were usually spot on, as this is one of the traits that made her one of the best bounty hunters in the business. There were times when she could deduce where a convict was going to hide or run off to even before the convict themselves had made a decision. As such, Ying Yue was correct. The unassuming gem that had been left behind for her by her mother was in fact a spiritual artifact. It's name was Boundless Spirit Pantheon, and was the home of the ancient celestial phoenix, Jun Huang.

Jun Huang stared at Ying Yue, and seeing that its master had spaced out and was apparently ignoring it, the little phoenix became upset. As a result, Jun Huang let go of Ying Yue and angrily waddled away, leaving little burnt footprints in the grass behind it.

"Master no longer wants me," Jun Huang muttered to himself, "then I'll just have to prove myself all over again." The little phoenix was so hopping mad that his hair turned to flame, and he crouched down by the pond next the the cabin, sulking, trying to come up with ways to prove its worth to its master all over again.

Coming out of her thoughts, Ying Yue looked over to see the child squatted by the pond sulking while muttering to himself. She couldn't help but sigh. "Great, not only do I have to deal with my own issues, but now I have to take care of some brat."

It should be noted that Ying Yue is normally very nimble minded, however with the recent events in her life, her brain seemed to be running slower than usual. As a result, she was not asking herself some important yet simple questions. For example, why is this child all alone? How come this child called me master? And, most importantly, why is this kid not freaking out over the fact that he is currently on fire? As a result, when Ying Yue's brain finally caught up with itself and she really took notice of the sulking child, the first thought that popped into her head was, "Holy shit, this kid is on fire."

Ying Yue, being muddled as she was, could only think of one thing after the realization that the child she now seemed to be responsible for was on fire, and that was to chuck the poor kid into the pond to put him out. So, that's exactly what she did.

Poor Jun Huang was currently paying no attention to Ying Yue, as he was too immersed in his own thoughts. The lamentable child was simply concocting ways to make his master remember and love him once again, when all of a sudden he was roughly picked up and thrown into the pond in front of him. It had been quite some time since Jun Huang had been treated so roughly, so he was rather taken aback. By the time he had made sense of the situation, he was already submerged in a couple of feet of water.

Jun Huang lept* out of the water in a rage. When has his master ever treated him like this? Since when had he last had to suffer such abuse? Now, he was no longer crying, he looked at Ying Yue in rage, which was quickly followed by shock. Without the tears in his eyes blurring his vision, he got a clearer view of Ying Yue.

"Master, what did you do to make yourself look so much younger than when I last saw you?" Jun Huang asked, completely disregarding his anger, and replacing it with confusion. Wasn't his master in her late thirties? So, why did she now appear to be a young girl? The person standing before him couldn't even be twenty, let alone thirty. Jun Huang was suspicious, but the girl before him definitely had the mark of the contract on her, so he very tentatively asked, "Yu Yuhan?"

Ying Yu stared blankly at Jun Huang and thought to herself, "Don't tell me this brat has mistaken me for someone else?" The name he spoke, however, did seem very similar to her, like something she should know. She just couldn't figure out where she had heard the name before. Thinking about it, she finally remembered where she had heard the name before. Yu Yuhan was the name of the original Ying Yue's dead mother. "Has this idiot really mistaken me for my mother?" she thought, "Does this mean this kid has some relationship with my mom? Could he perhaps be an illegitimate child?" Ying Yue's mind was working a million miles a minute, going of into all sorts of possible scenarios as to who this child was and it his relationship to her mother.

She decided the best way to clear up her confusion was simply to ask. So, she looked at the little kid and questioned, "How do you know my mother?"

This caused Jun Huang to blank. "Don't tell me that idiot woman left me to her daughter?" he thought, "Is that what I've been reduced to? What a joke!"