Hearing Yang Kai's question, Li Jiao also grew suspicious and frowned: "Indeed, why would you be here? And where is the one who harmed you?"
Lü Sanniang lowered her head and remained silent for a moment before speaking softly: "After I was brought back to Dragon Island, I was imprisoned within the Dragon Palace, living a life worse than death." Her voice choked with emotion, and her body trembled uncontrollably. "Until fourteen years ago…"
She turned to glance at her daughter, offering a sorrowful smile: "When Qiner was born, that was when I was finally cast out."
Li Jiao froze for a moment, not quite grasping what she meant, but once the implication sank in, his face turned livid and he slammed his palm on the table: "Bastard!"
Yang Kai's expression darkened as well, thinking to himself that the Dragon Clan really was despicable.
Dragging a woman like this to Dragon Island to torment her for years was one thing, but driving both mother and child away the moment the child was born — was that even human? Yang Kai hadn't harbored any particular prejudice against the Dragon Clan before, merely finding them excessively arrogant — a trait that both Zhu Qing and Zhu Lie seemed to have been carved from the same mold to possess. But that was harmless enough; if the Dragon Clan weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be the Dragon Clan.
Yet he had never imagined that the Dragon Clan, who proclaimed themselves the noblest of all living beings and the foremost of the divine spirits, could harbor such sordid deeds within their own ranks.
"Who is this girl…?" Yang Kai asked, looking at the young woman.
Lü Sanniang said nothing, but the implication was obvious.
"If she's a descendant of the Dragon Clan, why was she driven from the Dragon Palace?" Yang Kai asked with a frown. Even a vicious tiger won't eat its own cubs — Lü Sanniang's daughter carried Dragon Clan blood no matter what, so how could she be cast out along with her mother the very moment she was born?
Lü Sanniang replied in a low voice: "The rules of the Dragon Palace are as such — if no offspring are produced, it doesn't matter. But if a child is born and the child possesses no dragon veins, both mother and child are expelled from the Dragon Palace. Qiner… she has no dragon veins."
"What kind of bullshit rule is that!" Li Jiao flew into a rage.
Regardless of whether the child had dragon veins or not, it was still their own flesh and blood — how could they just sweep them out like garbage? The Dragon Clan was far too heartless.
"Indeed outrageous!" Yang Kai's regard for the Dragon Palace plummeted in an instant.
Lü Sanniang offered a plaintive smile and shook her head: "On Dragon Island, this sort of thing is commonplace." She turned to look outside and pointed at the hurried passersby: "Where do you suppose all the people in this Half-Dragon City came from?"
"Where?" Li Jiao asked.
Lü Sanniang said: "Many of them were expelled from the Dragon Palace. And even if they themselves weren't, their ancestors were."
"What?" Yang Kai and Li Jiao both stared wide-eyed.
"The Dragon Clan is few in number, and reproduction is exceedingly difficult — often not a single new member is born in ten thousand years. What's more, the ratio of males to females among the Dragon Clan is severely imbalanced. The adult male dragons frequently leave Dragon Island to seek out exceptional women, capturing them and bringing them back to serve as outlets for their desires. Over time, many of these women conceive children. When the offspring are born, if the child possesses Dragon Clan blood, the mother and child may remain in the Dragon Palace for further observation. If the child lacks Dragon Clan blood, or if the bloodline rank is too low, they are expelled from the Dragon Palace. Over countless years, Dragon Island has accumulated this great many humans, demon beasts, and impure-blooded dragon descendants."
"As the population of these humans, demon beasts, and dragon descendants grew, they established Half-Dragon City here. That is the original foundation of Half-Dragon City. The residents intermarried among themselves, bore children generation after generation, and the population grew until it eventually reached its current scale."
Listening to Lü Sanniang's account, Yang Kai and Li Jiao were so stunned they could hardly speak for a long while.
This Half-Dragon City had come about in this manner?
Every living being in this city — whether human, demon beast, or dragon descendant — was all a grandchild or great-grandchild of the dragons?
This… this was almost too incredible to believe.
Lü Sanniang had explained it very clearly. Within Half-Dragon City, a portion of the residents had been expelled from the Dragon Palace, and all of those were women who had been captured by the Dragon Clan and the children they had borne, just like Lü Sanniang herself. That portion should be relatively small in number. The vast majority, however, were descendants who had been born and raised over countless generations.
No wonder this place was called Half-Dragon City — there was this layer of meaning behind the name.
Every resident of Half-Dragon City had some connection, however distant, to the Dragon Clan. What else would you call it if not Half-Dragon City?
Li Jiao had originally felt as though he'd been cuckolded, seething with rage that had nowhere to go, and his feelings toward Lü Sanniang herself had soured as a result. The only reason he'd asked so many questions was to get to the bottom of things.
But after hearing this account, a great deal of pity welled up in his heart.
Lü Sanniang had been captured through no fault of her own. After all, at that time she had only been at the Third Stage Dao Origin Realm — what chance could she possibly have had against a member of the Dragon Clan?
Her present circumstances were so wretched that Li Jiao no longer had any intention of blaming her.
He let out a long sigh, feeling that he and Sanniang simply weren't meant to be together in this life.
"What is the child's name?" Li Jiao asked, looking at the young girl.
Lü Sanniang said: "Yuqin. Lü Yuqin."
Li Jiao nodded and asked: "Then who is the dragon who did this to you?"
Lü Sanniang looked up at him, anxious: "What are you going to do?"
Li Jiao said: "I have suffered this humiliation, all thanks to that bastard. Do I not have the right to know his name?"