Warm, snow-scented arms wrapped around the twenty-five-year-old Original Timeline Gu Nian Phantom from the right side. Meanwhile, empress Luo Qingxue pulled both her husband and her scarred, grown-up son from the erased world straight against her heart!
For eight years in our timeline, Luo Qingxue had been the cool, composed Glacial Empress who showed her love through quiet actions. Peeling fruit for the kids, freezing enemies who looked at them funny, and standing guard at her husband’s side.
Now, holding the twenty-five-year-old boy who had grown up in a timeline where she never escaped the Upper-Realm Star-Prison to be his mother, Luo Qingxue wept without a shred of imperial reserve.
She cradled the back of the twenty-five-year-old youth’s scarred head with one slender hand, pressed her warm cheek against his snow-matted hair, and kissed the jagged sword-scar over his left eyebrow again and again.
“Mother is here, Nian’er... Mother is finally here,” Luo Qingxue sobbed softly, her Half-Step Rank 10 Ice-Hearth Lotus Halo wrapping around the boy to draw every last splinter of eighteen-year-old frostbite out of his hands and feet.
“Forgive Mother for being locked away in that world... You had to grow up from seven to twenty-five without Mother ever brushing your hair, or sewing you a pair of warm shoes, or singing you to sleep when you had nightmares. Never again, my sweet boy...
