Evolution - Chapter 169
Chapter 169
After sixty-plus years of diligent, hard work, I finally succeeded in getting my wife pregnant!
It’s a story that would make any listener weep with sympathy.
Although Yu Zhiyao’s motivation for having a child wasn’t entirely noble—it was because she loved Ji Changqing, the person with whom she could create this child—when she actually became pregnant, she was still filled with anticipation for the life slowly growing inside her.
After all, this was her and Ji Changqing’s child. Even though the baby was just a tiny, unaware embryo, it didn’t stop the mother-to-be from a whole series of imaginings.
Would they look more like Ji Changqing or more like her? Or would they have some features from Ji Changqing and some from her?
Would they be adorable, well-behaved, and thoughtful? Or would they be a lawless little hellion?
Which evolutionary path would they take in the future? Would they have a constitution like hers, more suited for cultivation, or would they lean toward the ABO path, like Ji Changqing?
How should she care for them, teach them, to make sure they didn’t go astray?
What if the child was disobedient? What if they went down the wrong path? How should she guide and raise them?
As her thoughts spiraled, the ever-composed Yu Zhiyao began to panic. “Ji Changqing! Ji Changqing!”
Ji Changqing appeared at her call, only to hear the flustered mother-to-be ask, “What do we do? What if the child grows up and goes astray? Quick, go find some resources! We need to study how to raise a child properly!”
Ji Changqing couldn’t help but laugh. She hugged the panicked mother-to-be and soothed her, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s still early. They have to grow up in here first.”
She stroked Yu Zhiyao’s flat abdomen, and as she did, her hand couldn’t resist wandering upward, only to be slapped away by Yu Zhiyao.
Yu Zhiyao shot her a reproachful glare. They were discussing serious matters; couldn’t this person be a little more serious?
Ji Changqing nonchalantly retracted her hand and kissed her. “Let’s first learn how to take care of the mother-to-be, so both mom and baby can be healthy. Then we can learn how to care for a newborn, how to prepare infant nutritional meals, and how to manage postpartum recovery, hmm?”
As for how to educate the child, that was a consideration for much, much later!
The most urgent task right now was, of course, taking care of the mother-to-be!
After Yu Zhiyao’s pregnancy was confirmed, Alliance law stipulated that Ji Changqing must work on the same planet as Yu Zhiyao for at least the next ten years to care for her family and accompany their child’s growth.
The military’s recommendation was for her to return to Blue Star and once again serve as its supreme military commander.
Blue Star was different now, and its status in the Alliance had changed. When she had previously served as its supreme military commander, the position required a rank of Major General or higher. That was sufficient then.
But Blue Star’s development had become increasingly fantastical, and it was subtly becoming a strategic planet that connected myriad races and promoted common progress. Now, its supreme military commander needed to be at least a Lieutenant General.
After more than two hundred years of effort, Ji Changqing had been promoted to Admiral over a decade ago. The next step up was the Alliance’s highest rank—Five-Star Admiral, also known as Marshal.
But with a baby on the way, Ji Changqing was about to be promoted to mother. Her lazy nature kicked in again; all she wanted was a bit of peace and the happy life of a family with a wife and child. She politely declined the military’s arrangement and applied to be a training consultant, returning to Blue Star to help train special forces soldiers at Lingyun Peak.
After completing her transfer application and the onboarding procedures at the Lingyun Peak training base, Ji Changqing returned, looking completely relaxed, to the home she shared with Yu Zhiyao on the peak.
The fact that Yunbao, that little goofball, wasn’t at Lingyun Peak right now was truly a blessing!
The little guy had gone to Dragon Island with his friend Angela to learn how to be a mighty dragon and make lots of little dragon friends. Whether he was learning anything was anyone’s guess, but he was having a grand time there, and who knew when he’d be willing to come back.
When she got home, Yu Zhiyao had already instructed the nanny-type intelligent robot to prepare the ingredients for dinner.
Before the pregnancy, they could just freeload meals at Lingyun Peak. But now, with Yu Zhiyao’s special condition, Ji Changqing had consulted Shen Guiqing, combined her advice with opinions from pregnancy experts, and created a specialized meal plan for Yu Zhiyao, scheduled chronologically.
And she was going to cook it all herself!
As she bustled about in the kitchen, Yu Zhiyao, who hadn’t yet reached the stage where she couldn’t stand the smell of cooking fumes, leaned against the partition door to keep her company and chat.
“Why did you turn that down to come back as a training consultant?”
Yu Zhiyao knew she had refused the position of Blue Star’s supreme military commander and instead applied to be a training consultant, essentially an instructor. Of course, she believed Ji Changqing’s reason about not wanting to be too busy and wanting to spend more time with her and their unborn child, but she suspected there were other reasons as well.
“Do you remember that famous case from when the evolution first started and the Alliance transitionary regulations were being implemented? The one about the trafficked person who killed their captors?”
Yu Zhiyao nodded.
The case became famous because it sparked a huge debate at the time over whether the defendant should be judged under Blue Star’s original laws or the Alliance’s statutes.
The defendant, who had excellent potential and evolved early, had suffered a persistent high fever during her full evolution and was thrown into a storage room to die. She survived and differentiated into an Alpha. In a miraculous burst of strength, she killed the family that bought her, as well as the villagers who had helped keep all the trafficked people confined there.
Coincidentally, the traffickers who had sold her arrived that very night with a new batch of “goods” and were killed by her as well.
After killing all the men in the village, she calmly called the police in another jurisdiction. Could the local police and grassroots officials have been unaware of what was happening in that village? They all knew, but they operated on the principle of “the less trouble, the better,” focusing only on their own careers and completely ignoring the victims’ plight.
After reporting the crime, she rescued the other trafficked women one by one. At the same time, she crippled some of the village women who had acted as accomplices, as well as all the boys over the age of ten.
The group’s wails shifted from vicious curses when they were first dragged out to cries for mercy and confessions after they were actually crippled.
On Blue Star, under the old laws, the trafficked person who fought back and killed would certainly have received a heavy sentence. After all, they had only trafficked her, bought her, and imprisoned her to prevent her from leaving the village, yet she had taken everyone’s lives!
Moreover, after the killings, she had crippled most of the innocent women and children, sparing only the young girls.
It was an act with a terrible impact, carried out with extreme cruelty.
However, considering she was also a victim and there were extenuating circumstances, the judge didn’t consider the death penalty, wavering between a suspended death sentence and life imprisonment.
But according to Alliance law, the defendant had been trafficked and imprisoned, constantly in a state of persecution. No matter when she chose to lash out and kill or injure someone, it was considered legitimate self-defense, and she bore no criminal responsibility.
Instead, a psychologist should have been arranged for her immediately, and a thorough investigation into the years of inaction by local officials should have been launched.
The timing of the incident was just that critical. It occurred during the period when laws were being revised, but the trial took place just as Major General Xie'er and Claire were preparing to forcefully implement the new laws.
The two sides used this case as a battleground. If the verdict was based on the old laws, it would mean that future progress would be even more difficult, and might even come to nothing. If the verdict was based on Alliance law, it would mean the interest groups that held power would lose it completely.
It could only be said that Blue Star’s original rulers had misjudged the determination of Major General Xie'er and Claire, or rather, the determination of the Alliance. The power struggle lasted for several months. Many high-ranking officials were successively investigated for illegal activities, which were immediately made public. Public sentiment surged, and the people almost unanimously accepted the Alliance.
Whether the Alliance was good or not was still unknown, but they could see that the group that had held power was rotten to the core.
Because the hardliners were not clean themselves, most of them were purged from their positions, making subsequent progress much easier.
In the end, the defendant in that case was acquitted. She immediately enrolled in a military academy.
Because of the case, she was delayed by a few years. By the time she was accepted into the academy, Ji Changqing was already in prison.
“She was just promoted to Lieutenant General. If I don’t take the position, she’s the most likely candidate,” Ji Changqing said with a smile. “The current deputy should be able to get promoted to Lieutenant General within ten years if he plays his cards right.”
With that, Yu Zhiyao understood.
“You don’t like the current deputy?”
Ji Changqing would be on Blue Star for the next ten years. Alliance law required her to take a mandatory three-year parental leave starting six months into her wife’s pregnancy—the first three months to care for her wife before delivery, and the following two-plus years to care for the child. In the eyes of others, once those ten years were up, she, as an Admiral, would surely be transferred to a more important post.
So for these ten years, she would just be occupying the position, allowing them to promote their own person later.
Ji Changqing frowned. “You might not know, but that guy is still living two hundred years in the past.”
Misogyny and self-interest were practically etched into his bones. Back in the day, Pencil and the others had told her about him. He was a gay man in a sham marriage who dragged his feet on a divorce, spreading rumors that his wife was cheating to justify her desire to leave. His character was despicable.
But because of the environment back then, the wife couldn’t produce any evidence and was nearly driven to depression and suicide.
He only agreed to the divorce after extorting a large sum of money from her.
But all of this was settled before the evolution, so nothing could be done about it afterward. Plus, he was a diligent schemer and quite capable, so he had managed to climb the ranks.
But being a deputy was one thing. If someone like him became the supreme commander, he could corrupt the entire atmosphere of the Blue Star military.
In her view, that ruthless woman who had fought back all those years ago was a much better fit. She now despised evil and loathed those who occupied positions without doing their jobs. To her, holding a position without fulfilling its duties was tantamount to harming those whose interests were consequently damaged.
Just like back when she was trafficked and imprisoned—if those officials had been doing their jobs, could they really have been unaware of what was happening in that village? Was it so hard to investigate and understand their own jurisdiction? They ignored all the illogical signs, which was no different from aiding the evildoers.
Perhaps it was because they were well aware of this woman’s temperament that some people on Blue Star wanted to push someone else into the position.
But Ji Changqing had pulled the rug out from under them, completely thwarting their schemes.
At least that woman was capable of saying: “After the evolution, although a small portion of people were cast into what they saw as hell, at least the vast majority were liberated from their shackles and gained the right to choose the lives they wanted.”
As for that small portion of people who felt like they’d been cast into hell just because they were stripped of their former privileges, no one could muster an ounce of sympathy. In fact, they’d probably just send them a string of “ha ha ha’s.”
Seeing the serious expression on her face as she gossiped, Yu Zhiyao couldn’t help but kiss her and praise her sincerely, “You were so cool just now!”
Cool or not, she was already taken! They’d been married for over two hundred years, and their baby was in her wife’s belly. The most important thing now was to serve these two well!
Ji Changqing devoted herself with utmost care to looking after Yu Zhiyao during her pregnancy, right up until the baby was born nine months later.
This was, strictly speaking, the first new addition to Lingyun Peak, and everyone was nervous, gathered together outside the delivery room.
Ji Changqing had insisted on being present for the birth, but it turned out she was far more nervous than Yu Zhiyao. Every time Yu Zhiyao cried out in pain, she would overreact and cry out with her, much louder and more panicked than Yu Zhiyao herself!
This only made everyone else more nervous.
The medical staff in the delivery room found her annoying and forcefully pushed her out, telling her not to cause trouble. Big Sister also found her annoying and casually froze her in place and silenced her.
Although Yu Zhiyao couldn’t use her spiritual energy, her high cultivation level and excellent physical condition meant she gave birth smoothly in just three hours. The little one had absorbed a great deal of the spiritual energy her mother had accumulated, making her fair and tender, with delicate features and a thick, dark head of hair. She was adorable and beautiful, not red and blotchy with a few sparse yellow hairs like most newborns.
The medical staff brought the swaddled baby out and had just said, “Mother and daughter are safe.”
They were about to hand the baby to Ji Changqing, but the moment the spell was lifted, she shot into the delivery room like a gust of wind. She went straight to the bed where Yu Zhiyao lay, exhausted and covered in a cold sweat. She tenderly brushed the sweat-dampened hair from her forehead, kissed her cheek, and asked with unconcealed worry, “How are you? Does it hurt a lot? You’ve worked so hard!”
In a daze, Yu Zhiyao felt a sense of déjà vu.
Back when she was resolving her physique issue, Ji Changqing had rushed in and asked her the very same thing. At the time, she had thought, Why is she asking me like I just gave birth?
Now that she really had just given birth, she was asking the exact same way.
She blinked and squeezed Ji Changqing’s hand. In truth, childbirth hadn’t been as painful as resolving her physique issue back then. She managed a slightly weak smile. “I’m okay. It was much easier than that time. How’s the baby?”
Huh? Ji Changqing was stunned by the question. Uh, she didn’t know. She hadn’t even seen her.
But she answered cleverly, “They’re holding her. I wanted to see you first.”
Outside the delivery room, Big Sister carefully took the wailing baby, who had been thoroughly ignored by her own mother. She gently tapped the baby’s forehead, leaving a spark of spiritual light to preserve a breath of her innate qi.
Ji Changqing was soon asked to leave again.
Once Yu Zhiyao and the baby were cleaned up and settled in their room, the baby was placed beside Yu Zhiyao, and she was reminded that she could start breastfeeding.
Looking at the little one, who was whimpering with her eyes closed, Yu Zhiyao’s heart melted. She gently stroked the baby’s smooth little cheek with her fingertip, making her tiny brow furrow. She was adorable from every angle.
Ji Changqing watched eagerly from the side, a sense of foreboding creeping in. Not only had her exclusive territory been seized by the little one, but her status was likely in jeopardy as well. President Yu had clearly said her heart only had room for you, not her, but what about now? She’d been watching the baby nurse for ages! She was staring so intently she hadn’t even spared Ji Changqing a single glance!
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