Javier Sinclair came to an abrupt halt in mid-air.
He looked at her pale little face.
He frowned slightly.
'I forgot, this woman is just an ordinary person who has never practiced Cultivation.'
'She doesn't even have a Spirit Root.'
'How strange!'
When he had used the Bloodline Traction Technique earlier, he had also taken the opportunity to inspect the child in her womb. The child's Spirit Root was of a high grade, though the specifics could only be determined by a test after birth.
He could find out by force, but his Spiritual Power might harm the child, so it wasn't necessary.
Generally, a child would inherit the Spirit Root of their father or mother. Sometimes, their parents' Spirit Roots would combine to form a new one with different attributes.
If one of the parents was an ordinary person without a Spirit Root, the child would most likely also be born an ordinary person. It was possible for them to inherit the other parent's Spirit Root, but their aptitude would be so limited that even reaching Foundation Establishment would be difficult, let alone anything higher.
Therefore, for the sake of their children's aptitude, male and female cultivators in The Cultivation World almost always chose partners who could also practice Cultivation, rarely pairing with ordinary people.
Setting aside the matter of the next generation's aptitude, lifespan itself was an insurmountable barrier.
An ordinary person's lifespan was a mere hundred years; even with spirit pills and elixirs, they could only extend it by a few decades. A Cultivator's lifespan, on the other hand, could easily last for centuries or even millennia.
Javier Sinclair found it odd. The child in this woman's womb had a high-grade Spirit Root, yet she was merely an ordinary person without one. It just didn't add up.
But upon examining her body, he confirmed that she hadn't been tampered with in any way. This was truly strange.
His gaze shifted to her face.
"So frail."
'It's hard enough for her to take care of herself. Can she really give birth to this child safely?'
"What a hassle."
A flash of crimson crossed his eyes. At the same time, a Spiritual Energy Shield materialized around his body, enveloping Celeste Grant.
Javier Sinclair held her and flew toward a town ten thousand li away…
When Celeste Grant woke up, she found herself lying on a bed. The surface beneath her was very soft.
The blanket covering her and the bedding on the bed seemed to be made from the fur of some Greater Demon.
She pushed herself up and leaned against the headboard.
She had finally gotten a good night's sleep and felt much more refreshed.
She had been so busy fleeing lately that she hadn't been able to rest properly.
The Cultivation World was vast, with mountain ranges stretching for hundreds of thousands of li. Countless Cultivator Dynasties and Cultivator Sects of all sizes were scattered across these lands.
Her family was just a Cultivator Family from a small, remote city under the rule of The Daxton Dynasty, so insignificant they could be overlooked. Forget about other regions; even on the map of Daxton, they were just a speck, invisible if you weren't looking for them.
She was the legitimate daughter of the Grant Family's second branch.
The Family Head was her uncle.
Before she transmigrated into the book, she was a person from the real world.
A major landlord in Donnerly, she owned five residential properties and eight commercial buildings. Her WeChat groups were filled with so many company bosses she couldn't remember their names and had to identify them by numbers instead.
When Celeste Grant crossed over into this world, this body was only twelve years old. Seven years have passed, and at nineteen, she was still in the bloom of her youth.
Back then, she had been bored and idly scrolling when she came across a top-ranking female-oriented Cultivation novel. She clicked on it and skimmed through it. Finding the heroine to be a hypocritical menace, she dropped the book and couldn't resist leaving a comment.
The author replied.
"If you've got the guts, go kill the heroine yourself! Stop yapping. You think being an author is easy? I have to make a living! You think I want to write this way? I can't write the genres I like because they don't get traffic. My editor tells me to study the top-ranking lists. The market's like this, so I have to follow the trends. If I don't, I'll starve. I quit! *flips table* Whatever!"
Even through the phone screen, she could feel the author's profound resentment. It was as if she could see them smashing their keyboard and roaring at their computer.
She decided to go out for a meal to calm her nerves.
The moment she stepped outside, she was struck by a bolt of lightning and ended up in this world.
'That author definitely has a cursed tongue!'
She had transmigrated into the book.
She had become the villainous side character who appeared throughout the entire story, only to pop up and get face-slapped by the heroine.
According to the plot, the villainess was drugged with something "unclean" by the heroine and her lover number one—the fiancé who had been engaged to the villainess since childhood. They then threw her to some roadside Evil Cultivators to be assaulted, and she ended up pregnant.
The end result was that her son's Spirit Root was dug out to supplement the heroine's son.
The villainess awakened her Spirit Root, joined an Immortal Sect to practice Cultivation, and sought revenge on the heroine, only to have her Spirit Root dug out again to be given to one of the heroine's other lovers. The villainess endured all sorts of humiliation and hardship, but in the end, she couldn't even make a splash and was stabbed to death right before the grand finale.
Mother and son died in perfect unison, both in the exact same way.
The heroine was the villainess's cousin. At the start of the story, her father died, and her mother was taken away by her mother's family, her whereabouts unknown. No one in the Grant Family wanted to take in a burden like her. It was the villainess's father who couldn't bear to see it and took her in, only to end up with an enemy.
From the heroine's perspective, her second uncle and aunt were selfish and terribly biased. They gave all the best things to their daughter, her cousin. Meanwhile, she could only have the leftovers they didn't want. They never showed her a pleasant expression, and she always lived like she was walking on eggshells.
She also claimed that the villainess's parents had embezzled the inheritance her own parents left behind. In reality, her parents hadn't left a damn thing, but the heroine was convinced they had, which is why she took all sorts of revenge on the villainess and her parents later on.
Celeste Grant, who had transmigrated into the book and knew the plot, did everything she could to avoid the villainess's tragic fate.
Before the plot even began, she constantly tried to avoid any contact with the heroine, taking detours whenever she saw her. She even refused when her father tried to arrange a marriage for her with that loser.
She had thought that by not getting engaged to one of the heroine's lovers, she could escape her destiny as the villainess and live a peaceful life far away from them.
But that was what she thought, not what the heroine and her cronies thought.
In the end, she couldn't escape the machinations of the plot and ended up pregnant. Fortunately, this time, there was a deviation from the book.
This incident made Celeste Grant understand.
Nice people get bullied.
The villainess and the heroine are natural enemies.
It's either you die, or I do!
Celeste Grant's parents were not in a good position within the family.
Celeste Grant didn't want to involve them.
So, after she became pregnant, she didn't return home. She only used a Sound Transmission Jade Slip to tell them that she had awakened her Spirit Root. She said she had found a place to practice Cultivation outside and would definitely return in the future.
Celeste Grant's original plan was to give birth, awaken her Spirit Root, and then secretly find a Sect to practice Cultivation and level up on the sly.
But plans can never keep up with changes.
Half a month ago, she had run into Jocelyn Grant in Sollaris.
The first thing she said was:
"I didn't expect you to still be alive."
"How shameful. To think you're even pregnant with an Evil Cultivator's child. If Second Uncle and the others knew, I don't know how they'd ever show their faces again."
Celeste Grant's heart was filled with hatred for her.
But Jocelyn had another man by her side, and his Cultivation was very high. Even without him, Jocelyn had been on the path of Cultivation for over a year, while she was still just an ordinary person, and pregnant at that.