Invincible Dad-Chapter 685 Guess Who I Am_1

"Who is Yun Jin?"

Those four simple words stunned Xu Yiyi.

Qian Xiao scratched his head. "Sister Yiyi, which kindergarten is she from? How come I don’t know her?"

"Yun Jin! We participated in the Martial Dao competition together, have you forgotten?" Xu Yiyi grew agitated. "She was the one who proposed the Empress Alliance, and you two were fooling around together."

Qian Xiao remained clueless. He had no idea who Yun Jin was. The Empress Alliance existed, but as far as he recalled, only the two of them had participated in the Martial Dao competition...

Xu Yiyi looked at Xu Lai and Ruan Tang, saying nervously, "Daddy, Mommy, Yun Jin is a member of Uncle Taotie’s clan. She even stayed at our house before."

The couple exchanged a glance, then both furrowed their brows.

"Daddy, Yun Jin really loves playing games! And, and she’s a big eater, a little bit taller than me, and has a small snaggletooth..."

Xu Yiyi was so anxious that tears started to well up in her eyes. As she continued to list Yun Jin’s characteristics, she didn’t know why she was crying, but an indescribable emptiness filled her heart. It felt like waking up on graduation day to find the dormitory deserted, with only you left behind.

Xu Lai’s brow was deeply furrowed; he had no memory of a little girl named Yun Jin.

Ruan Tang, meanwhile, clutched her head, a headache seemingly coming on.

"Honey, are you alright?"

"I’m..." Ruan Tang shook her head. She tried desperately to search her memories based on Yiyi’s description but couldn’t match them to any little girl she knew. After a full minute of thought, a vague shadow finally flickered through her mind.

So much so that she couldn’t tell if it was her own fantasy or a true memory.

But seeing her daughter’s tear-filled eyes, Ruan Tang’s resolve hardened. She looked at Xu Lai and nodded firmly. "Xu Lai, I think there was a little girl named Yun Jin, but... I can’t clearly recall her face."

Xu Lai didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he said solemnly, "Honey, you drive Yiyi home first. I need to go out for a bit."

"Okay."

Ruan Tang took Yiyi home. A worried Qian Xiao followed them into the car, continuously comforting his boss.

...

「On the beach.」

Taotie and Liu Wan sat hand in hand, watching the sunset. Their gazes met, brimming with affection.

Five seconds, ten seconds, twenty seconds passed...

It was Taotie who broke eye contact first, though he didn’t know why.

Just then, he sensed a presence and looked ahead. Xu Lai was standing there silently, startling both him and Liu Wan.

"The Supreme Emperor."

"Madam Liu..."

"May I borrow your boyfriend for a few minutes?" Xu Lai asked with a smile.

"Of course," Liu Wan replied, getting up. "Taotie, I’ll wait for you at the beachside barbecue joint."

"Supreme Emperor, what has happened?" Having followed Xu Lai for tens of thousands of years, Taotie could tell at a glance that something was off. He asked gravely, his fist cupped in his palm.

"Is there a girl named Yun Jin in your clan?"

"No." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"..."

Xu Lai fell silent.

He then left Earth and traveled to the Taotie Clan’s domain but found no trace of Yun Jin’s existence.

However, the Empress Alliance was real. And it was only now that Xu Lai learned the truth of it.

Most of the Saint Heirs and Goddesses from the great Tao Lineages, Holy Lands, and prominent clans of the Immortal Domain had been absorbed into the Empress Alliance. Those who hadn’t joined were all thoroughly beaten.

Furthermore, the major Holy Lands, Tao Lineages, and ancient families with legacies spanning dozens of epochs were actually pleased with this outcome. Pressure created motivation. Their own prodigies were usually too arrogant, and suffering a few setbacks would help them progress faster and go further.

And indeed, it worked. Many of the defeated Saint Heirs and Goddesses considered it a great humiliation and chose to enter seclusion or venture into perilous lands to strengthen themselves, their cultivation boundaries advancing by leaps and bounds.

But the founder of the Empress Alliance wasn’t Yun Jin; it was Xu Yiyi. The one who had carved out an empire for her in the Immortal Domain was Chong Xinxue, the prodigy of the Chongming Bird Clan. She had met Xu Yiyi when she accompanied her ancestor, Chong Yang, to Earth.

When Xu Lai brought Chong Xinxue before his daughter, Yiyi shook her head. "I don’t know her. She’s not Yun Jin..."

Chong Xinxue was of the Demon Race, and by Human Race standards, she was only in her teens. Hearing Xu Yiyi’s words, tears the size of soybeans swirled in her eyes. "Yiyi, how can you say that?"

With a wave of his hand, Xu Lai sent Chong Xinxue away from Earth and fell into deep thought.

Ordinary people have a saying: a goose leaves a trail where it flies, and a person leaves a voice where they’ve been.

This was true. Even as an Emperor Realm expert, Xu Lai couldn’t completely erase a person from existence, because every life leaves traces. Although these traces might fade with the passage of time, they could still be followed. Things like memories, legacies, or records in written or other forms. Even a trampled ant on the road, a grain of sand picked up on a beach, or the brief brushing of shoulders with a stranger—all continue to exist in different ways.

Completely wiping away every trace of a person’s existence was harder than ascending to the heavens.

But it seemed as if an unseen hand was working behind the scenes, silently erasing... no, *replacing* everyone’s memories.

Could it be an Emperor Realm powerhouse? Xu Lai narrowed his eyes. Was it one of the experts from the past ninety-nine epochs who had feigned their death? Or was it those undying old masters from the Nine Kings’ Palace that Elder Huang Quan mentioned—the ones who hunt Emperor Realm experts and their children just to stay alive?

But what was their motive?

"Daddy, will Yun Jin never come back?" Yiyi clutched Xu Lai’s sleeve, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Daddy promises you, he will find her and bring her back."

"Really?" Yiyi lifted her little face, sniffling.

"Mhm," Xu Lai said, crouching down with a smile. "Let’s pinky swear."

After their pinky swear, Xu Yiyi, who had been crying for hours, finally relaxed and drifted into a deep sleep in Ruan Tang’s arms.

"Uncle Xu, I’m going home," Qian Xiao said with his head lowered, a dejected look on his face.

He felt so useless. He couldn’t help his boss when she was at her saddest, and he couldn’t even remember the girl named Yun Jin.

Xu Lai walked Qian Xiao to the foot of the mountain. When Qian Xiao sensed that Uncle Xu had stopped, he walked another ten meters or so before turning around in the darkness.

"Uncle Xu, do you believe Yun Jin is real?"

"I do," Xu Lai nodded. Ruan Tang believed Yiyi, and he naturally believed her too.

Qian Xiao raised a fist. "I think some villain hid her away! They better hope I don’t find them for making Sister Yiyi cry!"

Xu Lai gave Qian Xiao a long, deep look. His dislike for this little brat coveting his daughter dropped from a height of one hundred thousand feet to ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine.

Qian Xiao left Mount Haitang and boarded the subway.

Perhaps because it was nearing midnight, the subway car he was in was completely empty.

WHOOSH... As the train sped through the underground tunnel, the normally bright lights in the car flickered and went dark for a moment.

When they brightened again, a little girl of about six or seven stood before Qian Xiao.

She wore a pink dress, red sandals, and had red lipstick on, but her skin was frightfully pale. The flamboyant colors of her clothes only served to accentuate the ghastly pallor of her face.

"Who are you?!"

The sudden appearance of someone right in front of him sent a cold shiver down Qian Xiao’s spine.

The little girl looked at him, a smile slowly spreading across her lips. "Guess who I am."