ALVF Base 01, Qinglong Naval Base, Linan, Democratic Union of Aviye
Zai
For three days, Zai sat with the news Amri had delivered.
It wasn't just the struggle to accept that Yue had been sick the whole time and she hadn't even noticed the one time she'd returned home to visit. It was the struggle to accept that, for over five years, Amri had known and kept it from her.
"I wanted to tell you... but you were deploying, and I didn't want you worrying about our child when you were having to fight every day..." Ari had explained with tears in her eyes.
Calmly, Zai had filled the interval with questions about Yue's illness. The void flame, as Amri was calling it, defied much of what was known about qi and cultivators. There were effects like it, such as qi that burned away whatever external qi it touched, but nothing known to be permanently existent within a person.