Jing He watched Jinde’s downcast expression and felt anxious at once. It seemed that he shouldn’t have asked about this topic. Now, he had brought up bad memories along with it. He hesitated but then carefully spoke up. “If you don’t want to talk about it, we can speak about something else, father-in-law. I don’t mind at all.”

Jinde was pulled out of his thoughts and quickly shook his head. “No, it’s alright. It’s not about this. Just … it reminds me of Jin Ling.”

Jing He roughly knew what had happened even though he hadn’t been there any longer to see it. Still, Qiu Ling had mentioned some things in his letters so he had a vague impression of all this. “It must have been hard. You were separated for a long time because of the differences between your races and then, you lost him so suddenly, without even being able to bid him farewell.”

Jinde nodded, humming faintly. “The toughest part is that I often feel like I am the only one who remembers him. Even those who do … Who can claim that they are positive memories? Qiu Ling and Jin Ling never got along, Xin Lan hated Jin Ling’s guts, and as for anyone else in the dragon realm, he was simply the king of their enemies. They’re probably all happy he is dead.”

Jing He didn’t quite know how to react. Such dark topics, he seldom had to consider them. Still, it was obvious how much Jinde suffered. “What about your husband? Surely, he can understand.”

“In a way.” Jinde lowered his gaze and picked up the teacup again, sighing lightly. “He didn’t know him though. Not as Chun Yin back then and now in his current life … well, I guess their first impression wasn’t good either. We did always suspect that Jin Ling wanted to kill him, after all.” And frankly, he had little doubt about that being true.

No matter how he saw his own child personally, he also knew that Jin Ling was a demon and their obsessions could run deep. Since he believed himself to be in love with him, he naturally couldn’t accept a husband beside him, no matter how much this husband was loved by him and despite the fact that dragons couldn’t fall in love a second time.

Simply put, the ‘love’ that a demon spoke of, didn’t care about the well-being of the other person but only about the fulfillment of their own desires. As a result, they were bound to hurt that ‘loved person’ and often deeply at that. The curse had made this their nature and few demons could rise above it, trying to think about things from the other person’s perspective and making sure that no pain would be caused.

He had no illusions that Jin Ling had been among those rare exceptions. If he had been, he never would have expressed those feelings in the first place. If he had been … he wouldn’t have had to banish him from the dragon realm, refusing to see him even when he ‘died’ or after he finally came back.

It was this inability of Jin Ling’s that had caused the breakdown of their relationship in the end but that didn’t mean that he didn’t feel guilty as well and didn’t constantly think that maybe there would have been something else he could have done. He often thought of this and he had to admit that with the birth of Xiang Ling coming closer with each day, that worry only grew.

What if he did things wrong again? What if this child couldn’t be raised well either? His first two children had suffered so much. Who was to say that the third would have it any better? Anything could happen …

Jinde closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This was nothing to discuss with Jing He. Qiu Ling’s husband was an anxious type of person himself. He definitely shouldn’t put an additional burden on him. No, this matter was his own to deal with.

He shook his head again and put on a smile, trying not to worry Jing He. “Well, I will deal with it. It’s just that it hasn’t been too long since … everything happened. If not for the fact that there was so much else going on, I’d take more time to grieve but that isn’t possible, unfortunately, so some days, I feel it harder than usual. Don’t worry about it though. Anyway, we were talking about the first few years of children, weren’t we?”

Jing He nodded but his thoughts stayed on the part of the conversation just now. He hated that he couldn’t say anything more to help Jinde. This was something his father-in-law had opened up to him about but he was too useless to even come up with a few comforting words and only knew how to ask about his husband. That really hadn’t been his effort.

While Jing He was admonishing himself, Jinde tried to push off the thought of his late son and instead focused on everything he had witnessed over the years. “I don’t know how it is with the gods but dragon children don’t have magical abilities in the first few years. Those only start to develop after two or maybe three decades in and even then, they are slow to become more steady. Sometimes, you’ll have them cause a big splash in the literal sense one day, and then the next, they look at you as if you are growing three heads if you ask them to perform even the slightest trace of magic. It’s a wild time.”

Jing He smiled. He hadn’t interacted much with children but the way Jinde told this, it sounded as if it was something cute to watch. If they had a child … he wondered how things would go?