The hurt in Qiu Ling’s features was obvious. Even after such a long time, the mere thought of what had been done to the previous king was able to elicit such a reaction.

Min Jun lowered his gaze, thinking of everything he had witnessed today. The way those two looked at each other and spoke and how the previous king had defended their current king when he accused him of potentially being a threat to their race … these two were as close as family. Maybe even closer than it was the case for many who were related by blood. Most likely, more so than his mother with mixed blood, their king considered this person his parent. Of course, he would be furious when this person was killed.

“So you wanted to get revenge.” He could get behind this. He had felt the same after his parents were killed. In a time like that, when you couldn’t do anything but either change your form or pick up a weapon to fight, what else was there but revenge?

Qiu Ling nodded. “That and … I suppose I wanted to preserve what he fought for.” He looked at Min Jun and then motioned outside. “You know how the dragon realm is doing now and you know how it compares to the time back then. Being quite a bit older, I even remember the time before the war with the demons became that fierce, the time when Jinde was still reigning.

“I won’t pretend that I know all the ins and outs. After all, I was merely a child back then. But I do know that the people around me were happy and safe and that Jinde was actively working to make things better. Sometimes, he would tell me about what he was up to or how things were in other parts of the realm. He never felt that it was wrong for me to know about these things.”

Thinking back now, Jinde might have thought at that time already that he would one day have him as his successor. Even though the title of the dragon realm’s sovereign wasn’t hereditary, people close to the previous sovereign in one way or another tended to have a higher likelihood of succeeding them. It seemed to be a matter of course: They could observe how to govern the country from up close and their options to learn were often the best in the realm as people with great abilities gathered in the capital city and especially in the palace.

While he might not have spent all of his life there, the first years of his life laid the groundwork for the rest and he had indeed seen and heard much that influenced his understanding of the realm. Coupled with the remainder of the education he received from his father, he indeed wasn’t that far off from how his father and Jinde had grown up under the tutelage of Longjun Gao Huan.

In a sense, that had made him a viable candidate, and Jinde who had been raised in the palace himself had naturally understood this. Considering his thoughts on acceding to the throne instead of Chun Yin, Jinde might have felt that this would right a wrong and maybe might have thought it would tie the two of them closer together again. If not for what Biao Han had done later, that actually might have worked as well.

Either way, because of this, Jinde had clearly guided him in a way suitable even to a young child. The stories he told him were full of lessons about moral questions, the past of the dragon realm, the qualities of past sovereigns and their loyal advisers, and even about the relationship between the races.

Because Jinde knew well how to deal with children and they formed a close bond, much of that had stuck with him. It couldn’t replace the education he hadn’t gotten in the later years but it laid a solid foundation for him that gave him something to work with when he was pretty much pushed onto the throne from one day to the other. It also taught him much about the way Jinde thought and behaved as king and how the realm had been shaped under his rule. Those stories — because they had been tied to this person he looked up to — had been even more important to him.

“Because I knew I felt the need to do something when I heard how his dream of the realm was being destroyed. I felt that … I owed him this. Both for how my father had clearly failed him and for what my mother’s people had done to him. That was why I went to the battlefield and fought. Just this. Being king … that was never something I wanted. On the contrary, I rejected the idea at first.”

Min Jun nodded faintly, somewhat understanding. “Why did you change your mind then?”

“Because for the first time in so long, I felt that … I was needed somewhere. Maybe even wanted. I know … and I already knew back then, that this was based on people believing I was a full-blooded dragon but I had lived in the wilderness for literal millennia. I longed to be part of our people again and yes, I was willing to hide my true identity for the sake of that. I … was simply lonely.”

And yet, despite that, he hadn’t left that loneliness behind. In a way, it only became worse after he lived in the capital city again and ruled over all those people. Before, he had been without anyone around. His loneliness, while self-inflicted in a way, was also inevitable since there was no one to accompany him. But living where there were thousands of people? Yes, the fear of interacting with them struck him much more harshly and the longer he stayed, the more he realized that he might never find happiness.

The good days were gone. They had been left behind together with the home of his childhood and the blood of his mother that dyed the ground that day. He couldn’t get it back. At the very least, that was how he thought.