1 Prologue (2/2)
”I have never seen anyone as beautiful as those two people,” he mused to himself as he ran down the street towards his father's shop. ”Maybe they are fairies! I've heard in legends that such beautiful people exist, but I never thought they were real!”
Thinking this, the small child just laughed to himself and thought no more about the encounter. Although they were beautiful, they were both real. Thus they could definitely not be fairies, but the child was still dreaming when he reached home, and his eyes were sparkling with excitement as he saw his father.
”You seem excited,” his father commented when he saw Xue Wei coming inside the door. ”Was it really that exciting to get the cultivation technique from those three old men?”
”Don't call them old men. You're an old man!” Xue Wei laughed. ”They are at least a decade younger than you, and they are real martial artists! They served in the army and returned as heroes. Aren't they amazing?”
Xue Wei's eyes glistened with excitement as he thought about this, but his father just laughed and shook his head.
”They are actually older than me. Older than me by quite a bit! But as you said, they are martial artists, and thus their life has been extended compared to normal people like myself. I can prolong my life with the use of herbs, but my youth will never return.”
”Martial artists, on the other hand, are all able to prolong their lives. Those that are the same rank as our three old Overseers are able to live to be two hundred years old, double the lifespan of a normal person. And rumor has it that if you become strong enough, then one day you could even become immortal!”
Xue Wei had never before heard his father speak about martial artists, but he was filled with excitement. He nodded his head seriously, showing that he was listening to what was being said.
”I don't understand why you wish to become a cultivator, to be honest,” Xue Wei's father said with a sigh. ”I understand the allure of becoming a hero, but heroes usually die young. Geniuses fall from the skies as often as the rain, and I would never want to see you, my dear son, die an early death. Also when you enter the army at the sixteenth year of your birth, you will not become just common infantry like the others. Because of your background as an apothecary's son, you will become a member of the Medicinal Corps.”
”But father, I want to learn martial arts!” Xue Wei said pleadingly. The two of them had often discussed the same thing, but neither truly wished to give up. It was just that Xue Wei's father had backed down enough to allow him to go and pick up the cultivation technique and study it. As for whether or not he could truly become a martial artist, no one could tell. The road a martial artist tread was simply too long.
Sighing, Xue Wei's father shook his head and waved his hand, ”I need to look after the shop. Why don't you go to your room and study this martial art you received?” he said with a tired voice, but Xue Wei, who was caught up in his excitement, did not notice his father's tiredness and just ran out of the room to the back of the shop where their living quarters were located.
Xue Wei ran to his room and sat down on his bed. His hands were shaking from excitement, and a silly grin was on his lips. He could not contain his excitement, and he instantly opened the copy of the cultivation technique and started to read.
The martial art described inside was very simple. It explained how to breathe and which route the energy should flow through one's body so that it could be refined before one stored it in their dantian.
Xue Wei read through the entire technique, not skipping even a word. He read it time and time again until he understood it by heart, and it was only then that he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He sat down in a lotus position and closed his eyes. Breathing heavily, he absorbed the surrounding energy into his body. He could feel a slight golden wisp of energy enter his body, and he instantly started to rotate it in accordance with the way the book had described.
As he rotated it through his body, he felt how pure energy was, but moments after, as the energy reached his dantian, it all dissipated through his body as if his dantian could not accommodate it.
Shock, disappointment, and disbelief filled Xue Wei's face. He had read that the amount of the energy that stayed in one's dantian depended on how talented they were, but to have all of it leave and not even a tiny bit remain truly left Xue Wei dumbfounded.
Thinking that he might have done it wrong, Xue Wei decided to try once more. But after trying time and time again, he obtained the same result.
”I better ask father!” he said to himself as he went towards the front of the shop. As he walked out of his room, his heart was trembling from shock. He felt how his dreams were on the verge of shattering, and he was tearing up but forced the tears to stay in his eyes and not overflow.
Xue Wei was only ten years old. He had expected to be a talent only seen once a generation. He expected that he was a true master and would become a real martial artist! But he could see the truth before him! So far it seemed as if he was worse than trash at cultivating. He could see that his talents were so poor that he still might be a once in a generation cultivator, just not in the way he wished!
Grumbling and feeling down, Xue Wei went towards the front of their store, but a frown took hold on his face on the way over. He was almost at the front, and as he reached it, a metallic scent filled his nostrils.
”Is father dealing with corpse grass or blood ginseng?” he wondered as he opened the door. But the moment he opened it, he froze.
In front of him was his father, but he seemed strange. Something was impaled through his chest. The more Xue Wei looked, the more horrified he became. He dropped the cultivation technique to the floor, his eyes widened in shock, and his mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
Right now, a long arm covered with azure scales and spikes had been thrust through his father's chest; the metallic scent came from the blood which was oozing out like water from a broken fountain. The azure-scaled hand had small streams of blood flowing off the scales, giving the otherwise beautiful scales a menacing appearance.
The moment Xue Wei opened the door, his father turned his head. His eyes misted over, and a trail of blood could be seen running down the corner of his mouth. Blood frothed at his mouth as he opened it.
”Run... Little Wei... Run!” he whispered with what little strength he had left before his eyes were completely devoid of all life.
”Father! Father!” Although he had been told to run, Xue Wei's legs went soft, and they collapsed beneath him. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he started bawling out loud as he slowly climbed towards his father's corpse that was still hanging on the scaled arm.
The arm was suddenly swung to the side, and the corpse of his father was flung into the wall. Blood sprayed everywhere and the sound of bones breaking made Xue Wei scream out and feel nauseous. As he reached his father's side, he saw a large hole on his chest where he had been impaled. With trembling fingers, he touched his father's still warm face that was splashed with blood and frozen in fear.
A sound came from footsteps that moved towards him, and finally, Xue Wei looked at the arm that had impaled his father and would most likely impale him soon as well.
The arm that was covered in azure scales and spikes slowly changed from the arm of a demon to the arm of a normal human. Even the sleeve of a robe appeared on this arm, a robe that seemed very familiar to the young child. His eyes followed up the rest of the robe till his eyes landed on the face of the handsome young man he had seen earlier that day.
”Why?! Why did you kill father?!” he cried out, and suddenly strength came back to his legs as he charged at the handsome man.
Not only him, but the noise had also caused others outside to notice that something was happening within the medicinal shop.
A group of mercenaries broke inside, and they were instantly met by the scent of blood, and their faces turned pale when they looked around.
The person the whole village looked to when they were wounded, the one who provided them with pills and pastes, laid dead upon the ground, and he had died a miserable death.
The only two people left was a handsome man and the apothecary's child. A child who had tears all over his face; his eyes were listless, and his body was trembling as he was being held softly in the embrace of the unknown man.
”You!” the first mercenary called out before he brandished his weapon and rushed into the store, but the unknown man did not as much as look at him. All he did was look at Xue Wei, whom he had captured in his arms, and he said something which no one could hear.
Moments after, the child collapsed. His eyes were closed, and his body limp as he lost consciousness.
A soft expression was in the man's eyes as he looked down at the collapsed child in his arms, while the woman who had previously followed behind him appeared at the door, her entire body covered in blood.
”Oh, there are a few survivors!” she exclaimed excitedly as she saw the mercenaries charge at the unknown man. Moments after, their bodies exploded from the sheer pressure the woman released. Blood sprayed everywhere, but when it was about to hit the handsome man and the child, it was blocked by an invisible force.
”Did you have to kill everyone?” the man asked with a sigh, and the icy woman nodded her head. Her laughter that was as cold as a winter night rang through the town. ”You should be happy. Now the Primordial Beasts from the Northern Taiga will be blamed, and no one will notice that a small child has vanished.”
”Have you not followed me for long enough?” the man asked, but the woman just laughed once more, ignoring the question, so all he could do was sigh.
”Although I did not get what I was looking for, I did manage to find something just as precious.” A doting expression was evident in the eyes of the handsome man as he looked at the child in his arms, but his expression quickly turned dark as he looked at the woman once more.
”I will return to the family five years from now,” he said with cold eyes and a voice filled with hostility. ”But if anyone tries to interfere with me in the next five years, I will kill them without hesitation, even if they are from my family,” he sneered, and the woman bowed deeply before the space around her twisted slightly. She took a step forward, vanishing the very moment she did so. Had any of the martial artists of Lingyun Town seen this, they would have been unable to comprehend what had just happened.
The handsome man took a glance at the town once more and sighed. Everywhere he looked, blood flowed in rivulets down the streets. The people living here had all died. Their bodies had exploded, and no one was left with a complete body.
Not only had the grown-ups died extremely tragically, but every single child suffered the same fate as well. Seeing this, the man's face turned dark with anger. But he could do nothing to save them; instead, he just shook his head before he too caused ripples to appear around him before vanishing without a trace.
Not long after, a group of mercenaries appeared on the outskirts of town. All of them were joking with one another about the bountiful harvest they had gained from their trip to the outskirts of the Northern Taiga.
Their ecstatic expressions all changed the moment they noticed a distinctive scent. A scent that these mercenaries were all too familiar with – the scent of blood!
As they entered the city, their eyes turned lifeless and fearful. They all had family within Lingyun Town, and when they saw the scenes in front of them, all of them rushed to see if their own family had survived, but the further into the town they went, the more horrified they became.
The entire town had been destroyed. Every single being was dead, and no matter how much they searched, they found no survivors.
The mercenaries were filled with sadness. Their loved ones had died, their families had been slaughtered, and they quickly rushed out of the town and hurried to the closest city with the information. A short while later, the Town of Lingyun was considered a town of the dead.
The authorities all assumed that this mass slaughter was just the work of Primordial Beasts from deep within the taiga that had decided to come out of the depths of the forest for a stroll. Meanwhile, the common folk spread rumor that the Primordial Beasts had just happened to come across the small Town of Lingyun and killed everyone in sight.
It was known as one of the most devastating attacks in the proximity of the Northern Taiga in recent times, and the rumor about Lingyun Town started to spread throughout the entire continent of Chang'an. It was simply too rare that the Primordial Beasts struck so violently.
While the rumors about Lingyun spread everywhere, far away from the Northern Taiga, in the southern area of the Kingdom of Heping, a handsome young man with a child in his arms appeared.