Chapter 3 - Sacrificial Repentance
Yaan stared at the three corpses with a blank expression. His mother, his aunt, and his newborn baby sister, June, were all dead. It was so sudden and so shocking that it felt surreal, Yaan was unable to comprehend what had just happened.
The sword tore apart their bodies as if it was simply cutting through air. Yaan’s eyes widened as he watched his mother loosen her grip around baby June, before the silent infant fell from her arms and rolled onto the stone floor.
As he took in the horrifically bloody scene, the reality of the situation finally set in.
“Ahh!” Yaan’s father cried out in pain. Shock and horror were plastered across his face as he stared at the fresh corpses of his sister, his wife and his newborn child. He fell to his knees beside the two and wept openly, something that Yaan had never seen his father do before now.
Suddenly, all of Yaan’s fear towards this ‘Lord Immortal’ vanished without a trace. Replaced, was a burning flame of rage. He turned towards the robed man with bloodshot eyes, then began screaming as he purposefully strode towards him.
“You, you, you killed my mother! My baby sister! My aunt! And for what?! Just because my baby sister cried?! What did they do to deserve this, you, you monster, you-!”
“Yaan, stop it!” Just as Yaan drew in closer and the robed man turned towards him with a frown, his father suddenly yelled out with an urgent tone.
In a mixture of anger and confusion, Yaan turned towards his father, who was now running towards them. The man whom Yaan had always looked up to ran straight past him, then halted a few feet before the Lord Immortal. He suddenly dropped to his knees, placed his hands down on the floor, and lowered his head.
“Lord Immortal, I apologise for my son’s actions!”
Bang!
Yaan’s father actually slammed his forehead down onto the cobblestone flooring, causing his head to bleed.
“Father, he killed mother and sister, what are you-!” Yaan began to shout, but he was interrupted once again.
“Lord Immortal, he doesn’t know what he’s saying!”
Bang!
The desperate man’s forehead hit the ground yet again.
“Please forgive him!”
Bang!
“I apologise on my son’s behalf, he is just an ignorant child!”
Bang!
Yaan could no longer say anything. Seeing his father in such a pitiful state, he was dumbfounded and at a loss for words.
He didn’t understand, why was he doing this? Wasn’t he enraged that his sister, wife and daughter had just been killed?!
Suddenly, Yaan felt a sense of distance and disgust, a sense of loathing, towards this pitiful father of his.
“So then, how will you make up for this insult towards me?” Ignoring Yaan’s rapidly changing emotional state, the robed man spoke slowly, a look of amusement spreading across his aged face.
This disdainful and unbothered expression made Yaan feel sick to his stomach.
For a second, there was silence. Yaan’s father was considering this question carefully.
Yaan’s father was distressed, but he tried his best to remain calm…his sister, wife and newborn daughter were all gone. He partially blamed himself for this, after all, he had allowed his wife to take the baby from his hands just before the Lord Immortal arrived. She had seemed so desperate to take hold of her child, and he was unable to turn her down…but perhaps, if he had just kept hold of the baby, then none of this would have happened…
No matter what, he could not allow his remaining child to follow after them!
“I am willing to repent with my life, Lord Immortal!” Yaan’s father finally looked up. His face was a bloody mess, covered in blood and gravel.
Yaan was truly shocked by what he had just heard, and even more shocked by the look in his father’s eyes. That gaze showed no fear, no regret, only resolve.
This…was his father.
Suddenly, Yaan felt ashamed. He felt ashamed that for a moment, he had despised his own father. He wanted to make things right, but just as he was about to apologise, hoping to salvage this situation, the robed man responded.
“Very well.”
The flying sword appeared once again. With a whistling sound, it shot out at an untraceable speed, then stabbed down into his father’s lowered back.
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Chi!
The sword pierced straight through his spine and penetrated into the ground, pinning him to the floor and forcing his body down further, into an even lower and more subservient position.
“Yaan…” His father painfully turned towards him and smiled with an expression that made Yaan’s entire body tremble. As tears streamed down Yaan’s face uncontrollably, his father reached out with his hand. He wore a sorrowful expression as he tried to look up, hoping to see his child’s face one last time…
Unfortunately, the blood from his forehead had filled his eyes, he could see nothing but a sea of red.
Sleeee…
His body lost all tension and slid down the blade of the sword, until he was lying down on the ground…dead. The sound of bone and flesh grinding against the metal edge echoed through Yaan’s ears with an agonising vibration, feeling as if it was dragging on for an eternity.
But eventually, it did end. Like his aunt, his mother, and his baby sister, his father was now dead.
Yaan stared with wide eyes at this bloody scene of horror…it was an image that he would never forget throughout his life.
Yaan was at a loss.
“Father…mother…aunt…little sister…” Yaan’s eyes glazed over and tears streamed down his pale cheeks. He slowly turned his head towards the robed man, the perpetrator who had massacred his entire family for seemingly no reason other than his slight irritation.
Seeing Yaan’s hateful gaze, the man raised an eyebrow.
“Do you intend to invalidate your father’s sacrifice?” He asked coldly.
Yaan froze.
He felt conflicted. The hate that he felt towards this man was like nothing he had ever felt before! He truly wanted to kill this person! He wanted to rip this man’s body apart, piece by piece! But…
Yaan finally realised that everything his father did just now, was to protect him. All because he stepped out, his father was forced to offer up his own life as compensation.
He just couldn’t do it…he was unable to bring himself to waste his father’s sacrifice.
“Your father died because of you, boy. Now though, there is nobody else to step out for you. I only accepted his offer on account of your moderate talent, but I will not be so generous if you are to incite my ire again.”
“Generous…?” Yaan muttered hatefully, the bitterness in his words obvious to everyone within earshot.
Yaan suppressed the burning anger in his heart, feeling beyond pained as he found himself in this despairing situation, this situation where he could only stare helplessly at the despicable murderer before him.
After a few seconds passed by and he managed to somewhat calm down, a thought occurred in Yaan’s mind.
Even if he wanted to attack this person, what could he do? This was an immortal, whilst he was just a weak mortal child. Even if he wanted to kill this man, even if he wanted to rip apart his limbs and pulverise his flesh, he would be completely unable to do so.
He was too weak.
“Just tell me…why…why do you treat their lives like dirt?” Yaan finally asked through gritted teeth. He ground his teeth so violently that his gums bled. He clenched his fists with so much force that red marks appeared on his palms and his nails were bent inwards. Inflicting this pain upon himself was all he could do to keep his calm.
The robed man glanced at Yaan indifferently.
“Because they are dirt. The lives of mortals are akin to those of livestock, they exist only to produce resources for the cultivators.”
With that answer, the Lord Immortal turned away from Yaan and ignored him, returning his attention to the remaining three people in the selection. Yaan was left feeling stunned by the cold words that the robed man spoke with such conviction. He was completely unable to muster up a response. He felt it incomprehensible that a human being could be so heartless.
But in truth, the robed man was feeling a bit gloomy right now.
He remembered that when he last visited this village, there was a small matter which ended up souring his mood. As such, he intended from the beginning to kill some of these mortals, to display his strength and to remind them of the authority that the Heavenly Path Sect held over their lives. He killed both adults and children, making an example of his power and ruthlessness.
But who would have thought that he would end up choosing the family of one of the newly selected disciples! Out of the many villagers, he really was unlucky to randomly select those people.
That said, it was not a big deal, otherwise he would have been more careful. Anyway, if he truly cared about fixing this matter, then he would have spared Yaan’s father…but he did not. Maintaining the overbearing impression that he had created was more important to him than making amends.
‘No matter, this child is only a moderate talent, he is almost certainly destined to remain a slave in the outer sect. Even if he becomes one of the few to reach the inner sect, he will forever remain amongst the bottom tier.’ The robed man quickly dismissed this incident without thinking much else of it. After all, a moderate talent was nothing amazing.
One final person was discovered to have low talent. The small five year old girl looked fearful as she was herded away from her parents.
“Into the rear carriage.” The robed man stated this plainly as he walked across to the front carriage. The children only now noticed that there was actually a second horse drawn carriage nearby, towed by two horses and a driver, just like the first.
“Wh- where are we going?” One boy hesitantly stepped out. He was the oldest of the group at nine years old, so he decided to take it upon himself to lead and protect the others.
“Oh, were you not informed?” The man stopped, then frowned at the chief with an accusing glare. The chief broke out in cold sweat and hastily apologised.
In the past, the children in Lightstone Village were informed about this matter in advance, preparing them for what was to come. However, this caused the children to feel too fearful when the day of the selection arrived. This fear had resulted in a child acting out in front of the Lord Immortal…that child was killed by the robed man because of their actions. Ever since then, the adults in Lightstone Village agreed to keep this matter a secret from the children until the very last moment.
“Hmph, you mortals are far too soft.” The Lord Immortal harrumphed before glancing back at the children briefly.
“You are all to join the Heavenly Path Sect.”
The five children all looked at one another with mixed expressions. They felt some fear and unwillingness, but also a hint of expectation and excitement at the coming adventure.
Did this mean that they could become Immortals?!
Only Yaan felt nothing pleasant towards this prospect. To join the sect that was responsible for his family’s slaughter left a bad taste in his mouth to say the least. He wanted nothing more than to rip apart this monster of a man, yet right now, he could only follow obediently into the back of the carriage.
To be honest, were it not for his worry of implicating even more people in his rage, then he might have lost all rationale and charged at the robed murderer anyway.
Yaan’s mind felt numb as he followed behind the other children into the rear end of the wooden carriage. He received looks of pity, both from the carriage drivers and from the other village kids.
The children looked back towards their parents as they departed, but they could only briefly make out their figures waving from a distance. They were not even given the chance to say goodbye, yet nobody dared to speak out for fear of angering the Lord Immortal once again.
After entering the carriage and settled down onto the wooden seating, Elia tried to talk with Yaan to provide words of comfort. However, Yaan didn’t even hear her. She turned slightly and looked at his face, but what she saw sent chills throughout her body.
His eyes were still bloodshot. He was gritting his teeth so hard that his gums leaked a continual stream of blood, whilst tears streamed down his face without end.
Yaan felt so much pain due to his family’s demise that he wasn’t sure how to act, or what to do with himself, other than to stew in mindless rage. It hardly felt real, yet he knew that it was. He was being taken away to an unknown land, with nobody waiting for him to return. The mixture of emotions in his heart caused him to feel like he was losing his mind.
“Yaan!” He suddenly jolted awake from his stupor when the oldest child yelled directly into his ear.
Yaan blinked a couple of times and looked around. Feeling the unstable shaking of the seating below him, he realised that they had already left the village without him noticing. He slowly turned towards Falca, the boy who shouted his name.
“Yaan, I know that you must feel sad, but we need to pay attention and stick together now!” The boy spoke with a serious expression.
“Stick…together?” Yaan spoke dazedly, staring at Falca with a cloudy gaze for a moment.
“Right. You all might not know this, but I remember the last selection! My parents explained things to me, and other things I overheard secretly. Every few years, the Lord Immortal visits the village and holds a selection for the children between five and ten years old. The children with talent for immortal cultivation are taken to the Heavenly Path Sect…but they never return.”
The kids all listened silently and started to feel afraid. They would never return home? Why, what would happen to them at the sect? The young five year old girl, Una, asked this, but Falca could only shake his head and sigh.
“Nobody knows. That’s why we need to stick together! We only have each other now after all.” He put emphasis on that last bit and looked at Yaan meaningfully.
Yaan understood the meaning behind his words. His expression eased ever so slightly and he straightened his back, looking around at the other kids.
Right, his family members were gone, but he still had these people around him!
The dead were no more, but there were still living people that he cared for.
A mysterious golden glint flashed in Yaan’s eyes, and for a brief moment, he felt like he had understood something, but this feeling dissipated along with the strange light as soon as he tried to focus on it. It was so brief that nobody noticed, and even Yaan himself thought that he must have been mistaken.
Yaan looked at the children in the carriage and felt a newfound sense of resolve. This time, he would definitely protect them.