Shen Jian casually cracked his neck as he walked toward the stables at a quickened pace. Several steps behind him, Shao ran to catch up to his retreating form.

“Hold on! Wait!” Shao shouted, but his words did not create a stutter in the older cultivator’s step. The two cultivators traveled in this way all the way to the stables, and Shen Jian did not respond until he reached his destination.

“I’m still on a strict timetable, Yang Shao. When I told you that I had to leave today, I meant it,” Shen Jian said as he slid his sheathed sword into a loop in his horse’s barding.

“The bodies of my kinsmen aren’t even cold yet, and you want me to leave just like that? I should be here to collect and bury the bodies, and…” Shao paused as he remembered the pained faces of the butchered Chu family and the splayed viscera of his family and friends. It seemed immensely disrespectful for him to go about his life like nothing had happened so soon after the massacre. “And I need time to grieve.”

“You can grieve and walk at the same time, can’t you?”

“Hey!” Shao growled as a violent anger suffused his body once again. Though there was nothing he could do to physically harm Shen Jian, the anger in his body prepared him to fight. “This isn’t a fucking joke!”

“Right, right,” Shen Jian said thoughtfully, tapping his cheek. “Perhaps I was too flippant there. What I mean to say is that we do not enjoy the privilege of spending weeks in bed every time a tragedy occurs. At Shigong Temple, you might make friends, and these friends might die. Hell, this could be a weekly occurrence. We lose about a hundred disciples a year; that’s just the way of things. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

Though Shao wanted to respond with more aggression, the conversation he had with Lin Daiyu the last time he went fishing shot through his mind. Every adult, every person he had met with any significant life experience, treated death with a flippancy that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Lin Daiyu treated the death of her son with a sense of tired acceptance.

“I guess,” Shao grunted. When he mentioned Lin Daiyu, he remembered that there was one last thing he had to ask his grandmother before he left. “I just need to speak to my grandmother one last time before I go. Is that okay, or is waiting five minutes too long for you?”

“Wow,” Shen Jian smiled. “You really do sound like your grandmother.”

Shao made a rude hand gesture with the hand of his uninjured arm before he turned away from the stables and ran back to the Patriarch’s home. Dozens of villagers bowed to him as he ran through the streets, and Shao tried to ignore the sense of awkwardness festering in his stomach.

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His grandmother stood in front of the Patriarch’s home, ordering around two young men who were lifting something between the two of them. Shao came to a stop near Lin Daiyu and bowed quickly to the three villagers standing in front of the large structure in the village center. As he came to a stop, he realized that the two young men were carrying his iron staff between them.

“Good. You can take your unwieldy weapon back, Lin Shao,” Lin Daiyu said as Shao grasped his iron staff by the middle. Briefly testing to see if the iron staff had been damaged during his earlier fight, Shao adjusted his grip on the length of metal and spun it around in one hand. The ease with which Shao spun the iron staff made him suddenly realize with certainty that he was significantly stronger than he was yesterday. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but he probably got a power boost after his fight with the divine bull.

With a look of awe on his face, one of the young men looked at Shao and said, “I saw how you used that weapon against the attackers. You’re truly amazing, honorable Yang Lin Shao.”

“Cut that out!” Lin Daiyu said, shooing away the two young men. “His ego is getting inflated enough by everyone bowing and scraping.”

The two men awkwardly stepped away from Lin Daiyu and her grandson, unsure of whether or not they should bow. Once they were gone, Shao turned to his grandmother and asked her the one last question he needed answered before he left home.

“What is the name of the man who killed my parents?”

“You’ll just get yourself killed if you…” Lin Daiyu began, but Shao cut her off.

“It’s different now. I’m a cultivator. More importantly, I’m apparently a very talented one. After a week of training, I beat five demonic cultivators who had been training for years. I have the power to take revenge on him and every other callous murderer on this island.”

After a deep sigh, Lin Daiyu said, “His name is Shen Zaifu Ming. I know this because he shouted his name after he killed my son.”

“Shen?” Shao enunciated. He didn’t want to draw the obvious connection, yet it continued to stare him in the face.

“Yes, he is a member of the Shen Clan, the same clan that your mentor is from.”

Suddenly, the fear that Shao had noticed among the elders in the village made a lot more sense. Not only was Shen Jian a cultivator, but he was a cultivator from a clan that had already attacked the people of Bluecrest Village.

“A man from the Shen Clan was here, and you didn’t even try to…?” Shao began.

“What could we do?” Lin Daiyu interrupted Shao. “Revenge is the privilege of the powerful, though that might be hard for you to see from your position.”

“Yes, and that’s why I need to get revenge for us. For you, me, and everyone in Bluecrest Village.”

“So it really is goodbye, then?”

“I’m sorry that I can’t stay to help with the burial, but Shen Jian insists. I’ll return when I can. When I come back, I’ll probably be even stronger than Shen Jian.”

Lin Daiyu sighed deeply. Then, a moment later, a genuine smile appeared on her face. “If you must leave, then you have my blessing. Go out and make something of yourself, Yang Lin Shao.”

End of Act 1