Hello, guys, this is my very first fiction, please be gentle towads lil ol me. 

Chapter 1

In the known universe, there is an immeasurable amount of planets, stars, galaxies and nebulae. Speaking of the unimaginable vastness of space, one could say that to travel from one corner of the other would require the life travel of every single person to ever have been born multiplied by a terrifyingly inconceivable number. Essentially, you could say that to be a true traveller within the sea of space would be basically impossible - aside from travel within a given solar system - even then; it would be only to the moon or maybe to the nearest planet. 

In an insignificant galaxy floating with the many trillions just like it, in a tiny little solar system with only a mid-sized star, on a minute planet of green and blue – laid a youngster of about 6-7 years of age. 

It was deep in the night, but instead of it being pitch-black, a silvery moon was hanging in the inky black midnight sky, beaming down in all its shimmering glory upon the boy and the field he was resting his back on. The long grass - dark green in the night – swayed in the night-time breeze, and as it was illuminated by the moonlight, each individual blade of grass seemed like the willowy fingers of a nymph as they tickled the immature face of the youth.

The young boy had wavy, jet-black hair, which contrasted with his almost shockingly white face. He had thick, noir, sword-like brows that cut across from his temples; giving him a severe look that was many years above his age, however his somewhat plump cheeks betrayed his age. The boy had his hands interlocked behind his head like a make-shift pillow as he gazed at the stars in the sky. 

His deep, dark, onyx eyes glittered with a depth that was bursting with wisdom as they flickered through the countless stars in the sky. 

His lips were moving as quick as his eyes were jumping from star to star, as he whispered the name of each constellation and each twinkle in the sky that night. If an astronomer had been strolling past by chance at that moment, their eyes would be bulging out of their heads at the sheer amount of constellations and stars the boy could name. 

It was a clear night that night – the sky was devoid of a wisp of cloud, and like most nights like this, the boy had quietly snuck out of the church he had been living in for all of his life. After five minutes of his mouth rapidly moving, it abruptly stopped and the profound gaze in the boy’s eyes changed to one filled with a deep yearning and a hint of despair. 

A small sigh crept out of the boy’s small, red mouth as he pushed himself off of the ground and stared at the heavens above him.

“Sister Margaret said that reading every single book that even mentioned stars and space in the church would at least quench my thirst for what lies beyond the seventh level of heaven, but it hasn’t killed my curiosity but instead has fanned the flames of my desire!” The youth stretched his right hand up and clenched his fist so tight as if he wanted to grab a star and wrench it out of the sky. 

His hand trembled and he released his fist and let his arm fall back down dejectedly. He let out another melancholy sigh and his black eyes cringed in pain; his hands were scratching his chest as if they were trying to rip it open, so his soul could feverishly explode like a rocket towards the stratosphere, abandoning his body which was bound by gravity so it could traverse the endless ocean of space with profound ecstasy.   

“I guess it’ll never be possible for me to experience true freedom, and know the real truth of this universe that I live in.” The boy dragged his feet up the hill he was resting on and slowly started walking towards the church. 

The boy heard a noise, as if someone was calling towards something, but he stubbornly kept his head down as he counted each individual blade of grass under his feet. 

“78... 79,” the boy muttered under his breath as he ignored the faint yells that were gradually growing louder in his ear.

“Ner.....” The voice that was being carried in the wind towards him was clearer but the full word that was being screamed faded in the wind but despite that, it was getting louder and more irritating. In response, the boy gritted his teeth and raised his voice,

“86... 87... 88... 89...” The boy’s counting kept getting louder until it reached a crescendo and he couldn’t shout any louder at all. However, the person who was obviously a boy at this point yells got more and more piercing until the word that had been screamed all this time was able to be distinguished.

“Nergal! Nergal!” A figure walked towards the boy in the distance, and upon seeing the boy, rushed towards him. He continued yelling into the boy’s ear, until the boy couldn’t take it anymore, and finally raised his head from the pleasures of counting individual blades of grass. 

“WHAT, JIN?” He roared at the boy of the same age. The boy, who was named Jin, was as tall as Nergal, but he looked completely opposite to Nergal. Jin had shoulder-length, luscious blonde hair and bright azure eyes, and where Nergal had a cold attraction; Jin had a boyish, cheeky charm that was not one whit inferior to Nergal. 

Jin had pain flash for an instant across his face as he covered his ears, before he recovered and stared solemnly at the black-haired boy named Nergal with his bright blue eyes. His voice trembled as he said in dismay,

“Head Sister woke up!”

Upon hearing Jin’s words, Nergal’s delicate face immediately turned pale. He lifted his hands, grasped Jin’s shoulders and squeezed. His eyes squinted in disbelief and shock.

“But she’s normally sleeping like a dead log at this time of night, are you sure she’s really awake? Remember what that old wretch said she would do to me last time she caught me sneaking out to the fields at this time of night? She can’t be awake. Yes, your mind must be playing tricks on you! Haha there’s no way she would be awake at this time of night. Nice joke Jin, you almost had me there.” Nergal’s face became more and more frightening as incoherent mutters flowed out of his mouth. His eyes were filled with an intense fear as he clutched onto Jin’s shoulders – hands squeezing tighter and tighter as he tried to deny the news that Jin had brought him.

Jin’s adorable face grimaced in pain as he backed away from Nergal who was more and more starting to resemble an insane man. 

“It’s true! I saw her with my own eyes! She woke up because Thomas puked all over the dorm again, so the other sisters woke her up so she could give him the rod.” Jin winced as he imagined the state of Thomas’ bottom after the head sister had been done with him.

Nergal at this point was visibly shaking with fear and he was practically chomping his thumbnail to the bone. He stroked his own bottom in remembrance of the utter devastation that had been imparted onto him by that old sack of bones. For such a small woman, the terrifying power her wrist displayed as it swung the rod was truly demonic. 

His hand was on his derriere, as if soothing it to reassure that it would never have to endure such backbreaking pain ever again. Nergal suddenly stopped tearing his poor thumbnail to shreds as his eyes swung to Jin and a cold light entered his eyes.

“Thanks, Jin, it’ll be fine.” Nergal slapped Jin’s small back in gratitude and started strolling towards the orphanage with a calm gait. Jin ran to catch up to Nergal and asked, 

“What’re you going to do, how are you going to sneak back into the orphanage without Head Sister finding out? She really has eyes in the back of her head. You could only do it when she was sleeping, but now she’s awake so it’s impossible.”

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Jin was confused as to why Nergal was so calm – given his fear towards the Head Sister and her black rod, which she had affectionately named ‘Anna-Mae’, he should have been freaking out at that moment. Jin saw a drop fall from Nergal’s face and onto the grass they were walking on. He frowned, and squinted at Nergal. He saw that there were two fat streams of liquid pouring from Nergal’s eyes as he had a calm look on his face. It was truly strange. He was so stoic, yet there were tears soundlessly dropping from the corner of his eyes. 

It seemed as if his fear towards the Head Sister had reached such a point of unimaginable terror that his mature 6 year old mind couldn’t handle it and he crossed over to a new realm of fear – one where one fully accepts one’s fate and all of their bodily functions shut down in response. 

Jin was truly gobsmacked at this point. He had never experienced the wrath of the Head Sister and her tool of divine punishment before, but in imagining how unbearable the egregiousness of that punishment must have been to reduce Nergal, the most intelligent, mature 6 year old he had ever met to that state, he shuddered in horror and felt a hint of admiration towards the Head Sister’s tyranny. 

He forcefully grabbed his best friend’s ice-cold wrist and pulled Nergal out of his stupor. Nergal turned his head to look at Jin with his eyes which were now covered in a cloudy film of incontinence. Jin shook his head sadly. He sighed and then said,

“Did you really think I would have come out to warn you if I didn’t have some way of getting back to our room undetected? Do you really think I was so noble as to take one of Head Sister’s beatings for you?” Jin flashed a cheeky grin that was full of holes at Nergal and dragged him towards a path that led to the rear gardens of the church that served as both a nunnery and a home for abandoned young boys. 

At hearing this, Nergal shook himself out of his advanced state of fear and his deep black eyes glimmered with a trace of hope. 

“Well, what are we waiting for?” With a voice filled with joy he shouted, then beamed a rare smile at Jin and ran onto the path leading to the vast rear gardens. 

As the two boys ran towards the church with a quickened pace, the large manor house loomed in the horizon. 

Although it was dark, the elaborate stonework and the stained glass could clearly be seen from a distance. The converted mansion house that was now the church had formerly been used as the country house of an old noble family that were the lords of the land of about a 500 km locus with the manor right in the deep centre. 

The manor was 1000km west of the capital city of the Cyan province, which is one of seven provinces that are part of the illustrious, ancient Purple Jade Empire. The empire is one of four empires on the Divine Shi Huang continent. 

The continent is a place where one could say – power rules – and it is a place where martial cultivators are counted by the thousands. It truly could be said that a person of considerable strength is merely a drop in the ocean.

The church had been remodelled a few centuries ago, so it was starting to show signs of being decrepit, but the convent couldn’t afford to regularly pay for the manor’s upkeep, so it much of the original sculpture and stonework of the church had deteriorated.  

As the duo crept through the grounds of the church like thieves in the night, they finally got to their destination; the rear gardens. Nergal breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Jin with gratitude.

The rear gardens had flowers planted by the children under the supervision of the sisters, so it was quite beautiful under the shine of the moon. Tiptoeing through the rose-bushes, they came to a stop underneath a second floor window that was open.

“Normally, there are a few nuns in silent prayer on the outskirts of the grounds, but this time, the heavens are truly on our side! They truly care for the state of my butt!” Nergal gushed as he stroked his bottom affectionately. He was so filled with glee at the prospect of not getting a beating from the head sister that his butt was actually tingling with joy.

Jin almost facepalmed as he glanced at Nergal, marvelling at the disparity between his normal, cool, icy, mature self and the him right now who was concerned for the safety of his gluteal muscles. He sighed, but he didn’t share in Nergal’s relief. For some reason, he had a really bad feeling, but he shook it off and looked at the window of the second floor of the church that he had left open. 

There was a mechanical pulley system that he had built from tied together sheets and a dusty hamster wheel left behind by the previous owner of his room. Jin had built it previously, just in case of times like these because of Nergal’s frequent disappearances. It wasn’t very safe, in fact it could be said to be a death trap, but Jin hadn’t been formally educated yet, and it was honestly quite the stroke of genius for a 6 year old to have designed. 

Nergal tentatively went to stand in a bucket that was tied to one side of the makeshift rope and Jin hoisted him up to the second floor window. Upon reaching the room they shared with two others, Nergal immediately jumped out of the bucket filled it with rocks and threw it back out of the window. 

“Be careful, Jin!” Nergal’s eyes were fixed on Jin as he worried if Jin would be able to get to their room safely.

At this point, Jin had still been holding on to the knotted bedsheets, so was yanked upwards by the weight of the falling bucket. Jin felt a sense of vertigo at being yanked up so high so fast, and turned a deep shade of green, but Nergal threw his arms out of the window and caught Jin safely. 

At this moment, they both let out huge sighs of relief, as if they had been holding them in the whole time, and collapsed into the room in a cold sweat. They looked at each other, onyx eyes into sapphire, and they both laughed while stifling their laughter, because they had pulled it off.

“Ahem!” 

A cough rang out in the silence of the room that had four beds on the floor, and the two boys looked around the room. Nergal and Jin saw four empty beds instead of the two it should have been – as Jin had told the other two occupants of the room to cover for them should a nun had ever come in during the night. 

Their eyes continued to sweep across the small room as the trepidation in their hearts grew bigger and bigger. Finally it rested upon a scene that shook their hearts and turned their blood ice-cold. There, on a wooden chair, sat an old woman with deep wrinkles spattered across her face, wearing a black robe with a sweet demeanour as if she was your grandmother that had just finished baking cookies for you and your siblings. 

However, under this sweetness was almost a poisonous aura, like she was just waiting to strike. In front of the old woman lay two small forms, with their butts raised high in the air, and deep gouges in the section of wood flooring that were near their fingers. 

It was a brutal scene, especially for Nergal as his eyes filled with a bottomless despair and he collapsed onto his knees from fear. Upon seeing this, the elderly woman chuckled and immediately flashed her falcon-like eyes at Jin, who buckled under the might of her gaze. Seeing this, the woman’s eyes twinkled in joy, as she rubbed a long, black stick that was lying on her lap. 

A loving gaze filled her eyes as she looked at the rod and crooned as if she were talking to her first-born child,

“So, Anna-Mae, which one do you want first?”