CHAPTER 3: DANNIE VALYON

There was no world in which Dan lay aside his father’s task and continued cultivating. Not even temporarily.

The Spirit Gathering mix was a rated elixir. It might only be F-grade, but Dan wasn’t even an F-graded cultivator. Only an immortal with a recognizable level of alchemical ability could create one. There was a certain level of guarantee that if Dan could drink the mix, that he would experience a dramatic improvement to his cultivation. It wouldn’t be exaggerated to guess that he would jump straight into the Channel Building stage.

He’d be an immortal. Guaranteed.

It took Dan nearly fifteen minutes to compose himself, and a further hour to scour the house. As was a regular occurrence, his father had disappeared.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t so easy, not that he had been expecting much. If there were any memorabilia left from his father’s childhood, then he must have already hidden it.

…

The dirt roads of the Valyon family compound were well kept. A bright older man swept the path as Dan passed by, wishing good tidings that he happily responded with.

Truth be told, the Valyon family was large, and its compound contained over three hundred souls. In practice, half may be out of town, others working the shops, and perhaps nine or ten at most might reasonably be wandering the roads of the compound at any one time.

Hence, it was especially surprising to Dan when he encountered a forming crowd. Naturally, he wanted to know what all the hubbub was about and followed his gathering cousins.

The direction he walked eventually troubled him, and his fears were confirmed once he followed the crowd past the family’s vineyards. Beyond, lay only the graveyard.

The Valyon crypts were of unpolished stone. Undecorated constructs stood tall, containing the family’s greatest men and women. Tombstones littered the yard in an orderly manner.

In the graveyard, the light always seemed dimmer. The mood was never more or less than a quiet sombre sobriety, and a cool wind, borne of the yard topping a stout hill, always gave Dan the shivers.

Dan didn’t know the person who’d died, but it looked like a relatively young woman who had lost her life long before her time. She seemed suspiciously familiar, and he subconsciously joined the crowd in mourning, as her open casket was closed and buried. Today had turned out much grimmer than he had expected.

A tombstone was erected, and Dan read it without thinking too hard about it.

It read; Dannie Valyon, mother of three, seventh wife of Immortal Valyon. Died of natural causes.

The words made less and less sense the more he contemplated them. His eyes glued to the simple stone; Dan unknowingly froze. He forgot all else. It was a miracle he had the wherewithal to breathe and blink. Most certainly, he forgot that he was looking for something as innocuous as his father’s age.

By the time he broke out of his stupor, the funeral procession had ended, and the crowd had broken. He missed the careful glances and gentle farewells. He missed the tear-filled exchanges and retreat of two teenagers, each much bigger than him, who had extremely similar features.

He carved the memory of the woman’s pale face into his heart and walked home. It took much longer than usual, and he walked the wrong way once or twice. He didn’t often visit the fields, and his head was in the wrong place.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Dan found his father standing outside the front door. Pursed thin lips, hands behind his back, short and combed hair and an unseen wind tussling his lightly decorated robes. His father cultivated a particular persona that Dan couldn’t say he liked or didn’t.

But right now, Dan didn’t care about the way his father looked.

“Dannie-”

“Dad. Who is Dannie?”

For a moment, a confused grimace crossed his father’s face. The next, it was gone. Instead, his father’s eyes became especially piercing.

Dan pushed on. “Her funeral was today.”

His father shrugged. “Everyone dies eventually.”

“She was your wife, dad.”

“Yes Dan, she was my wife.”

Dan spluttered. “You just- you’re doing it again! Why can’t you just tell me these things? Was… was that… was she my mother?”

“Dannie was your mother.”

“…I guess I knew that.”

Silence, awkward for each of them, enveloped the pair.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dan didn’t see his father move. In one moment, he was several feet away, standing by the front door. In the next, he’d already crossed the distance and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll take this inside.”

But for the first time in his life, Dan disobeyed.

“No. Tell me here.”

A light pressure engulfed his shoulder, as if his father was considered forcing the issue, but he seemed to think better of it.

A heavy sigh later, his father sat on the square stone step beside the door, and ushered Dan to sit beside him. Dan had already drained his will in standing his ground, and he was all too glad to follow.

“Did you figure out how old I am?”

“No. Can I guess?”

“You won’t get it, Dan.”

A confused glare emanated from Dan’s eyes. His father held against it valiantly.

“Are you forty?”

“Do I look forty?”

“You look younger, like auntie Celine. But I think it’s a lie.”

A thin smile bloomed on his father’s face.

“I’m one hundred and twelve this year.”

Dan’s lipped automatically formed an ‘o’.

“Wa-wait, one- one hundred?!”

Dan leapt to his feet without even thinking and walked around his father with a strange look on his face.

“Really?”

“I wouldn’t lie about that.”

“But you can’t be that old!”

“Oh?” His father’s lips quirked. “And why can’t your father be an old man?”

The words Dan intended to speak were stuck before his lips. It was true; his father was a cultivator, an immortal, and not one of the first level. But it just… he had no idea. It was too shocking. He couldn’t keep looking. He sat back down and stared at his feet.

The shock eventually passed. His father patiently waited.

“Dad… why didn’t I know about mum? I have siblings too, right? Don’t I?”

“You have a lot of brothers and sisters, Dannie.”

“Don’t call me that anymore.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

Dan’s father, Immortal Valyon, pat down his son’s agitated hair and quietly reminisced.

“Dan, even if I don’t cultivate ever again, I will still live another hundred years. More if I break through to the next level. I will, by the way. I’ll make sure that you will, too.”

“I- okay, dad, but what does that have to do with meeting my family?”

“How long will they live for, Dan?”

It hit him like a tonne of bricks.

“L-long enough!”

“Your mother is already dead and you’re only nine. Granted, none of your siblings are likely to die from spirit exhaustion unless they give birth to a cultivator. But none of them have spirit roots. My children… except you, they will fall like flies. Mortals are worth very little in this world, Dannie, and mortal distractions are unhealthy for a cultivator’s state of mind.”

Dan bit his lips and clenched his hands into fists. Unknowingly, his nails cut his palms, and a drop of blood fled down his thumb. His father placed a calming hand on Dan’s side and pulled him into a one-armed hug. His hand carved soothing circles into Dan’s arm and calmed his mind.

“Don’t let it get to you. Your mother knew she wouldn’t have long to live if she birthed a worthy child, and she didn’t want to burden you with half-baked memories of an ill parent.”

“And my siblings? Do they know?” Dan didn’t know when he’d felt too drained to stutter.

“Some of your brothers and sisters are aware. As are all of the elderly generation. Some of your siblings are already dead for a variety of reasons. But most of them understand that there is a difference between you and them. You have spirit roots; heaven’s gift to mortals. They do not. Your siblings are doomed to live in mediocrity. The least they can do is leave you to cultivate peacefully. It’s all for the benefit of the family.”

It was all too much for one day. It had started as usual, cultivating in the silence of their cultivation chamber. But then his father had almost given him an elixir that would finally make him into a cultivator, before it devolved into a wild goose chase that resulted in unknowingly attending his mother’s funeral…

At some point, Dan fell asleep. His father, with a relieved smile, gingerly picked him up and brought him inside.