CHAPTER 5

Zhu was pulled from his sleep and dragged out of the manor long before he had even properly woken up.

“W-what-”

An arm covered his mouth, and his voice came out muffled.

“Hush!”

“Dad?!”

“Quiet!”

His father briefly let him fall to his feet, and then tugged him forward through the dark.

“Come.”

He was pulled in the direction of their family’s gate, the entrance to their compound, and he didn’t have much choice but to follow along. Rarely was his father this domineering.

If this place weren’t his home, his might’ve fallen in the dark. As it was, Zhu walked through the night with a vague confidence in his footing. As soon as they left though, he would be completely lost.

“Halt!”

An elder’s voice echoed through the night, and Zhu could hear footsteps rapidly moving in their direction from across the family compound.

“Faster!”

His father became hurried, and Zhu blearily realized that they had been walking only to make less noise.

His father’s speed was too much; he quickly lost his footing, and he was dragged across the grass, the dirt path, and the grass again – but he couldn’t complain. He had hardly even woken up, but in his heart, he understood what was happening.

They, father and son, were escaping not their family, but the Flying Shore Sect.

What was that nonsense about the Jade Serpent Hall? Evidently, it was just a diversion.

If members of their family were qualified to enter a sect, wouldn’t they have already joined?

“Tch!” A particularly sharp rock jutting from the earth sliced into Zhu’s leg, ignorant of his thin nightrobes, and he shivered as the wound continued to brush the dirt and greenery. The cold, that for whatever reason hadn’t been obvious, lathered the wound with a harsh breeze.

“Hold on.”

The Liang Family compound was lined by stone walls at least twice as high as Zhu himself. He tensed as they approached them and couldn’t help sounding his surprise when his father easily hopped over the wall. The movement seemed as simple and effortless as Zhu stepping over the side of the bathtub.

His father’s eyes eventually drifted to Zhu’s injured leg and softened. He pulled him up and over his shoulder but didn’t pause or slow for even a moment.

Like this, the Liang Family Head and his heir fled their own home in the cover of night.

The elders that were originally hot in pursuit, petered off as soon as they recognized their family head leaping past their walls. What were they supposed to do about that? It was far out of their responsibility, and if it helped to mitigate the threat of a sect crashing down upon their heads, all the better for it.

The Family Head’s son had pointlessly brought threat to their Liang family. It was a great pity to lose the head of their family in such a manner, but if it was to avoid disaster, it could be reluctantly accepted.

It was hardly their choice anyway.

…

It was hours later that, as the night was slowly overcome by the early rays of morning, the two slowed their escape.

Or, better said, Zhu’s father slowed their escape.

Zhu fell to his feet, wobbly and dishevelled, and his father sat against a tree and finally released an exhausted sigh.

Zhu shivered and dropped to his knees, hugging his shoulders.

He had the full night to consider the repercussions of running from his home, and despite that Zhu wasn’t particularly strong mentally, he could figure out that this was an escalation due of his own actions.

“Father, I, uh…”

His father’s gaze was supportive, and his expression tired, but warm. “What is it?”

Zhu really couldn’t ask for more than that.

“I’m sorry.”

Sorry for killing that envoy, sorry for being an unfilial son, sorry for making you choose between your son and the rest of your family, sorry for… too much. All his life, Zhu had failed again and again to give back for his father’s kindness.

His nose felt sour. It must be the change in the seasons.

His father snorted and waved a hand. “It’s too late to be sorry! What’s done is done. We can only move past it.”

“Oh…” Zhu blinked. “Yes! But…”

“But?”

“What… what do we do now? Where do we go?”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Now? Uh…”

The two looked at each other dumbly.

Zhu vaguely recalled that half of him was born of his father.

“I didn’t plan anything else!”

“Then why did we run away?!”

They stared dumbly at one another for another minute, before reeling back with laughter.

“Oi, oi, you’re right!” his father laughed, before sobering up. “Also, I wanted to apologize.”

Zhu’s face scrunched. “You? Apologize for what?”

“I didn’t believe you, earlier.”

“Huh?”

“I took the liberty of carrying you to check your cultivation.” His father leaned back, knocking his head against the tree and closing his eyes. “How long is it, until you reach the third stage?”

Zhu relaxed and released a relieved sigh, shuffling from his place to sit beside his father and likewise use the thick pillar of wood to support himself. “That’s it?”

It wouldn’t have taken any effort on his father’s part to check his cultivation with his arm being grasped for the entire night.

[Attributes]

LEVEL 3 [Karma: 2/20]

Cultivation: Body Refining | Stage 2 [+] Cost: 20 Pure Qi

Cultivation Talent: 3 [+] Cost: 4 Point(s)

Comprehension: 0 [+] Cost: 1 Point(s)

Spirit Energy: 22/22 | 2.2/Hr

Pure Qi: 110/110 | 9.3/Hr

Point(s): 0

Time to live: 158Hrs

It was clear that they had been running for a long time.

“I can do it already.”

His father narrowed his eyes in thought. “Then do it!”

“I can, but… it was painful last time, and I don’t want to get my clothes dirty.”

His father massaged his temples in an exaggerated manner. “You’re skipping months, or even a year of hard work – and you’re hesitating because of your pajamas?”

Zhu paused, aware that it sounded bad. “I… I am!” He chose to stand up for himself.

His father grumbled something beneath his breath.

“I’ve raised a brat.”

Zhu shook his head awkwardly, unwilling to retort.

“Alright. I’ll find a stream or something.”

In the end, it was only the work of a few minutes to come across a shallow river, and his father waited a short distance into the woods surrounding it. He would use the time to rest his eyes and restore his stamina.

The water rushed at speeds that, hardly more than a day before, Zhu would have hesitated to stand within. That is, it was a slow stream.

Now, his footing was unnaturally steady as he walked into the waters, which while shallow, still almost reached to his waist.

He had already stripped off, his thin night gown folded at the foot of a tree beside the river.

Without hesitation, he pressed onto the [+] beside his cultivation and braced.

He expected to be coated in multicoloured lightning from head to toe, to feel the searing of his flesh and then see the expulsion of impurities from his body.

The reality was different.

The world that had just recently turned from night to day, shifted backward, like time had unwound. The glare of the sun was immediately masked, the stars re-emerged, and the moon above shown with a bright silver sheen.

The sky overhead, originally bright and empty, was suddenly overcome by thick, dreary clouds, grey and menacing.

Boom!

Thunder roiled amongst the clouds, a variety of colours mingling aggressively. In the distance, ordinary golden lightning struck repeatedly. Overhead, rain had already begun falling.

Booming impacts shook the ground, the flash of lightning burned the eyes, thunder shook the ears, and the river, originally quite tepid, suddenly grew fierce.

“Oh no.”

Crack!

A bolt of lightning, glowing with a myriad of colours and as thick as his wrist, abruptly shot for his head. Before he could even think to regret the decision to breakthrough, his vision swam with a myriad of colours.

DING!

[Cultivation Success!]

Body Refining | Stage 2 » Stage 3

Spirit Energy +10 | +1/Hr

Qi Limit +10

Zhu tumbled into the flowing rapids. He fought the waters, but his limbs shook outside of his control. This breakthrough was nowhere near as simple as the last, and especially not the first.

There was no evolution deep within his body, of the forming of spirit channels or the widening of meridians. No, this time, it was his skin and the muscles buried beneath that had been baptised, and the skies themselves seemed to be his witness.

It was a miracle that he even fumbled to the riverside. Were the waters any higher, with the jittering of his limbs and the pain in places that he didn’t know existed overcoming most of his mental faculties, he wouldn’t have made it so far.

“Zhu?!”

He could only hold onto his consciousness for long enough to feel a strong grip on his shoulders pull him ashore before it all went black.

…

Liang Feng hardly understood his son at the best of times.

Let alone when his son turned backward the wheel of time, shifted the weather, and summoned shocking tribulation lightning in the lowest levels of the Body Building realm.

He gruffly pulled him up the bank and through to the makeshift camp he had just set up, dropping him on a bed of grass. It was the work of a moment to realize that Zhu wasn’t even bleeding.

“He’s not even injured?”

This son of mine faced tribulation lightning, and he was knocked unconscious not by the tribulation itself, but... mental shock, maybe?

None of it made sense, but in a way, it was very typical of Zhu.

Zhu had always failed to make sense. From the moment he was meant to start crawling, speak gibberish and play with his toys – and didn’t – it had quickly become clear that something was amiss. Yet… at the same time, nothing was wrong at all.

Zhu had never failed to unimpress. It was only after two decades of patience, that he finally felt him sufficiently mature to sit in on a meeting and understand the content matter. He hadn’t been.

He was almost ready to give up in the moment that the emissary’s throat was slit, but...

His wide hands brushed through his son’s long hair absent-minded. Despite his near-drowning, despite the heavenly wrath that assaulted his son, his hair was still neatly brushed. It was mysterious.

“Dad?”

Zhu's eyes were only half open, but Feng swore that, for a moment, it wasn’t his son staring back at him – but something significantly higher placed.

He smiled dotingly. Yeah, he was right to stick by this kid.

...

Cultivation: Body Refining | Stage 3 [+] Cost: 30 Pure Qi

The cultivation method was beyond ordinary and the breakthrough absolutely shocking, but the result seemed ordinary. Zhu really couldn’t understand the Heaven System at all.

In the end, once he was steady on two feet, he and his father left. They were still exhausted from a night on the run, but there was no question that the scene of his breakthrough would draw wandering eyes and curious cultivators. There was no need to meddle with the likes of those people.

While Zhu hardly knew his left from his right, his father trudged through the woods without much of a care.

After some time had passed, Zhu’s curiosity couldn’t any longer be contained.

“How do you know where we’re going?”

Zhu’s father paused, considered, and smiled.

“I was following you.”

“You’re in front of me! Can’t you be more reliable?!”

The strong, reliable figure of the father in his memory was tarnished. Forsaken forever.

They were equally hopeless in some ways. However, it was inevitable that they would come across a path, like the one that they had long since abandoned. Looking back, perhaps treading the beaten path would’ve made more sense than making their way through the unmarked woods. Was anyone really chasing them? It was hard to say.

His father shook his head.

“In our case, it’s better to be lost.”

“Is it?”

“It’s all the more time for you to cultivate!”

It was easy to say, but… Zhu had developed a healthy apprehension of breaking through after the last time. Besides, he could breakthrough at any time.

“I want a real bed, later.”

His father sighed.

“I know.”

“I mean it. I need a bed with silk sheets and thick, but not too thick, pillows. It should be pre-warmed too.”

“…I know.”

“I also want a nice view.”

“Zhu.”

“Father.”

His father gave up first, and the two kept carving their way through the woods.