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CHAPTER 4 --- FIRST TIME?
It took two days for Ren to be let out again. By now he had reached the white aura stage. But before he could go any further, he was called out of his room to go to another ‘class’.
This time the lesson was on basic cultivation, and they were sent out midway because the rest would be the sect’s techniques. It was then that Ren realized that the only reason they were sent to the classes was to make the elder’s children learn that they could treat slaves with impunity!
This made Ren incomparably gloomy. It meant that he’d probably never learn anything useful at all!
The next few days, Ren started the Qi-integration stage. Reading the explanation it said to:
“Pull out the Qi from your core and let it permeate throughout your body. This will improve your body and make it ready to accept a natural Qi-flow. Do so until your body adapts and the essence you absorb from the air naturally refines your body before going to your core.”
Under this text was an image of a glowing human body. You could see why this was given to children! It was basically a children’s book/ manual! Ren felt like they took him for an idiot by giving him this. But of course, he didn’t consider that most children started cultivating at 6 and had formed their core by the time they were 7-8 years old.
It was necessary to make it a children’s book to keep the children’s attention. Of course, there were more advanced books and books with nicer illustrations, but they wouldn’t give those to slaves. Ren got the most basic and oldest of books,
and if there had been simpler books they would’ve given him those. They wouldn’t actually expect Ren to use the book in at least a few months. His cultivation speed was unprecedented! If the elder knew how quickly Ren cultivated, he would probably dissect him to find out how he did it! He was really lucky that his cultivation was invisible for some reason.
As he was cultivating, 2 weeks quickly passed, and by now some of the essence Ren absorbed already refined his body before going through his core. Not all of it yet though, there were some places where his body had more trouble adapting, mainly his head and limbs. But he was getting closer every day!
In these two weeks, the only things he had to look forwards to were the few short moments on his walk to and from classes. There he could talk with An’gra and relax a bit. The twins still ignored him, but Mazri was slowly getting comfortable around him.
He had not dared to ask the boy if he was born with those ears, no matter how curious he was, as he was just too afraid of what it might mean if that were the case! But despite his heart itching for the answer, this was still the only good part about his current days.
Classes had become his personal hell. Even with the other children’s specialness, his white hair still stuck out like a sore thumb! He was constantly targeted, most of it instigated by that first kid, who was called Jovy. They did everything to make his life difficult, and would use any excuse to activate his bracelet and make him suffer.
Suffering this torment had caused Ren to become quiet and retreat within himself. Even when talking to An’gra, he didn’t show the interest or the drive he had before.
Today, his door was once more knocked against and unlocked. Ren got dressed as usual and went outside, but this time, it wasn’t Grumpy waiting for him, but the elder!
“Hi there kid, follow me, your calm stay here is over”
The elder said, walking off before Ren could say anything.
As ren followed him, they once more entered the building where he was held before. Ren started panicking, afraid he’d be locked up underground again, and prepared to run away. But before he could run, the elder had already arrived at the stairs.
But this time he went up instead of down, Ren noticed, and started to calm down a bit. He had nowhere to run anyway, with the bracelet he wore. Apparently, distance didn’t really make a difference when activating them. He had plenty of experience with this from his classes.
Arriving at the top of the stairs, they went down a hallway linked with the large arena next to it. Ren could see the inside of the arena, a large field surrounded by walls, above which were the seats for the audience. It reminded him of a roman arena, but the walls were made of metal instead of stone.
Seeing the arena, Ren had a bad feeling. He couldn’t help but glance at the elder. Noticing this, the elder immediately started talking.
“Yes, you’ll be in there, and you’ll be fighting another slave. Now, that slave has no cultivation, so don’t die and embarrass me!”
Ren looked at him, face filled with disbelief and despair.
“n—no, you can’t be serious! I’ve never fought before! And why in an arena?”
The elder snorted.
“Hmph, you’ll fight when I tell you to fight, either you survive and kill your opponent, or you die. You’ll learn how to fight quickly enough!”
Ren immediately wanted to run away, but before he could the elder had already gripped his arm.
“Now, now, follow along nicely.”
He grinned, and pulled Ren along to some stairs. Going down them, they arrived at a long turning hallway with a lot of doors lining it. They could hear voices and groans coming from the doors. Clearly there were people in there, from hurt people to slaves yelling to get out.
After walking through the hallway for a while, they arrived at a cell linked to the arena. The elder pushed Ren in and then went to a weapons rack next to it. He took a short sword and threw it in the cage.
“Here you go, don’t worry, your opponent has the same weapon.”
He said, and then just left.
Of course, Ren wasn’t worried about the weapon, but about this whole situation! Why would he have to kill someone? This went against everything he was taught as a child! Killing is wrong! Everyone deserves to live! And even if he wanted to fight, how could he fight in this body!
When the door opened, Ren quickly picked up his weapon and went outside. And that’s when he knew that he had worried over the wrong thing, and neglected the most important thing of all!
His opponent was a child!
A child around the same age as him, but a child nonetheless! How could he fight a child? How could they let children fight with weapons? Looking around, he saw a lot of people were watching this! How could they?! This was just inhuman!
As Ren was standing there in shock, the other child had already quickly approached him and slashed out at him with his own sword! Ren quickly parried the blow, shocked at being attacked so suddenly. If it hadn’t been for his ‘Sense’, he would’ve been dead!
The kid jumped back, and then quickly slashed at Ren again. This time, the kid aimed at his legs, and Ren was too slow to dodge it.
“Aargh!”
Ren yelled out, and quickly swung out his sword at the kid retreating kid. The kid avoided his slash and backed off, giving Ren the time to look at his leg. The cut wasn’t deep, but was quite long. It started at his knee and went up about halfway his thigh.
By the time he looked up again the kid was in front of him again. This time he was prepared though, and used all his might to block with his sword. The kid clearly hadn’t expected this, and his sword went flying.
Ren quickly put his sword on the kid’s neck, and the whole crowd began yelling and cheering!
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“kill”
“Kill”
“Take his head!”
“Chop his arms off first!”
“Kill him!!”
As the crowd was yelling, Ren shook his head. He couldn’t do it! He couldn’t just kill a kid in cold blood! He pulled back his sword and slowly backed off. The kid just stood there, kneeling on the ground. Once he was a few meters away, he turned around and went back to his cell.
But before he got far, however, the kid had already grabbed his sword and ran after him! As soon as he sensed the kid behind him, he turned around to defend, but the kid was just too fast. The kid stabbed with the sword, hitting him in his left shoulder just as he turned around.
Pain flooded through Ren as he slashed blindly while falling down. Black dots covered his vision and he almost fainted from the pain. If he hadn’t been tormented with shocks the past weeks he probably would’ve immediately blacked out. Luckily he didn’t. by the time the black dots disappeared, he saw his opponent bending over him while looking at him.
But before Ren could even beg for his life, he noticed that his opponent’s neck was completely red. Looking at it again, the fact that it was blood finally registered with him as his opponent fell over. Ren was completely shocked!
His mind went blank as he vomited on the ground and started mumbling to himself.
“I—I—I’ve killed someone? No… no.. NO! This can’t be, why? Why didn’t he just leave?! How… How could i… NO! It wasn’t on purpose! It..it wasn’t my fault… Right? I—I had no choice…”
As he sat there, a servant came to pull him out of the arena. Back in his cage, the elder came to get him with a smile on his face.
“Hahaha good! You’ve done well! I was right to have expectations of you. Though it was stupid of you to turn your back on your opponent! But it made it all the more exciting to watch. The crowd loved you!”
Turning to look at the elder, Ren was still in shock.
“You!... It’s you! Why? Why would you do this? I didn’t want this! What did he do to you? He was just a kid! Don’t you have any shame?!”
He yelled, not caring if he would get beat up.
The elder just started laughing in his face.
“Hahaha what did you think? You’re just slaves! Your life is worth as what we paid for you! And you were free! Hahaha stupid kid! In the end, it’s you who killed him, no? Just be glad you’re still alive!”
The elder opened the cage, and grabbed Ren by his throat with one hand, using his other to press his wounded shoulder.
“A—AAARGH!!!”
“And never talk like that to me again!”
He said with a menacing look on his face.
Ren barely managed to force an answer through his throat.
“O—o..k”
The elder grabbed him by the back of the neck, dragging him out of the cage. He pulled him over to one of the doors and threw him inside the room. The room was once again the same as the previous ones: bed, bath, mirror. The elder then left, leaving Ren on the ground, barely conscious.
10 minutes later, a female servant came in with bandages. She had brown hair and black eyes, and was quite beautiful, but by now Ren was too far out of it to notice. He barely reacted as she lifted him up and put him on the bed. And by the time she started bandaging up he had long lost consciousness.
As Ren woke up he had the feeling he had had a beautiful dream. It had been long since he had slept so well. But before he could enjoy it the events of the previous day came back to him! Tears flowed out of his eyes, as he sat in a corner of his bed. His arm and thigh still hurt, and as he checked the wounds he noticed they were bandaged. Just touching them was incredibly painful, but he felt like he deserved the punishment. He had taken a life, and one so young. A child who still had so much to live for, so much potential.
The cruelness of it all hit him hard, he felt like something inside him would break if this went on! He couldn’t calm down and started cultivating. By now cultivating to escape reality had become a habit. He did it almost subconsciously, completely concentrating on it so he wouldn’t have to think of reality.
Cultivating wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing, he had to put his whole mind on fusing the Qi with his body, spreading it through every inch, inside and out, while maintaining a link with his core for a steady supply of Qi. This allowed him to calm down and temporarily forget about his plight. Of course, he still had to deal with what happened, and running form it didn’t solve the problem for him. But it gave him the time to process it more slowly.
By the end of the day he was taken back to his room in the academy. The next week was hell, his arm constantly hurt, his mind was in disarray, and the elder’s children used every opportunity to hit his shoulder. He had already hated the children, but now it turned into a murderous rage. Never before had he wanted to hurt them like this! Nor had he really wanted to take his revenge on them. He had always still considered them children. But now, now he began to see them as real enemies, people who wanted to destroy him.
He started cultivating more and more, running away from reality. By now, he had already finished the Qi-integration stage, and was starting the Qi-manipulation stage. The book said to:
“manipulate the Qi to flow through every corner of your body freely, until it will do so at a simple intention of yours. This is different from the Qi-integration in the fact that you have to move the Qi randomly, so your body can adapt to sudden bursts of Qi. Begin by pulsing the Qi slowly, and up the speed until you reach your limit. As soon as you reach your limit, stop the pulses, and start randomly moving Qi through your body, this way your body will surpass those limits and adapt.”
So, he started following the list. What he liked about this was that it required an even higher concentration to accomplish, giving him the chance to forget his troubles more easily. But he only had that chance when he was alone, classes were still hell.
2 weeks quickly passed, and Ren’s hatred for everything only grew. Even when talking with An’gra, he barely showed any facial expressions, as if he was numb to everything. He had been forced to suppress all his emotions, to control himself and keep his rage and anger in check. Once he had exploded, his face turning red, tears streaming down his face, and jumped on Jovy, the one who attacked him the most.
At that moment, Ren’s mind was strangely the calmest it had ever been. His only thought was to attack the kid, and he did. He ignored everything else, and kept on hitting him. Even when 4 children tried to pull him off, all stronger than him by far, they didn’t manage to stop him, and even when they shocked him with his bracelet, he barely reacted.
He kept on hitting Jovy until the shocks rendered him unconscious. When he woke back up he was in his room and 3 days had passed. Jovy had apparently survived, but hadn’t been seen again in class since. From then on the kids still did everything to bully him, but they made sure to keep their distance and avoid all physical contact with Ren.
This event had changed Ren even more. He somehow became more quiet, more reserved, but at the same time this didn’t seem to make him an easier target. The kids could somehow feel that this calmness was like the ocean, and hid countless decimating storms in it’s stillness.