Chapter 155

  Grudges (I)

  The sun had just cracked over the horizon as a chilly squall swept over the empty and hollow landscape. Where once tall mountain peaks stood proudly like giants now lay a flat so barren one couldn't even see a single blade of weed growing anywhere.

  There was only dust and tiny stone pebbles and an occasional bird sweeping overhead on its way to the greener pastures.

  Even the prying and curious eyes who came early on were gone, for there was nothing to see but ashes and nothing to hear but silence.

  And yet, at its heart, the dirt stirred and the ground quaked. A few hawks landed around it, their beady eyes staring curiously at the odd movements.

  Suddenly, a hand ripped out through the dirt, causing the birds to cry out and fly away rapidly while dust spread outward. The fingers were covered in thick layers of dirt and blood, and they dug into the ground, breaking it easily, as though it were porcelain.

  Before long, a larger hole opened up, and a silhouette emerged from the cracked dirt, covered from head to toe in dust. Long hair flew out, blasting particles of wind everywhere, while the figure's eyes slowly opened.

  The man appeared young, somewhere in his early twenties at the latest, with starkly red eyes as though infused with blood. His body was rather lean and tall, cracking almost six-five, though his robes were tattered and destroyed, covering only a few bits here and there, revealing a chiseled, dehydrated figure.

  He coughed, spitting out dust from there too, and slowly looked around, his gaze confused, angry, and melancholy.

  "... it's gone?" He mumbled in a hoarse voice, as though he hadn't drunk water for weeks--which his cracked and parched lips very much attested to.

  He sighed, swiping upward against his greasy hair and moving it away. His gaze landed at the sky that was just beginning to burn with the morning sun, something seemingly caught in his throat.

  "Did they manage to get away?" he mumbled yet again. He instinctively tried to reach into his spatial ring to pull out some water but forgot that it was destroyed.

  Everything was destroyed.

  When the last of them burrowed inside that mountain pass, he collapsed it and turned to face over twenty attackers. No matter how strong he was, he was quickly overpowered and subdued. But... they didn't kill him.

  Instead, they captured him.

  At the same time, he watched countless friends and kids he'd known their whole lives dying one by one, and the old Ancestor trying desperately to reverse the situation.

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  The sky and the earth bled crimson, and the anguished cries could write a symphony.

  But then... there was only silence.

  All he could recall was a pillar of light bursting into the sky and expanding for a brief flash of light--one that consumed everything... as it should have consumed him.

  But it didn't.

  No... no, it did.

  He remembered.

  The searing of his flesh, the melting of his bones, the agonizing sensation of having blood boil within him as he was dying... it was real.

  So, how come he was alive?

  He scattered his Divine Sense out to see whether there was anyone nearby, yet gasped in shock a moment later--the reach... it was impossible. It went for nearly twenty miles in all directions, something that even Sect Master could only dream of achieving.

  Looking internally, it didn't take long to figure out what was wrong--his cultivation realm... was different. At the time of his death, he had just barely started taking steps towards reaching Void Transformation, but within him, there was a seance of elements the likes of which he had never even heard about. Though he knew the two realms that came after Void Transformation--Inner World and Demigodhood--he wasn't really certain what exactly they entailed.

  At the very least, he was within one of them--though possibly even beyond that.

  ... How?

  He had no answer. Nothing beyond the intervention of Fate or the Gods themselves sparked an idea.

  "Just... what happened?"

  The Sect was dying regardless--they were besieged on all ends by the scum that didn't even see them as human. But that light... that light did not come from them.

  The vague feeling the light gave off, he found it ever so distantly familiar. As though he'd brushed against it once, a long time ago.

  And yet, he didn't know.

  Regardless, his home was gone, his friends were gone, and even those kids... chances were that they were gone too. He had nothing left.

  No, that's not true--he had one more thing left.

  The payback of the debt.

  The Holy Lands... his gaze turned cold and bloodthirsty at the very thought of them, they who lorded over the lands with the hollow status, trampling over anything they desired. Who so callously came here where they did not belong, just because they heard a whisper of something they wanted to possess.

  The debt... it must be paid, no matter what.

  But not yet.

  Despite having grown stronger, he knew well enough the depth of their strength--even the visible layer was already far too much for him, but they each, no doubt, held secrets deeper than the chasms of the earth. If he were to fell them... he would have to grow even stronger.

  So strong that even if they all attacked him together, they'd fail.

  "Hm," he hummed lowly as he stretched, slowly walking toward the edge of the flat plateau. "I'll need a new name," he mumbled, wondering.

  On the off chance those kids are still alive... maybe it wasn't the worst, leaving some breadcrumbs?

  "Lonesome... chess... hmm," he stroked his chin, having reached the edge of the plateau within a few seconds without even meaning to. "Qi Feng is a bit too obvious... ah! Yun Qi. Hm. A fine name," he mumbled further, glancing over the edge and toward the long stretch of green.

  He was reborn, for better or worse, and though he hadn't left the confines of the Sect's territory in over a hundred and fifty years, he held no fear as he jumped down, landing as lithely as a leaf in the wind.

  He glanced back one last time at the place he would one day return to, to actually die, bowed toward it with clasped hands, and started walking away. As he did, Qi swirled around him like a storm, cleaning up the beggar-looking appearance into that of a prominent Young Master, more so as he used Qi to materialize red dragon robes, donning them.

  Elder Qin was dead, but Yun Qi, Patriarch of an Ancient Family, was alive.

  And he swore to devour them all, one by one.