[Getting hurt is an integral part of a cultivators journey. It's a part of growing up as the feeling of your blood dripping from the open wounds on your body, or your heart beating faster or slower as poison coursed through your veins and brought you ever closer to the jaws of death either makes you, or breaks you. Many learn to live above the pain, to use the sight of their blood as their motivation to grow stronger.
Others get so afraid of this sight that they grow stronger just so that they wouldn't have a reason to bleed again. But there is something symbolic about a cultivator bleeding. You give to the earth your life's blood, as she gives to you her essence breath. Countless cultivators have watered the earth with their blood, and many of them have grown stronger for it, or falling to it as they returned to her embrace. You should know blood is life, and every time you bleed, it should be for a reason you would never regret.]
Bartholomew Álē
There was a bit of a clamor as everyone moved helter skelter, fingers were pointed and whispers flew into the air. Alex had taken a life, and all the onlookers would love nothing more than to poke holes into such an action.
But Alex himself felt nothing, well it was not that he felt nothing, but more like he had somehow blocked himself off from it. There has been a death, but no one was going to blame him, this was the life that all cultivators chose the moment they decide to refine their bodies and fight for the opportunity to advance to the stage of the immortals.
Compensation would probably be sent to his family, and they might understand, or they might not. Either way Alex wouldn't be held accountable, the moment they registered for this competition, a life and death waiver had been signed. Besides this fight could have gone either way, and Alex would have been the one being escorted out on a stretcher, lifeless and very dead.
Alex made his way back to the stands, cradling his injured hand as best as he could. Anya came to help him over as a man made his way out of the crowds. Some of the guards on duty attempted to stop him, but a quick word from him, and he was let through. This man was Alex's father Ben, and he got there at the same time a doctor got there to have a look at Alex's Injuries. The doctor didn't say much, but just got to work mending Alex's injuries.
Alex looked up at his father and opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn't. Not a single word could come out of his mouth. What was he supposed to say, that he did not mean for this to happen, or that he didn't expect that Sanusi would die.
The truth of the matter was that Alex knew such an outcome was possible, though he expected that the [Iron Shirt] martial art would have been able to mitigate most if not all of the damage. Things really don't go as planned.
"Do you blame yourself?" Ben asked as he looked at his son with an expressionless gaze.
Alex looked up for a moment, and wanted to say something. But it was as if the words were stuck in his throat and all he could do was shake his head no.
"So you don't blame yourself for his death, that's good. Do you feel sorry for him?" Ben asked again, this time he squared down and made sure his gaze was directly at his son's.
"I...I do." Alex replied with a whisper.
"Then that's good enough for me. If you felt nothing, I would never have let you continue cultivation. We would have been on the first bus back to the village. In this path you have chosen, blood is bound to flow, death would become so close to you, it would be like your own kin. And as death comes to you, so too will you give it to others, sometimes intentionally, other times you're left without a choice.
You might feel regret for the lives you've taken, but you just have to see it as a sacrifice, this is the price you have to pay to walk this path, the demon and stigma we all have to carry.
Whether innocent or guilty, cultivators are all murderers, because to advance and grow on this chosen path of ours, blood has to be spilt in copious amounts.
That's the gift we return back to the earth as tribute for breathing the same air she does, and growing stronger for it. Alex my son, you might have to find your one philosophy and belief about why you have to take a life, but I want you to remember today, because the only time killing will really matter to you, is the first time you do so, and the last time you ever will.
You will keep on killing, but you have to find your own method of paying penance. You don't have to carry the world on your shoulder. You just have to know that when you kill, if you really have too. Don't take a life that will call your conscience to question, be true to yourself, even when you have to take a life. You're a good kid son, don't let the blood on your hands change you. Because in this world, it is not the Wulin, or Jianghu that changes you, it's the cries of the blood you've spilt."
After he finished speaking, Ben placed his hand on his son's head, and made his way back into the crowd. His words placed a fire in the heart of his son, and his crazy best friend beside him. This fire burnt away their innocence and exposed their eyes to the true ugliness of the path before them, it was an endless road of blood and murder. And not just the blood of humans, but the thousands of other beasts who would give their lives as resources for the increment of their cultivation.
Maybe what his father had said was not the supreme truth about killing and how it changed someone. But the both of them were still growing up, no matter how tough this road might seem to be, the both of them have chosen it, and they were quite ready for the sacrifices they had to make and the consequences that came with their choices.
After that fight, Alex and Anya forfeited their subsequent fights. They were placed 35 and 34 on the rankings when everything was said and done. But no one could blame the outcome, they all knew that those two could very well be in the top 10 if not the top 5 with Anya being number one. But this glory was not what they were after, they had qualified for the inter local government competition at the state capital, and they all had to travel there in a week.
At least it gave them enough time to rest and gather themselves, after all they had just taken their first step, but met an obstacle that even older and better people than them had failed to pass. But they will persevere, it was all they could do.
........
It's been a day, since the fight, Alex had found it really difficult to sleep, so he had decided to take a walk around the town. Already he could see that town was gradually getting empty, as people all made their way towards the state capital for the next part of the competition.
His thoughts were troubled, but eventually his wandering leg and mind took him to a rather dilapidated and abandoned section of the town. There were a bunch of abandoned and broken buildings around, but from the looks of it, all this buildings were actually temples or to be more precise shrines.
Even though only half of his bloodline belonged to this land, there was a belief that no matter how far a son travels, he would always return to his father's house, and to the roots where his ancestry sprung from. This shrines, were made to pay homage to the old ways, to the spirits of his ancestors, and their avatars here on earth.....the masquerades.
Masquerades were spirits given a physical form, and more often than not, they were either the personification of the founding ancestor of a family line, or a guardian of a particular family, or river or attraction within a village or town.
They were Intense and dangerous forces of nature, with very mysterious origins. However no body has seen a masquerade in almost five hundred years, only descriptions of their appearance, tales of the power, and shivers of how frightening the looked with their carved masks were left for his generation.
It was getting late, the moon was already high in the sky, and the wind was especially fierce. An old mango tree swayed and shook, as the wind held her sway and an eerie chill spread through the air. As mature as he was for his age, Alex was only fourteen, and he was walking in an abandoned part of town that used to house spirits, or to be exact materialized ghosts. There was no way he wasn't terrified.
There was no electricity in this part of the town, and looking back towards the shimmering lights in the distance, Alex could not help but wonder how he had gotten himself out here without noticing he had gone to far.
"Woooouooooouoooooo!"
Alex gulped, that wail was definitely not from a wind. Because if it was the wind, it wouldn't be coming from behind him, and it definitely wouldn't be a twenty feet tall floating sack cloth with a grotesque black mask. At first it stared, and it's eyes began to glow a fiery red, there was a clicking sound from within its body as the mask controlled the wind to raise it's extremely long sack cloth dress up. There was a story among the Igala people, especially for those of them who have lived in Dekina and it's surrounding villages for a very long time.
Regardless of their origins you can't tell if a masquerade was good or bad. They were eccentric and were prone to rather violent and horrifying mood swings. If you meet one, and it deems you as someone who has offended it, there were quite a few unfortunate things that can happen to you. One is that you would be beaten mercilessly, others you would be cursed and most probably end up dead within seven days, or blind, deaf, dumb or in extreme cases mad.
But it was also warned, to never follow a masquerade who beckons to you, and to never take anything from a masquerade unless it uses it's own voice to bless you or ask you to take it. Gestures are not to be accepted, words are preferred. And if a masquerade decides to show you something, then it was in your best interest to run and get the fuck out of there.
And that was what Alex did. After five hundred years of extinction, a masquerade just had to appear the one night he absentmindedly wandered into the area where their old shrines once stood. What kind of shitty luck was that. As Alex ran for his pitiful life, constantly being chased by a force of nature even Qi could not explain, he cursed all of his ancestors and their rather eccentric ways.
Why can't it be more simple. As he ran, the masquerade that was right behind him, suddenly disappeared and appeared right in front of him, scaring the living daylights out Alex as he took a detour and ducked into a side street.
From then, it was a game of cat and mouse as the masquerade chased after Alex, appearing and disappearing in different intervals. It wasn't until it was a little bit too late that Alex discovered that the masquerade was not just chasing him, it was herding him towards a particular location. But any attempt to come up with a counter came up null as Alex pulled up in front of a hut, built right in the middle of the entire area, and there was no other building close by for another twenty or thirty meters.
The masquerade was still close by, and Alex had no choice but to keep running towards the only refuge in the area, that was looking more and more like the gates to hell or certain doom. The hut was made of clay, and it had a hatched roof made from palm fronds, woven together.
The body of the hut was quite smooth, and there were tribal chalk paintings on it. The paintings depicted a variety of things, but Alex did not have time to look at them, as the masquerade behind him suddenly began to get more frenzied as it drew closer and closer wailing with such a voice that Alex felt his soul vibrate.
From the look of things, it looks like the masquerade had changed its mind about letting Alex anywhere near that hut, well too bad for it. Enemy of enemy is my friend right, so Alex gritted his teeth, and flew through the opening of the hut, and straight into the embrace of certain darkness.