Despite being a little skeptical about the whole thing, the indescribably tall Lu Fang still thoughtfully knelt for Cheng Hao to reach his head.
As soon as the old man had gotten on his knees, Cheng Hao put a hand on the older man's cultivation base: he was going to undo the seal that was binding it down!
Indeed: back then, the Zi family hadn't actually destroyed old man Fang's Sea of Consciousness. Rather, they had only sealed it away. It was as if they had tied a knot onto the intangible thread connecting together the mind and the sea of consciousness!
The reason wasn't all too clear.
Maybe, it was because they thought that that would be amusing, leaving him with an escape route just a little bit too high to reach.
Or even, they might have been thinking of somehow controlling him and his powerful cultivation base in the case of an accident, using him as a last resort.
Either way, this seal originally shouldn't have been detectable. However, with countless beings across the Nine Heavens and the countless Earthly Planes, how could one say with absolute confidence that one's methods were unbreakable; with his vast experience in terms of cultivation bases, Cheng Hao had noticed this small detail as soon as he had first laid eyes upon the man.
Cheng Hao chuckled and, as soon as his hand touched the man's forehead, he poured wave after wave of his own cultivation base's pressure.
At first it had little effect and the hope in the eyes of the old man was slowly but surely beginning to fade away.
As time passed and nothing happened, he was feeling more and more betrayed. Eventually, even his expression grew from amiable to scary, with veins bulging all over his forehead.
Just as he was on the verge of speaking up however, his red eyes cleared up and his mouth opened wide, an unspeakable excitement drowning everything else: he could actually feel a hint of the connection with his Sea of Consciousness again!
After ten more breaths Cheng Hao removed his hand: intertwining mesmerizingly as they hovered just above his palm were a golden mass of geometrical shapes.
Now, every day ever since old man Fang's cultivation had been sealed, he had been constantly trying to cultivate by meditating. Of course, all that had turned out to be useless, as the Qi Strands would be left outside of his Sea of Consciousness, without a chance for him to refine it.
However, now that his cultivation base was slowly being unsealed, all that unrefined Qi that had been gathering around him all along actually begun to pour into him!
In turn, this caused his cultivation slowly rise again… Or rather, it skyrocketed! The progress of countless moons was unleashed right there and then!
From middle Sung stage, to high Sung stage, and even to the peak Sung stage!
Up to that point, it had all been due to Lu Fang's unceasing efforts paving the road!
That was not all however, because with one final, big, push…
Whoosh!
"OOOOHHH!" Lu Fang's whole body shone so brightly it dyed the morning skies white: unexpectedly, he had actually reached a state very much similar to low level Reverend stage!
That was Cheng Hao's gift, guiding Lu Fang's cultivation to reach a precarious, quasi-Reverend Stage! It was not stable and would need a lot of work to fix whatever small flaws were left behind.
That would require years. Even still, until then, most under Reverend Stage would either have to flee or pay the price!
And eventually, the quasi-Reverend Stage would truly turn into Reverend Stage, invincible in the Mortal Realm!
"UuuuoooOHHH!!!" the old man's body lit up with blinding light and the air trembled, as if to recognize the power of a man that would be revered by mortals and cultivators alike! And with that, the powerful physique that had once shriveled up showed signs of recovery!
To Lu Fang, so many dreamy things happening at once was such a pleasant feeling, as if he had gone to sleep as a beggar and had woken up as the Emperor of a country!
After all, even in the current Mysterious Light-Shadow Sect, powerhouses of the whole five Continents, the strongest individuals except for the head were around the mid level Reverend Stage!
This cultivation base that the old man was holding now was such that virtually any power would try to lure him in… and all of this was thanks to the young man before him!
While tears streamed down the old man's cheeks, Cheng Hao pat his back as a smug expression appeared on his face. Seeing the boy's smile clearly saying 'I told you, didn't I?' Lu Fang trembled and kowtowed on the ground.
In His heart, the burly elderly secretly promised himself, "From now on, once I manage to figure things out with my daughter, I will only live for the sake of helping this youth!"
Out aloud, he bowed deeply, "Cheng Hao… you have my deepest gratitude! Whatever it is, this old man will not hesitate to risk his life to help you! Ask away… and I shall follow!"
The golden-eyed child chuckled and beckoned with his hand: the Heaven Devouring Dragon, now almost Superior Stage after its feast, was indescribably long, and its coiled up body alone filled up the entrance to the vast hall. At the youth's motion, the gargantuan beast took to the sky.
"Well, in that case, here's my first request then…" Cheng Hao smirked with a knowing smile, "How about you help me tidy things up here? The big fish is still out there after all…"
Lu Fang's eyes narrowed as he spat out hatefully, "Zi! Luo!"
"Ahahah, it seems we have similar thoughts on the matter. Let's go then! My guys might just be a tad too emotional and act out of script, so we have to hurry!" Cheng Hao jumped on the back of Blindlight, inviting the quasi-Reverend Stage elderly to follow him.
Two hands firmly grasped each other: one small, smooth, yet unimaginably scarred for one just eight years of age; one big, rough and experienced. As the two gripped tightly together, the dragon took to the sky. By the time it had left, not even the foundations of the massive mansion were left, as Cheng Hao had somehow taken it all away as 'payment for his actions': only the residue aura of the Immortal Ascension Tower hinting as to how the unimaginable feat could have been accomplished exactly…
Nothing was left behind of the esteemed Zi Clan, every hint of its existence wiped away from the lands.
Just as Zhao had done to Lu.
And today, Lu took back with the help of the Reborn, whose former self had razed countless more clans to the ground; a much feared Xu, a soon to be respected Cheng!
...
In a battlefield a very long time ago, a young man was humming a carefree tune under the moonlight as he walked in a battlefield full of corpses. The stench of blood and the wails of his wounded enemies below seemed to have no effect on the youngster as he trailed over the dead bodies as if he were stepping on grass.
His steps followed the cheerful tune and, as he hummed, he also began to speak dreamily. The words were powerful and each sentence seemed enough to shake one's soul, yet the musical tune made it resemble the scene of an enlightened singing a grand truth of the Heavens.
"A young man once cried unfairness to the gods, and the heavens responded. The heavens gave the man an executioner's blade, and with them a chance to uphold his own justice. However, as he killed his perception changed; the precious lifeblood in his veins flowed in those of the wrongdoers all the same! So he chained down, for centuries, until he changed again, forcing them all to labor instead, for millennia on end. And again, he changed, and did so over and over, as did his justice, and with it that of the world. The world turned out being unfair, as it never even had the concept of fairness from the start…"
The man eventually came to a stop and lifted his head upwards.
He inhaled deeply and his blue eyes gilded golden turned from emotionless to gentle, as warmth and reminiscence appeared on his face.
"For those who follow me, I shall drink with them as brothers, no matter who they are, saints or demons, I will call you brothers and sisters! We are all brothers and sisters in this unfair world, and as brothers and sisters we will hold the executioner's blade together! What is mine is yours, what is yours is ours. If you die, I will live for you. If I die, you will live for me! And until then, we'll bare our blades to the unjust world, together! And only at such a time, the justice that had eluded the world will finally be found, and it shall be found in one another."
A loud roar sounded out. A golden dragon thousands upon thousands of meters long landed besides the man, blowing away the nearby corpses as it approached.
The wind currents, though, didn't seem to affect the man at all as he looked up, admiring the swirling cloud formations in the sky that followed the beast's descent. As his gaze fell back down, the Primordial Beast bowed and let the man climb on top of his head.
Grabbing tightly onto a horn of the Dragon King, the man's blue eyes narrowed as he muttered, "Let us go, Blindlight, to save our brother."
As soon as he heard that, the gargantuan dragon kicked off the ground and flew in the air at indescribable speeds as the youth resumed his speech. He was calm and composed and as he spoke, his tone knowledgeable, "To the small man that called the heavens unfair, the world itself turned out being unfair, as it never even had the concept of justice from the start…"
"In such unfair world, only I can remain fair to my loved ones!"
"Only I can make sure my blade never executes them and is instead the greatest deterrent to those who wish to harm them! If it means I'll be a saint to myself and those I love, I won't hesitate to be evil to everyone else!"
"Follow me, live as brothers and risk our life together! Resent me, I shall understand you, for in an unfair world, I am bound to be unfair to others. But act against me or my dear ones, and I'll bare my executioner's blade not to protect… but to eradicate!"
…
Very reminiscent of a scene from more than a thousand years ago when a dragon and blue-eyed youth had taken off to save their loved ones, a sudden dragon cry had caused Zi Luo's murderous expression to change.
Following the call, a golden dragon dozens of feet long dove down from the clouds, so fast even a fully powered-up Fuyin could barely catch its movements. As for Xiao Wu, whom he was holding in his arms, she had only just now regained consciousness after being knocked out by the pressure of a Sung Stage cultivator: the moment the dragon cry had rang out, the pressure had been dispelled, and she had woken up immediately, to a shocking sight.
Blindlight had grown even more ever since the Wang and Xiao youths had last seen him. Now, he could easily fit dozens of people behind him, and the two being carried right now actually looked like ants as they stood on his back.
Of the two, the first was someone that couldn't have been any more familiar to them: it was, of course, Cheng Hao. However, he was also carrying three heads, one that of a middle-aged female and two of two elderly, which were unceremoniously dangling by their hair in his grip.
The second figure, on the other hand, was that of a person neither Fuyin nor Xiao Wu had ever seen before; a muscular old man wearing tattered clothes, with disheveled white hair reaching down to his waist, and righteous features adorning his gentle face. Contrary to his amiable looks, his eyes actually showed great animosity as he called out, "Zi Luo, face me if you dare!"
Without even waiting for the dragon to land, he immediately jumped down from the back of the ground at the sight of the Sung Stage Zi Clan Head: he then began to brawl with his sworn enemy.
At first, recognizing the heads in Cheng Hao's grief, the middle-aged man had trembled as the realization of what had most likely happened had his whole body shake from grief and wrath.
However, the moment he recognized the old man from his voice and felt a horrifying pressure washing down onto him, all semblances of anger and grief were washed away, replaced by sheer terror.
"Ahh!" Zi Luo cried out unbecomingly of his status as a Clan Head and… actually ran away!
However, the old man followed right after him. It was not even a few minutes later that he returned with a bloodied half a body, so mangled it could barely be called human.
"Well, that was that." Cheng Hao chuckled nonchalantly, as if the current situation that really took a lot of effort on his part to resolve had never actually been something worth of notice to begin with, "Sis, Fuyin, Lu… I'd like to introduce you two to a new friend of mine. Lu Fang, would you do the honors?"
= = = = = = = = = =
Author's Note
[1] Well, there goes one of my biggest regrets from the novel pre-reboot (seriously). It really was on my to-do list of things to do in the case I were to ever reboot it.
A mansion in Cheng Hao's style discarded just like that? That didn't make sense! (Yes, I tend to focus on the details and ignore some kind of bigger plot holes, but bear with me)
[2] For having an entire chapter named after it, that revenge sure went by quickly, ngl. At least the entrance was cool, I guess.
~ Cookie