"You miserable excuse for a woman! Do you really think stealing from me to support your talentless brat is going to give him a better life? He'll be nothing more than a burden on the family, dragging our already tarnished reputation even further down!"
Tom Ivor's face was twisted in anger as he berated Rose. His blond hair and mustache practically bristled with rage as he glared at her.
"Guards! Take her to the torture chamber and teach her a lesson she'll never forget!"
Rose's tears flowed freely as she begged for mercy. "I'm sorry, I just wanted our son to have a chance at success."
But Tom was deaf to her pleas, turning on his heel and storming out of the room as the guards dragged her away, her cries echoing in the empty space.
Lucas was oblivious to the events unfolding outside his room as he focused on his cultivation. He was on the verge of breaking through to the third stage of rank one when he heard a knock at his door.
Slightly annoyed, he suppressed his feelings and opened the door to find a gray-bearded man standing on the other side. It was the same man who had forced Lucas into cultivation.
"Your father will be here in a few hours to drag you to the torture chamber, just like your mother. Memorize this technique and use it when the time comes. If you can escape, I'll take you on as my apprentice. It's not every day that I come across someone with your talent in the path of time."
And with that, the man vanished, leaving Lucas standing in confusion.
'What is going on? My father is coming to throw me in the torture chamber? And my mother is already there? And this scroll on the floor?'
Lucas picked up the scroll and looked at the complicated patterns etched into it. His mind throbbed with the effort of trying to understand it.
'He said I have to memorize this, but who is he? Is he the reason I gained my first trace of cultivation?'
'Wait, I'm going to be thrown into the torture chamber by my own father, whom I've never even met? Am I going mad?'
Lucas's mind was in a frenzy. Eventually, he just stopped thinking altogether, only allowing a few simple thoughts to surface every few seconds.
'I guess I should memorize this technique. If I'm going to be thrown into the torture chamber, having this might give me a chance at escape.'
There was no description of what the technique did, so Lucas had no idea what to expect. He wanted to help his mother escape too, if he could, but he didn't feel enough of a connection to her to risk his own escape to save her.
'This body is still only eight years old, it hasn't even finished developing yet. How could I even think about escaping without the technique, let alone freeing my mother as well? That's like asking me to defeat a mighty dragon with a stick I found on the ground. It's simply impossible.'
For the next four hours, Lucas focused on memorizing the technique. He just finished in time, but he didn't have a chance to test it out before his father, Tom, burst into the room and grabbed him by the arm.
"Come with me, boy."
Lucas tried to resist, but his small, weak body couldn't match up against a grown adult. He was soon thrown into the torture chamber, where he was chained up and unable to move. Tom left, but the guards stayed behind to guard the door.
Lucas looked around at his surroundings. His mother was unconscious on the ground, the chains were brand new and seemed impossible to break, and there was a whip and sword in each corner of the room. There were no windows and the chamber was relatively clean, except for some dust and blood stains on the ground.
'How am I supposed to escape from this?'
Lucas thought about using the technique he had just memorized, but his mind was still tired from all the cultivation and memorization he had done earlier in the day. So, he decided to rest and try again later when he was feeling more refreshed.
As he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, he couldn't shake the feeling that something sinister was going to happen if he didn't escape soon. That fear prevented him from being able to sleep at all and he ended up not sleeping at all.