On Yijin's way home to his apartment, he changed out of his school attire and covered himself in baggy clothing and a hoodie. He jogged at a brisk pace on his way home so as to not attract any attention. Blood coursed down his arms and dripped off of his fingertips to the ground below.
As we already know what occurred the moment he arrived home, I mustn't need to go through details once more. However, I shall continue onwards from whence we halted. Yijin entered his bathroom and uncovered his body. The glass that had shattered upon him at the school was jammed within his body. Yijin knew from, quite the abundant amount, of experience that he had dealing with glass scars that this was going to be rather painful.
He lifted his hands to his face and began his cleanup, shall we say, routine. In about two hours, and quite the large amount of groaning and clenched teeth, Yijin was able to extract every minor shard of glass that had hit him and embedded itself in him.
He inhaled deeply, blood gushed from the fresh wounds as he sat down once more on the bedding and began to use his inherent energy. His deep breaths calmed his mind and eventually the heat rose again within him as he spoke the same prayer as before. He held his hands to his wounds and began to cauterize them with his Qi.
Yijin's eyes slowly blinked open as he rose from the bedding and walked to the window. His reflection was visible and beyond it, the nightlife of his hometown. He sighed. The world had changed so much since he had last been on it. He closed his eyes and turned from the window, walking to his phone. He began to write a message to Xiao. "You're welcome for today."
Yijin closed his phone and walked to the exit of his apartment. He had had a revelation. "Fighting weaklings like high-schoolers will not make me strong enough to fight Lu Gongfen. There has to be more practitioners of the ancient martial arts. He walked onwards. There was one place he had seen multiple times, but never pondered entering.
"The Sun Martial Arts Academy of Tao." I know you all can see the reference that I'm making, but since our main role-holder is far too dense to realize what is going on at least you will.
Yijin entered the Sun Academy and opened the door. It was still open despite the hour being incredibly late. "Oh damn! I forgot to lock the door. We're not open for business anymore."
"Is martial arts even still a business anymore?" Yijin said somberly.
"You're right about that, mister. There is barely anyone still wanting to practice martial arts at a dojo or academy." The man appeared and Yijin stared at him for a moment in disbelief. His eyes could barely focus. The mere presence of this man shook Huanzhi to his core. "Suntao?" Yijin stared him for a moment, awaiting a response. The man was also taken aback. "How do you know that name? Who are you!?" Shouted the middle aged man. Yijin continued his blank stare.
"Are you Suntao Ren?" Yijin looked at the man dead in the eyes and began to recount his questions regarding Suntao and even gave a majority of his history before repeating his first question. "What are you talking about? Suntao Ren was my greater grandfather. He died in a cave centuries ago.
My mother is a distant relative of his. My name is Juanbei Ren. Still, how do you know about him?" Yijin's eyes welled with tears as he looked at Juanbei. This man was Huanzhi's blood brother's grandson. He knew he couldn't say anything to Juanbei about the past or he would be ridiculed and kicked out.
"I am the son of the archaeologist who discovered Suntao's corpse. That's all I know." Yijin smiled warmly as he looked upon Juanbei like an elder looks upon his grandchildren.
The middle aged man whispered with a bit of a pale face, "He's a little weird isn't he?"
Yijin stepped forward and held out his hands in a revering manner as a student would do to his master. "Master Ren. Accept me as your disciple." He bowed respectfully as Juanbei looked at him in surprise. "Damn! You scared me there kid. Do you have the money to pay the school fees?" Yijin's face darkened for a moment as he thought, "Just like Suntao would have done."
Yijin bowed and said that he did. Juanbei nodded and accepted him as a disciple. "Can you give me a demonstration of your skills, Yijin?" Yijin nodded and he collected the Qi with his body. "What would you like me to demonstrate, Master?" Juanbei looked at him, nobody had ever collected their Qi in front of Juanbei before now. "Do you see that dummy over there?" He pointed to a rubber man without arms. "Show me what you know so far."
Yijin stared and looked at the dummy for a moment before stepping up to it and entering the stance of the Soul of the Unknown Swordsman. He inhaled deeply as he suddenly unleashed a flurry of blows on the torso of the dummy before performing a flash step and leaping upwards and sending a high leaping kick into the rubber being's forehead, sending the prothesis to the ground ripped from its origins. Juanbei shouted in surprise.
"What the f***!? How the hell?!" He dropped backwards and fainted. Yijin looked at the dummy, its torso was ripped open and now with the decapitation of it... he had shown Juanbei too much.
Yijin lifted Juanbei and placed him on a bench. He kept watch on the man and waited for the "master" to awaken. As he waited, Yijin exited the academy and crossed the street to a convenience store. He opened the entrance and walked around, grabbing himself a coffee and a bag of chips. As he placed them on the counter, a suspicious man entered the building. He was wearing a black hoodie and wore ripped jeans. He had a medical mask on his face and sunglasses covering his eyes despite it being night.
The most outstanding part of it, was the fact that he held something that was pointing out of his pocket. He walked up to the register. "Empty the machine now." He held up to object and pointed it at the clerk. The man whimpered and opened the register in fear with his hands up in the air. The money was quickly counted as the man turned to Yijin. "You! Empty your pockets."
The smell of alcohol was on his breath and he slurred his speech. Yijin stared at the drunk thief and refused.
"F*** you, you drunk little pissant. No."
He grabbed the man's arm and yanked it out of his pockets before slapping the man's face with the man's own hand. "Didn't your mother teach you better, you son of a bitch? Never steal from others." Yijin slapped him multiple times before pulling the concealed weapon from the man's jacket pocket and placing it lightly on the table in front of the clerk. The clerk thanked him as the money was also returned to him.
"Alright, you little shit. I guess since your mother never did it, I'll have to discipline you." Yijin said. He unveiled the man's face and showed it to the clerk. "If he ever comes back here, tell me and I'll beat him worse that I will now." He took the thief outside and slammed his boot into the man's ribs and face multiple times before shouting the word, "Scram!" at the tops of his lungs.
The drunkard ran off in fear. Yijin re-entered the store, paid for his snack, and returned to Juanbei. The master had woken up and now Yijin spoke to him, giving him a coffee. "Are you alright, Master Ren?" It felt weird calling Juanbei by Huanzhi's name, but Yijin did it. Yijin patiently awaited his thoughts as the man downed half the coffee in an instant.
"W-w-where did you learn to fight like that, Yijin?" Asked Juanbei. "That's not important right now. What's important is that I need your help. I need to improve immensely before I face someone who brought a lot of misfortune upon me in the past. He must be defeated. Crushed. Annihilated."
"I'll stop you right there, Yijin. You will never reach enlightenment whilst caught up in the essences of the past. They are merely illusions to distract you from your objective, child. You must face your past as a new person. A reformed person. This must be the only thing holding you back. It is an incredibly difficult thing to master, letting go of revenge. Especially when you have a personality that hangs onto every bit and piece of the past. This is the only thing I can help you improve with. Your martial arts are on another level compared to anybody on the face of the earth at this moment. Unless there is some hidden master somewhere."
Juanbei spoke passionately. "Yijin, there is only one way to get through this and improve. You must confront your past. Little by little, day by day, and piece by piece."
Yijin stared at Juanbei. "So this was the truth behind Suntao. He was on another mental and spiritual plane than I. Which is why I always felt so inferior compared to him when we were still alive in the past. It changed my entire being, made me consumed with a want to be stronger than him physically so I could at least pride myself on my physique. But all vessels die. All beings must come to an end. That physique will disappear someday, but the spiritual path that Suntao was on will never disappear. It will live on through his sons and daughters and generations from then on."
Yijin thought. Though they were going through an intense spiritual revelation something brought them back to the present. "There he is, boss! There's the little shit that beat me up while I was trying to complete the task." Slurred the drunk voice from the convenience store. The doors had opened and from the outside entered twelve men, armed with blunt melee weapons. "You the punk that f***ed up our routine protection money hustle?" asked a deep baritone voice from the front. A fat, barrel-chested man stepped forward from behind the first man in line.
"Yijin, what happened?" Juanbei asked.
"I messed with a coward who ran off for help, I guess. Don't worry, I'll be fine. They're no match for a matchless man." Yijin said proudly as he stepped up to them.
"I see you aren't as spineless as I thought you were. I'll still make you pay, but you got guts." The fat man said. He held up his bat to his shoulder and all of them entered a fighting stance. "You all interrupted me on the path to enlightenment. I'll make you regret it." The thugs laughed when they heard the word enlightenment and charged forward, slamming and lunging their weapons at Yijin. Juanbei shouted as he watched.
"Yijin!"
In a moment, a flash of corrupted, dark Qi emerged from within Yijin as he burst the weapons around him. His voice sounded distorted as he began to speak.
"This will be very fun." His pupils elongated into the shape of a very fine, vertical ellipse. He held out his hands and felt the Qi create almost gauntlets of dark energy on his fists. He moved in less than half a second and appeared behind the leader. "Too slow, tubby!" He laughed malevolently and slammed his fist into the back of the man's head.
The thug fell to the ground bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth. Yijin then dashed to one side and slammed six side kicks at flash-step speed of succession and knocked another man to the ground, writhing in pain. Yijin leaped upwards. "I guess it's time to end this shit." His gauntlets transformed into a singular Qi Bokken and he used the Twelfth Stage of the Soul of the Unknown Swordsman as he dashed forward. "Pains of Regret!"
He shouted as he made an immense amount of shadow slices in every direction to the front and behind him. Juanbei watched in fear at the amount of dark energy being emitted from the body of the sixteen year old boy. He suddenly shouted. "Release!" He made one single vertical downward slash as the blunt Qi slammed itself into every one of the remaining thugs.
He stood over the drunkard from before. His pupils still had not reverted to their original form.
"Demon! Get away from me! Stay back! Stay back!" He shouted, his face expressing the utmost fear possible. Yijin stepped closer and closer, the blade had not dissipated as Yijin rose it upward and was about to slam it down on the drunkard. He suddenly felt something clasp onto his arm. "Yijin. That's enough." Yijin looked at the hand on his arm and saw the light Qi emanating from Juanbei's hand.
It began to illuminate the skin that had been covered by dark Qi only moments ago. Yijin's pupils reverted and his body's Qi halted its onslaught. The bokken dissipated and the drunkard sprinted away as quickly as he could. "So you are a master of the Qi. More surprisingly, a master... of the Light." Yijin spoke as he looked at Juanbei in content and suddenly dropped to the ground.
"Poor kid. I imagine what hatred and sorrow must be hidden in his soul right now."
Juanbei carried the unconscious bodies of the thugs outside and left Yijin on a cot in the back of the academy before leaving and locking the place up.
"He won't wake up until noon tomorrow after letting his body go to the black Qi."