Damn it! He had been tricked!
Xu Zirong’s face immediately darkened.
The pressure on his body was not particularly strong. For an eight-year-old child like him, it felt rather like carrying an extra five jin of weight. It was neither light nor terribly heavy, just within an ordinary person’s ability to bear. But climbing a mountain under that burden was hardly going to be ‘a little tiring.’ It would be exhausting!
Xu Zirong pressed his lips together and added another entry against Xu Ziyan in the little account book in his heart. He rolled his shoulders and neck, adjusted himself into a more comfortable posture, then started climbing with that heavy ‘load’ on his back.
As the stone steps continued upward, Xu Zirong’s footsteps grew heavier and heavier.
Large beads of sweat slid down his forehead. The mountain path that he had expected to be easy now seemed anything but.
He had forgotten that he was no longer the mighty demonic cultivator of his previous life who could summon wind and rain. He was only an eight-year-old child. By a stroke of fortune, he had sensed spiritual energy yesterday, but his body remained frail.
Step by step…
Xu Zirong’s once rosy lips had gone pale. Bent beneath the weight, he felt sweat run into his eyes and sting them.
His vision blurred, and the summit seemed to recede farther and farther away. He did not even understand why he insisted on continuing. With his abilities, he could cultivate the Blood Sea Heart Scripture on his own, even without entering the training grounds.
A voice seemed to whisper over and over in his mind: Why bother? Why waste time in the Xu family? They were destined to be nothing more than stepping stones. All he had to do was find a safe place, kill a few rabbits, and he could reach the first level of Qi Refining. Once he became strong, the Xu family would be nothing but cattle and sheep waiting for slaughter. He could kill them whenever he wished.
Xu Zirong silently set his face, lending his delicate little features a sharp, striking beauty.
He bit his lower lip and stared at the blurry summit ahead. A fierce unwillingness to surrender welled up inside him.
In his previous life, he had never even been given the opportunity to come here. This time the chance stood before him. Was he really going to give up just because he could not endure the climb?
If he did, even he would despise himself! Would that not prove that he really was worthless?
Xu Zirong squeezed his eyes shut, drew a deep breath, then snapped them open!
Countless torments had failed to crush his determination to grow stronger. What was one little mountain path in comparison?
Step after step, his heavy, slow footsteps moved steadily toward the summit. Unbeknownst to him, Xu Ziyan was confronting a sallow-faced, burly man with an icy expression.
“Why?” Xu Ziyan demanded, furious. He had known the mountain path would be difficult, but the pressure Xu Zirong was enduring clearly exceeded anything he had anticipated.
The sallow-faced man cast him a flat glance. “Young Master seems to have forgotten. Those are the rules.”
“What rules?!” Xu Ziyan snapped. The original owner had never gotten along with this man. Xu Ziyan strongly suspected he was using this opportunity to settle a grudge.
The man’s expression remained unchanged as he spoke with a sneer. “Young Master is the family head’s son, blessed with extraordinary talent, and certain to enter a great sect someday. Our little training hall would never dare delay your cultivation. But Xu Zirong does not have your gift. According to Xu family rules, children brought in from outside the household must endure twice the normal pressure before they are permitted to enter the training hall. Only those who pass qualify.”
“But he’s only eight!” Xu Ziyan remembered that the Xu family did indeed have such a rule, but it was intended for ten-year-old children.
The sallow-faced man glanced at him. “Then Young Master may bring him back when he turns ten.”
Xu Ziyan was speechless with anger. He was twelve this year, while Xu Zirong was only eight.
When Xu Ziyan turned fifteen, the Flowing Light Sect, which stood behind the Xu family, would be recruiting disciples. With his talent, Xu Ziyan would certainly be accepted. But Xu Zirong would be only eleven then. If he did not begin cultivating until the age of ten, his Three Spiritual Roots meant that even practicing day and night would probably take him no higher than the third level of Qi Refining. The Flowing Light Sect would never accept someone with those qualifications and that cultivation.
But if Xu Ziyan did not take him along, he feared the other Xu family members would bully Xu Zirong after he left. What if they drove the boy onto the demonic path all over again?
Was he supposed to repeat the original owner’s fate, cultivating at the Flowing Light Sect only to hear that the entire Xu family had been massacred?!!
Absolutely not! When he left the Xu family, he had to take Xu Zirong with him. Otherwise someone else might lead his little brother astray all over again.
And given Father Xu’s personality, Xu Ziyan certainly could not leave the boy in his hands!!
Xu Ziyan’s face was livid, but the sallow-faced man was only enforcing the rules. As the saying went, without rules there could be no order. However furious Xu Ziyan was, he could not simply break them. All he could do was pray inwardly and watch Xu Zirong stagger upward, swaying with every few steps, until he finally reached the summit.
The instant both Xu Zirong’s feet touched the summit, Xu Ziyan rushed forward and caught him before he could collapse. Only after examining him anxiously from head to foot did he breathe a little easier.
He turned to the sallow-faced man, his expression unfriendly. “Is that enough now?”
The man remained impassive. “He has passed the Immortal Ascension Steps. Of course he qualifies.”
Xu Ziyan ground his teeth inwardly. People who clung rigidly to rules were the most infuriating of all. Unfortunately, most of the time, people like that were also necessary.
Carrying the half-conscious Xu Zirong, he hurried toward a small wooden hut. Injuries sometimes occurred at the training hall, so the Xu family maintained a physician there on permanent assignment.
After Xu Ziyan left, the sallow-faced man raised his eyebrows by an almost imperceptible degree.
The young master was extraordinarily gifted but usually imperious and arrogant. Relying on his aptitude, he often skipped the training hall’s lessons and showed very little respect to its instructor, this same sallow-faced man.
Yet Xu Ziyan’s conduct today had surprised the instructor, Xu Mo. In the past, the eldest young master had tolerated no contradiction. Even if he could not defy Xu Mo, he would certainly have hurled abuse at him. Today, he had merely glared in anger without uttering a single curse. How… intriguing.
Had Xu Ziyan known Xu Mo’s thoughts, his face would have been covered in black lines. Did the man have masochistic tendencies or something…?
Only after the physician confirmed that Xu Zirong had collapsed from overexertion and exhaustion did Xu Ziyan relax.
It was their first day at the training hall. If Xu Zirong took a dislike to the Xu family’s training grounds already, that would be terrible. Xu Ziyan remembered perfectly well that the novel depicted the boy as vindictive, suspicious, and vicious. The novel was told from Bai Hua’s viewpoint and might not be entirely reliable, but combined with the original Xu Ziyan’s memories, it was obvious that a child who had suffered so much could understandably develop such a personality.
Understanding was one thing, however. Xu Ziyan could do nothing about the way Xu Zirong had turned out in his previous life, but in this life he was the boy’s older brother, and he absolutely would not allow him to grow into one of those legendary unbearable brats!
“Big Brother?” Xu Zirong slowly opened his eyes. His large, watery eyes blinked up at Xu Ziyan.
In fact, he had not fainted. The pressure on the mountain path was heavy but had not pushed him to his absolute limit. The moment he reached the top, though, he saw Xu Ziyan’s concerned expression. He did not know why, but the urge to test him arose. So he closed his eyes and fell.
The cold ground never reached him. Instead, two warm arms caught and supported him, lifted him up, and carried him to this room filled with the clean fragrance of medicinal herbs.
Xu Zirong found it strange. Astonishingly, he felt a trace of warmth in his heart, which had long since turned cold.
How peculiar. He had not felt that warmth for decades in his previous life, yet now he was finding it in the very person he regarded as his enemy.
He mocked his own weakness inwardly. Had becoming a child again affected him so much? Was he beginning to search once more for a thing called warmth, something that did not even exist?
“Are you all right, Zirong? Does anything hurt?” Xu Ziyan asked gently, his voice carrying the clear, bright quality peculiar to a young boy.
“I’m fine.” Xu Zirong shook his head. A flicker of doubt crossed his mind, but he put on a curious expression. “Big Brother, why did my body suddenly feel heavier while I was climbing the mountain?”
“Heh.” Xu Ziyan smiled. “That path you walked is called the Immortal Ascension Steps. It’s a magical treasure.”
Xu Zirong’s pupils contracted sharply. A magical treasure?!! How had he never known the Xu family possessed a magical treasure in his previous life??
“Is the treasure very powerful?” Xu Zirong instantly became the picture of a curious child. He had a vague feeling that the Xu family was hiding many things he knew nothing about.
In his previous life, after slaughtering the entire Xu family, he had stripped their storehouses bare. Yet the most valuable items he found were merely a few magical artifacts. He had assumed the clan was too weak to possess anything better. Now it seemed that might not be true…
No wonder…
Understanding suddenly dawned on Xu Zirong. No wonder Xu Ziyan’s cultivation had advanced faster, not slower, after the Xu family was annihilated. He had originally assumed Xu Ziyan had encountered some fortuitous opportunity. Now it seemed far more likely that he had obtained the Xu family’s secret treasure hoard.
“Of course this magical treasure is powerful,” Xu Ziyan said with a smile. “It can be controlled to impose different levels of pressure. Ahem… speaking of that, Big Brother owes you an apology. I didn’t tell you beforehand because I thought you would face the same pressure I did. It would have been uncomfortable, but certainly not enough to make you faint. However, Xu family rules require children in your position to endure double the pressure before entering the training hall.”