Chapter 54 Young Shen Zhou, can't you see? ...
The sect that Shen Zhou joined was called the Heavenly Mandate Sect.
It is said that the sect was founded by a group of people in the Dharma-ending Age who sought to recreate the Ascension Ladder in order to obtain divine mandate. However, thousands of years have passed, and the Ascension Ladder has yet to appear, so the Heavenly Mandate Sect has abandoned its original intention.
When Shen Zhou became an apprentice, he was assigned to the outer sect because he had only five spiritual roots and his aptitude was ordinary.
His younger sister, who possessed a single spiritual root, first went to the inner sect, and soon after, due to her outstanding performance, she was selected as a personal disciple.
Fortunately, Shen Zhou didn't have to wait too long. In the spring of the third year, the Ninth Elder, who was in charge of teaching the outer disciples, recognized his aptitude and personally taught him swordsmanship.
Amidst the rustling bamboo shadows of the mountain forest, a young man knelt respectfully, holding a sword in both hands.
The Ninth Elder stood with his hands behind his back and asked him, "Have you thought it through? Why do you want to wield the sword in this life?"
The boy answered neither humbly nor arrogantly, "To protect my family and friends."
The Ninth Elder frowned and shook his head, looking heartbroken: "Mere worldly thoughts, you'll never amount to anything! You'll kneel here today and figure this out for me."
The boy knelt for a whole day, and the next day when the Ninth Elder came to ask him, his answer remained unchanged.
So he knelt down day after day until the seventh day, when the Ninth Elder pointed his sword at him and asked in a deep voice, "I'll ask you one more time, why do you cultivate the Tao, and why do you wield a sword?"
The boy stood ramrod straight and answered expressionlessly, "To protect my family and friends."
The Ninth Elder's sword tip fell, turning into a sigh: "The world is unpredictable, but the way of the sword is constant. No matter how persistent you are now, they will all pass away one day. When that time comes, will you still be able to lift your sword?"
"That day will never come." The boy's expression was calm and resolute. "I will die before them."
The Ninth Elder said no more. From then on, he would often take him to the back mountain to teach him swordsmanship.
This action was quickly discovered by the other disciples of the outer sect, and the boy suffered even more severe bullying. He was injured almost every day, with scars piling up one after another. The Ninth Elder turned a blind eye, treating this as part of his training.
He didn't tell Chen Xi, presumably because even if he had, Chen Xi wouldn't have cared. But another friend of his, the chief disciple of the Heavenly Fate Sect, learned of this and immediately drew his sword to avenge him.
In the clips seen under the bright lights, that friend often wore blue, was handsome and dashing, and acted with a quick temper and a thirst for justice, which was the complete opposite of Shen Zhou's cold silence, yet they got along surprisingly well.
She seemed to hear Shen Zhou call him something like "Ze Jing," but the memory was too fragmented and vanished in an instant.
Spring came and autumn went, and two years passed. The selection of inner disciples was about to begin. That friend brought wine to find Shen Zhou to celebrate in advance.
They both had a great time drinking that night.
The next day, however, the Heavenly Mandate Sect received news that their disciple, Shen Zhou, had secretly learned forbidden techniques and killed more than ten disciples who had bullied him in one night, thus betraying the sect.
He mastered the six forbidden techniques of the Heavenly Fate Sect in one night. Although he was unable to use them due to his cultivation level, he was still able to crush cultivators of the same level as him.
Neither his friends, his sister, nor the Ninth Elder ever imagined he would have such an ability, and he never showed any talent other than swordsmanship, seemingly uninterested in anything.
Everyone lamented his self-destruction, but Hua Deng knew why he did it.
Just a few days ago, he received a message from Chen Xi that their mother was determined to break through her cultivation level and attempt to reach the Divine Transformation Realm.
Therefore, he learned six forbidden techniques, but his real purpose was only one—the Nine Revolutions of Heaven and Earth Technique, to exchange his life for another.
The second month after leaving the clan, he returned home to see his mother.
He had advised his mother against undergoing the tribulation, as she had been injured repeatedly over the past ten years, her body was weakened, and she had no protective artifacts. Her chances of surviving the lightning tribulation were less than 50%.
But this time, he said nothing, only quietly watching the woman in the room holding her father's memorial tablet.
The woman placed the memorial tablet in front of him and coldly ordered, "Kneel down!"
The boy calmly asked, "Why should I kneel?"
The woman said sternly, "You have disgraced your father's teachings!"
"Admonition?"
The boy smirked, the mocking curve of his lips growing wider, and undisguised hatred surfaced in his dark eyes.
"Why should I listen to his teachings? He's a useless piece of trash."
The woman's expression froze, staring at him in disbelief: "What did you say?"
"Did I say something wrong?" The boy pressed forward instead of backing down, all his emotions suddenly erupting. "You're always looking at him, always looking at him! But what has he given us? Nothing! He can't protect you and Chen Xi, he's just a piece of trash!"
Under his mother's astonished gaze, he spoke coldly and resolutely.
“A few years ago, a group of people chased us to our doorstep. You were so badly injured that I thought you were going to die. I carried you around and went everywhere to ask for doctors, but no one was willing to save you! In the end, I used the magic I had just learned to save your life.”
"Another time, Chen Xi was almost kidnapped. Those people twisted three of her fingers off. What were you thinking at that time? I only know that I wished I could go back in time and kill your husband, my father, before he married you."
The more he spoke, the more pained the woman's expression became. She trembled with anger and slapped him across the face, yelling, "Shut up!"
The boy wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and continued, "I know why you want to break through to the Nascent Soul stage. It's because your father was at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage before he died, and his lifelong wish was to reach an even higher level. He didn't succeed, so you have to—it's utterly ridiculous."
The woman closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she put down the memorial tablet in her hand, and a sword appeared in her palm.
“Your father died young and couldn’t teach you personally, and I… I’m an incompetent mother.”
She pointed her sword at her son, just as she had when dealing with those demonic cultivators.
"You stole forbidden techniques, slaughtered your fellow disciples, and show no remorse! Since you are determined to become an evil cultivator, then today, let me, your mother, discipline you, so that you will not bring disaster to the world in the future!"
The boy remained motionless as the sword pierced his collarbone, and his figure vanished from the spot.
"I forgot to mention," he said, "this is a clone technique; you don't seem to have noticed."
The woman stared in astonishment as he disappeared, as if looking at her own child for the first time.
At the same time, thousands of miles away, Shen Zhou lowered his head and covered the new wounds on his body.
His cultivation is not yet complete; the injury to his clone will still affect his main body.
Across from him, a disheveled old man in gray robes cast an indifferent glance and lazily chuckled, "Judging from the location of the injury, she probably didn't intend to kill you; she wanted to capture you."
The old man's forehead was dark, his neck veins were bulging, and his pupils were faintly glowing red—signs that only appear after many years of demonic possession.
Shen Zhou bandaged the wound expressionlessly and said, "I know."
The old man casually channeled a wisp of true energy into him and said, "What do you think now? Are you still coming with me?"
“Of course.” The wound healed quickly, and the boy smiled. “Let’s go, Master.”
*
The lights awoke with a headache.
After a moment of stunned silence, she finally remembered why the name "Heavenly Fate Sect" sounded somewhat familiar.
This is because it was a sect that was destroyed five thousand years ago and was completely swallowed up by the rising Qingyang Sect.
Moreover, the breakthrough to the Nascent Soul stage requires undergoing tribulations, something that only happened ten thousand years ago.
Hua Deng: "..."
She turned over and pinched Chen Zhou's face: "You'd better really be twenty-four. I don't like older men."
"It's true."
Shen Zhou woke up at some point and raised an eyebrow at her.
The scars on his body were still there, but they didn't look as serious. After examining him, Hua Deng breathed a sigh of relief, but then suddenly noticed something was wrong.
Shen Zhou's gaze fell on her face, his eyes as always, but the eyes he used to love looking at most were now half-closed, as if he was looking at something.
"You...can't see?" Hua Deng asked slowly.
When breaking through to a higher realm, one's true energy will become uncontrollable, resulting in the loss of all five senses; she still remembers this.
"Yes." Shen Zhou did not hide anything and answered casually, "I have opened my Heavenly Eye and can still see you, so don't worry."
"What about the other senses?"
“Taste is the first to fail, followed by smell, sight, hearing, and touch.” Shen Zhou smiled. “But I can also hear the wind, so I won’t be unable to hear you.”
Hua Deng silently hugged him, and after a while asked, "How long will it take to recover?"
Shen Zhou said, "At least one month."
Hua Deng cautiously reached for his eyes, but he grabbed her wrist. She whispered, "Is there any way to help you get better faster?"
Shen Zhou said, "Yes."
Hua Deng asked in surprise, "What is it?"
Shen Zhou said, "Just have a few more spiritual exchanges."
Hua Deng: "..."
She shouldn't feel sorry for that scumbag!
Angrily shaking off the scoundrel's hand, she kicked him, then pulled the blanket over herself and hid at the foot of the bed to show her protest.
Shen Zhou reached out to pull the blanket, deliberately grabbing her as if he wanted to have a spiritual connection with her. Hua Deng rolled away from his grasp and heard his unrestrained laughter.
His spirit never came over. Hua Deng realized what was happening and covered his head with the blanket, trying to smother him to death.
Unfortunately, she couldn't smother him completely. Shen Zhou collapsed onto the bed, laughing so hard he couldn't stand up straight.
She discovered that this person's threshold for laughter was high, like a robot, but when it was low, there was absolutely no limit to how much they could laugh.
And when I'm with her, I seem to laugh a lot more.
Hua Deng silently threw off the covers, put on her shoes, got out of bed, and ran out to play. A moment later, as she reached out to catch a butterfly on a petal, a cold wind blew, and the butterfly was swept away into the distance.
She didn't even need to turn around to know who was doing such a pointless thing.
She would take her fishing rod to the pond to fish, and fish food would mysteriously fall onto the bank, attracting all the fish away.
She would practice magic with the puppet, and the puppet would suddenly collapse to the ground, begging her for mercy with tears in its eyes.
Hua Deng felt like the female lead in a supernatural movie, always followed by a ghost. And to make matters worse, this ghost was incredibly annoying; she could only silently pray that he was injured and needed to be lenient, while secretly wishing she could beat him to death.
When she's not doing anything else and is just keeping him company in the room or yard, he becomes very quiet, holding her and letting her sit on his lap. He's no longer a nagging devil, but a clingy big cat.
Sometimes, through spiritual communion, she could sense the fluctuations in Shen Zhou's emotions, but she felt them very faintly. His anger and gloom were suppressed and buried deep within his consciousness, rarely emanating from him.
A few days later, when Hua Deng called his name, she realized he couldn't hear her. Although she didn't say anything, he quickly noticed, and after doing something, he turned around and smiled, saying, "Now you can. What do you want to say?"
Hua Deng put her arms around his neck from behind and said, "Shall we rest here for a few more days?"
He has so many enemies, she's worried about him going out like this now, even though perhaps no one in this world can hurt him.
Shen Zhou did not refuse.
However, Hua Deng never expected that she would be the first to regret her decision.
That night, Shen Zhou fed her the pill, and when she lay down on the bed, she was still a little dazed.
...The night of the full moon has arrived.
Shen Zhou held her ankle, kissed the skin on the inside of her calf, and chuckled, "You were the one who wanted to stay. I originally wanted to find another way to help you get through these nights, but since you insisted, I had no choice but to..."
"Wait, I'm not ready yet—take your hand away!" Hua Deng kicked him, and his other leg was also restrained.
He tilted his head and bit down, the wet mark winding down her leg and all the way to her lower abdomen.
The streetlights are wide open.
He looked up, panting, and chuckled softly, "Want to try something else?"
"What……"
"Anyway, I can't see or hear now... Don't you want to give it a try?" he asked in a seductive whisper.
Those dark eyes were dull and lifeless, unable to focus even in the light, but the area he was looking at quickly warmed up, turning crimson.
The streetlights obscured her eyes, and she struggled softly, "Don't..."
The words abruptly stopped, turning into an uncontrollable moan.
He seemed not to hear her at all, ignoring her words, and slowly lowered his head, pressing it against her lips as if kissing her other lip.
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