Chapter 1240 Ibn's Childhood
Ibn slowly stood up and walked slowly into the house under the gaze of everyone.
His movements were not fast, and could even be considered slow; his mood at the moment was not good, and he was even a little sad.
I don’t know whether I should thank the construction team that came to renovate the place, or laugh at Aziz’s short-sightedness and stupidity... The decoration here has hardly changed at all.
The missing corner of the table leg in the living room was accidentally chipped off when he was a child, brandishing his father's sword and pretending to be a hero. His mother scolded him at the time, but his father laughed and said that he would become a hero in the future.
The symbols carved on the corridor walls were the codewords my sister had drawn on the walls when she imagined herself joining the Sandthroat Cult and practicing communication with the rebels. Of course, these codes were all her own creation, not real codes. She had held the young Ibn in her arms at the time, explaining to him one by one what she had prepared for them.
A lion's head once hung above the broken hole in the living room... It was my father's greatest achievement, but after his death, my mother sold the lion's head and the golden scimitar that killed it. It wasn't for money—they weren't short of money, otherwise they wouldn't have lived in the Third Ring.
That's just because I don't want to attract too much attention and get into trouble.
Everything in front of me is so strange and familiar.
Ibn slowly walked towards the basement, and a hallucination seemed to appear before his eyes——
He seemed to see himself as a child, running around the living room playing with his sister;
He saw his sister holding him and teaching him to recognize words by pointing to the words on the “Rest in Peace”;
He saw his father leaning on a camel-skin sofa, drinking from a flat kettle and bragging to them about his recent achievements;
He seemed to hear his mother's gentle call and see her attachment and admiration for his father.
——That was a long time ago.
"I am not from a family of ritualists."
Suddenly, Old Iben whispered, "Ironically... my father was once the leader of the guards protecting the Old Good Lord and a superb 'demon hunter.' That's a promotional profession for hunters who are well-suited to the Tao."
"He once possessed a golden scimitar inlaid with a massive ruby, enchanted with flames. He had once slain an assassin in front of the Benevolent Master, earning him a public reward as a 'proof of his prowess.' He also used this scimitar to single-handedly defeat a three-meter-tall lion, presenting its whip to the Benevolent Master as a gift. He was later rewarded with a suit of armor."
...This is indeed surprising.
Even Aiwass looked at old Iben in surprise.
This is the story he has never told anyone - the story before he joined the Sandthroat rebels.
"It's ironic that my father was cursed to death."
Old Iben spoke slowly, walking to the side of the corridor and looking at the simple yet fully functional toilet. "When we found him in the early morning after sunrise... he was sitting on the toilet, spitting blood, his eyes wide open."
In Parthia, having one's own toilet and bathhouse meant one was considered respectable even among free citizens. This meant they had "free access to water." However, some slaves, in order to clean themselves, could only bathe in scalding sand.
But for old Iben, this was the beginning of countless nightmares.
"Heartbreaking curse?"
Aiwass recognized the curse.
Old Eben nodded.
He smiled sarcastically. "For a long time after that, I believed my father was cursed to death by those... 'untouchables.' I felt that my father was the Good Lord's invincible protector. If they couldn't kill him, they wouldn't be able to assassinate the Good Lord. Therefore, I didn't understand why my sister wanted to join the Sand Throat Sect, and we often quarreled.
"Later, my sister angrily showed me the evidence—the correspondence between my father and the Sand Throat Cult. It turned out that my father had always been a secret subordinate of the Sand Throat Cult... I was the son of a rebel.
"At the time... I couldn't accept it. I had always believed I was the son of a hero, a completely different person from those slaves. I once wanted to run away from home, leave this oasis city-state, and venture deep into the desert to adventure like the 'heroes' in those stories.
"Until my mother handed me my father's suicide note while crying."
"Suicide note?"
Even Haina realized something was wrong: "Can a cursed person leave a suicide note?"
"Because the Heartbreak Curse is not a strong curse."
Zhu Tang, a fellow Transcendent, explained, "It's closer to punishment than assassination. It transforms a person's intestines into venomous snakes, causing them to spasm and writhe. This can cause severe diarrhea and abdominal pain... The pain can cause people to writhe on the ground, or even bite their tongues off. This curse will last approximately four hours before affecting the heart, ultimately leading to death from cardiac arrest."
In other words, after realizing he was cursed in the middle of the night, Ibn's father endured the excruciating pain and wrote a suicide note before dying without a word. He even bit off his tongue without alerting his family.
What this means is self-evident.
However, for Iben, who was still a child... or rather, for Iben and his family, who had no knowledge of curses, the cause of his father's death was a mystery.
"My father wanted me to be a hero, just like the Sir Helechin in my name."
Old Ibn said softly, "When the Good Lord heard that my father had been cursed to death, he sent a large amount of gold and well-trained slaves as a token of his condolence. It was because of this gold that we were able to continue living in the Third Circle despite having lost our only source of income.
"I wanted to find out the truth about my father's death... so I joined the academy through the connections of my father's old friend. I wanted to learn how to become a ritualist... or a curse caster.
"This goal is really... too easy to achieve."
Old Iben smiled sarcastically.
As he spoke, he led a few people to the basement.
He looked at the floor-length mirror, and at the old man in the mirror who was very old, with white and curly hair and a hunched back, he was suddenly dazed.
He seemed to see himself through the mirror when he first opened the secret door: a handsome young man with black curly hair, oily green pupils, deep and bright eyebrows, and a thin beard.
The old man was silent for a long time before he recited aloud: "I swear to always look up at the sun, even if it shines on me the same way as others -"
As old Ibn swore an oath, he reached out and drew a symbol on the dusty mirror, then opened the secret door.
The floor-length mirror fixed on the wall suddenly glowed, and then the mirror disappeared, turning into a deep, dark passage.
(End of this chapter)
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