Chapter : 18
I will not kneel!!
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"Qing Tian, she is just a maid of the clan and a lowly class person. How could you, as the second young master of one of the five strongest clans, the Qing Clan, accept her as your mother? Don't you have shame, or do you not care about your reputation and the clan's?" Ji Yuyue, who was already frowning at it, erupted when she heard Qing Tian call a maid his mother.
And how could Ji Yuyue herself accept someone else taking a mother's position in her own son's heart? Because of this, her aura erupted, destroying the entire Enforcement Hall.
As soon as Ji Yuyue's words about genocide landed, her aura exploded like a tempest with enough force to crush air.
The entirety of the Enforcement Hall shuddered and began to crack as if her aura was enough to rip the first two planes of reality apart.
Pillars shattered, the flagstones grinned and sagged, and the disciples who were present to watch fairly spat out their blood and retreated backward in terror, while they didn't even the courage to look up.
However, Qing Tian remained still in the middle of that storm and pressing pressing on his shoulder.
His small body, the body of a mere eight year old, it looked fragile against such a suffocating suppression, but his wide open black eyes burned with greater flame than any inferno, full of incomprehensible sorrow and wrath.
He didn't even look to Ji Yuyue at the assault, that she was doing as his biological mother.
He just gripped Song Yan's hand tighter, his small shoulders trembling.
And with that cracked, hoarse voice, he roared:
"Mother... she is the one, who raised me...from the birth, the one who protected me till now and held me when no one else did! The one to gave me everything she had when she had nothing! If you can't understand my reasoning for this... then are you even worthy of being classified as my parents?"
The words Qing Tian's hit like a thunder to the people present there.
Ji Yuyue's expression darkened and the veins on forehead twitched.
She felt, she was deeply humiliated as this was beyond mere rebellion, it was humiliation for her.
"You insolent child!!" Her voice exploded like thunder in the hall.
"You, for a mere maid, you dare to defy your mother, the Matriarch of the Qing Clan?! You, for a mere maid, dare to shame your father and clan's name in front of the elders?!"
Her aura expanded, doubled...., tripled; like a collapsing heaven, crashing down around him. The elders, were already started to shaking from the pressure of the Ji Yuyue, nearly knelt down over.
But the Qing Tian, at the center of it all was solid in his stance, even as blood oozing from the corners of his lips and nose, while even his knees were shaking.
An unseen force stirred quietly around him. Something hidden, something old, something unfathomable, like a thread of the universe itself was trying to protect him.
But even this force no longer trembled in Ji Yuyue's anger.
Finally, Qing Feng, who had been silent until now, get and stepped forward.
His face was bleak and, his were eyes complicated with the feeling.
He lifted his palm to Ji Yuyue.
"Enough." His voice was heavy anf full of majesty.
"This is not the place. He is merely a child. No matter your grievance, do not strike here and lose the shame."
"Child?" Ji Yuyue's voice was a whip, cold without any affection toward the Qing Tian.
She stared at Qing Tian, whose tiny frame was still refusing to fold. "No... this is not a child. This is a seed of defiance that will eventually destroy our clan if he doesn't put a stop to it. And it was all because of that damned maid!"
In one fluid motion, she did what was easy for her to do in the state her form was taking. She elevated her hand, gathering a palm of terrifying qi towards Song Yan's barely-breathing body.
Qing Tian's eyes widened. His cuore split. He leapt forward instinctively with both arms extended in front of Song Yan, his small body walling off his friend's barely-breathing body.
"Touch her, and I will swear, I'll never forgive you, even if you are my parents!!!"
These words boomed up to the heavens of the Enforcement Hall.
Even Elder Mu and the other Elders turned pale, unable to believe the amount of killing intent and defiance pouring out of a mere eight-year-old child.
In that moment, Qing Tian's body glowed brighter as if it were more than just a kid; the overhead lamp appeared as bright as the sun when a volcano burst open the ground.
"This... this pressure..." one elder stammered as he held his chest and broke into a cold sweat that drenched his robes. "How... how can an eight-year-old release such force...? And not to mention, he didn't have that cultiavation!"
Before anyone could say any word, Qing Feng, Patriarch of the Qing Clan finally moved agaiin.
"ENOUGH!!!"
His voice reverberated throughout the hall like the very heavens collapsing.
He pushed his palm down and the terrifying force of his will covered everything in the hall.
The full might of a patriarch, at the peak of the Dao manifestation of the Saint King Realm , suddenly weighed down as heavily as a mountain.
Then, there was an explosion .
Qing Tian's golden aura rushed against the patriarch's will.
When the two wills collided it shook the beams of the hall, launched tiles from the floor crashing down, and cloaked the entire clan grounds in unnatural black swirling clouds.
"Qing Tian!" Qing Feng's voice soared above chaos that brewed in the hall and draped itself in heavy restraint and suppressed anger.
"Do you have the nerve to release killing intent on the, on your own parents? On the clan that gave you life?"
But instead of shrinking back at their words, Qing Tian raised his head.
His eyes, swollen with tears, but it was burning bright with golden flames, glared at Qing Feng defiantly.
"You... who claim to be my father? Did you take care of me when I bled? Did you care for me when they laughed at me, spat at me, treated my like trash? Did you hold me when I couldn't even listen, or did she?" His trembling hand pointed back at Song Yan, broken and bleeding in mid-air.
His voice wobbled, but echoed louder than patriarchal might.
"She is my mother!! You? You are not worthy of that name?!"
The elders gasped in shock.
Even, Ji Yuyue froze for a moment, her face contorting between rage and disbelief.
Qing Feng's palm scrambled just slightly, yet he pressed down harder with his pressure. "Insolence! Even if she raised you, even if she gave her life, she was a servant. The blood in your veins is mine. Do not forget who you are, Qing Tian!!"
Once again a thunderous voice spilled from Qing Tian, saturated in sorrow and a sense of rebellion.
"If blood makes me your son, then I wish I had none and never born in this clan, who see the interest only!"
PAAHH!!!
A resounding smack rang out loud enough across the Enforcement Hall to cause Qing Tian to fly sideways off his feet to the stone floor.
It was from a son's palm smashing across a father's cheek.
It was no surprise if Qing Tian was dazed, but blood dripped thickly from his lip, his cheek swelled bright red, yet his eyes... his eyes pierced through them cold and dangerous.
"Kneel." Qing Feng stated with fury in his voice, His aura was like a weight, bear down on him like the collapse of a mountain range.
"Kneel before your parents! Kneel or I will cripple your cultivation where you stand!"
Even so, Qing Tian trembled, fists pressing into the cracked stones of the hall. Faced with devastation, the boy pushed back up.
His legs were shaken violently with horror under the will of suppression, but they did not bend.
His knees hovered inches from before touching the broken marble on the ground.
"I... will not kneel." He spoke hoarsely and the tone was bleak, but the not the determination.
PAAHHH!!!
Another slap resounded, but this time from Ji Yuyue.
The rage and embarrassment caused her beautiful face to be contorted in fury and her aura billowed uncontrollably, "YOU UNFILIAL WRETCH! HOW DARE YOU DISGRACE US, DISGRACE THE QING CLAN, BY CALLING A SERVANT OF OURS YOUR MOTHER!"
Qing Tian's head snapped to one side as blood spurted from his mouth and his vision faded. He could feel his knees give way underneath the immense spiritual pressure.
But somehow... he was still fighting against the pressure. His body was small and there was a faint light from within him, almost as if something was powering his resistance from the inside out.
With his voice failing again, the words burst from him with jagged desperation:
"You can break my bones... burn my body... but I will never kneel to those who abandoned me!!!"
Qing Feng's hand shook. In an instant, he didn't see an eight year old boy; he saw a person standing tall and stone-faced against heaven and the whole world.
Ji Yuyue narrowed her eyes. Her voice shaking with anger and incredulity:
"You would really rather die than kneel, even if it means your own life?!"
Qing Tian looked up, his face swollen and bleeding, his eyes ablaze with golden fire.
"Yes."
Wiping out the blood that was oozing from the mouth, he smiled, but it was full of mockery toward them.
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[End of the chapter,18]