Chapter : 21
South Pole (1)
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What happened to us... and how long have we been out of it?
The powerhouses and clansmen groaned from their current state and rubbed their foreheads.
A pounding headache consumed their minds and all memory of what happened was gone. It was like a fog rolled through their memories and wiped it all clean, even the name of Qing Tian.
Qing Feng coughed up a mouthful of blood and shuddered in pain. His eyes had shifted instinctively to the ruins of the Enforcement Hall. Inside the wreckage, there lay his son, Qing Tian, untouched, without a single scratch or bruise.
A chill crept up Qing Feng's spine. He reached up with a trembling hand to touch his neck and remembered the pressure...remembered being crushed because of the inherent powers of one's father and son being neglected as unworthy of one another.
He had almost been killed, in a way, by his own son with nothing more than instinct.
He was lost in a state of confusion. What happened? Why couldn't he remember?
As he turned around, he saw that Ji Yuyue lay next to him, in a heap, unconscious, her aura out of sorts.
Every single top powerhouse also had begun to move around him. Each had a look of confusion, like Qing Feng. Each was trying to remember, but whatever had just happened was all in some empty void. It was as if the heavens had taken that reality right out of their minds.
Everyone was gone. No one wanted to stay. They felt fear. Fear of what they did not know. Fear of what was unexplainable. Quietly, they got themselves together, readjusting their robes, and vacated the area of the clan grounds, piece by piece, they did not want to stay where such venomous event had happened.
The ruins of the clan, moved, Qing Tian began to stir. Eyes barely opening, he found he was under a clear sky.
The clouds moved gently, a calm sky … yet his mind was empty.
His memories were gone.
"What… happened?"
He stared at the endless blue sky above him and finally got up with the pain in his body.
Suddenly, a sharp pain sliced through his chest, splintering the delicate calm.
"Aunt… where is my Aunt…?"
The faded image of Song Yan's final moments, her bloody body resting in his lap, her shaking hand grasping his, flashed brightly in his head.
YHowever everything after… nothing!
Just an empty space!
The more he tried to remember, the more the emptiness expanded, as though someone had carved that space out of his soul, with only a hollow loss remaining, with no truth to hold.
His breath started to come fast. His fists were clenched until his nails dug into his skin.
Something was wrong, and it was very wrong.
Thinking of this, firstly he searched the body of Song Yan, but he didn't find even a single bit of anything belonging to her.
When he was searching, suddenly he stopped and looked at the two persons in front of him.
They were his parents (in name only).
"You could save her... right...?"
"But why did you let her die...?"
Looking at them and asking like this almost frightened Qing Feng, and especially seeing the same emotion Qing Tian released that time, he even took a step backward in fear of his heart.
Ji Yuyue had just begun to stir, her eyelashes fluttering, when Qing Tian's raspy voice pierced the ruined stillness in the Enforcement Hall.
The boy's small body racked as he swayed slightly, but the killing intent leaking out of his eyes was anything but small, his eyes opened wide and locked onto Qing Feng and Ji Yuyue heavily, like a mountain pressing down.
Each word was slow, heavy, like knives pressing against their throats.
"You don't know...she was the only one that cared about me?"
Qing Feng's lips trembled.
He wanted to say something, but his throat felt like ash.
His memory loss left him blind to what had just happened, but the primal instinct inside him screamed that this was not a good idea to provoke his son.
He opened his mouth, but as soon as he did, Qing Tian's eyes blazed crimson, and the boy's aura erupted again, a child of eight radiating the despair of a man who had lost everything in this world.
Qing Feng stumbled backward, his breath catching in his throat.
Why... why am I afraid of my own son?
The young man's hands clenched so tightly that blood trickled down his palms.
"If the two of you... are truly my parents..." His voice cracked, torn between a child's despair and a devil's vengeance. "...then why do I feel like I came from aunt Song?"
The air around him distorted. The ground shattered at his feet.
Although his memories were broken, the pain, the empty wound carved into his soul, was too real to deny.
He took another step forward and his aura pressed down upon Qing Feng and Ji Yuyue like the onslaught of a tidal wave.
"Tell me..." His young voice vibrated with venomous intensity.
"Are you worthy of being my parents?"
The air crackled with Qing Tian's utterance. His diminutive body stood tall, his aura, flaring like a tempest, crimson eyes alight. His gaze boring holes into Qing Feng and Ji Yuyue.
Ji Yuyue's face contorted. Rage coursed through her veins, a mixture of rage and a trace of fear she could not accept.
"Enough!" she shouted, her delicate jade hand shaking with rage.
"A child treats this way, and speaks this way to his parents? To me?!"
Before Qing Tian had a moment to draw breath, her palm whipped out.
PAH!!!
The slap reverberated like thunder throughout the demolished Enforcement Hall.
Qing Tian's head pivoted to one side, the rest of his body staggered. Blood sprayed from his lips.
Before his vision faded, before his knees buckled, he glared with that stubborn, defiant crimson light.
Ji Yuyue's heart wavered for a split second, and coulnd't help but think.
Why... why does his gaze disturb me?
Suppressing that feeling, she pumped spiritual force into her hand and swung again, not to injure, but to put an end to his resistance.
A heavy force hit Qing Tian's forehead. His young body jolted violently before falling to the ground with a dull thud.
Unconscious.
The killing intent, the volcano like energy instantly disappeared. All that remained was silence as if even the world had sighed.
Ji Yuyue stood above her fainted son, her hand still shaking. It was no longer the case that all of the sense of unease in her heart arose out of her unease about Qing Tian, but rather, she clenched her fist tightly, suppressing the feeling.
"Disobedient child," she said with a cold voice, though her voice was wavering at the edges.
"He must learn who is the elder and must respect."
Qing Feng gazed at his son who was now a motionless body on the ground and was filled with an unexplainable, strange, and suffocating dread.
The Enforcement Hall smoldered in ruins, but the true silence was in the hearts of those who remained
Several of the elders were gathered beneath the remains of the broken pillars, looking down repeatedly at the unconscious figure of Qing Tian.
The small child's body lay stretched across the rubble, the rise and fall of the boy's chest barely visible.
He looked innocuous, even delicate now, but every elder here remembered the bone, chilling terror of moments before. The crimson gaze. The raging aura. The feeling that stood before them was not a child, but rather a disaster.
And yet… when they attempted to remember the details, their minds turned to mist.
Elder Mu's face was still pale, his beard quivering as ran his fingers through it. His voice was leaden, filled with an anxiety he would not give name too:
"This child… he should not exist. But even the heavens have erased what was. Perhaps this is a warning. To kill him outright may… bring calamity to the clan."
Qing Gu, who stood directly behind him, grinded his teeth. His disdain towards Song Yan had already been directed at Qing Tian. He whispered harshly:
"Elder Mu, if we leave him to live, it shall only sow a larger disaster. He at least has the mark of that witch. And if his... odds get weirder as he gets older, then what? Will we just wait for him to be powerful enough to put us all under ground?"
Another elder spoke up, Elder Zhong, whose face was as wrinkled as a walnut and stone cold as ice:
"Hmph. You are not wrong, Qing Gu. But did you not feel it? That power is not the boy's own. There is something... else supporting him. Even Qing Feng himself was suppressed for a moment. If we kill him now, we will probably have retaliation from that unknown source. It is too much risk."
The circle went silent. Each elder weighed their greed, their apprehension, their want to simply rid themselves of the boy.
At last Ancestor Qing Heng, began to speak again in a grave tone of finality,
"Then he shall neither live... nor die. If he is calamity, we shall bury him where calamity cannot grow."
The other elders turned and waited.
"The South Pole of the Desolate Mystic World," Elder Mu said, his eyes sparkling. "The coldest desert in the heavens. Eternal ice. No life, no warmth, no spiritual energy. Not even the Divine's blessing can favor that place. If he survives, it will be by his own will. If he dies, the world takes him, we do not."
Qing Heng smirked slightly, his hatred somewhat mitigated.
"Exiled into the Frozen Hell of the south…that would be worse than death."
When Ji Yuyue and Qing Feng heard, they paused for a moment, but they didn't said anything afterward.
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I wanted to carry this part little bit fast, after all, it is too slow in the early phase. And not only, but also the first volume of the book is about to end!
End of the chapter!!