After falling towards his death for over an hour, Raider's mindset had gone through countless changes. You could say that knowing he was about to die had broadened his mind. But now, this moment he had been waiting for did not happen. His insides shook as the only thing he knew for certain would happen did not happen.
While Raider was frozen in shock due to still being alive, the strange force that had prevented him from crashing to his death suddenly disappeared.
Raider's body hit the ground and the slight pain he felt jolted him to his senses. He stood up slowly and observed himself. He was a little dusty but his hands were just as he remembered them. He slowly patted himself down and confirmed what he could not believe.
He was still alive!
Raider did not have a good life. From his youngest age he had been treated as a slave by every single clan member at all times. Never had anyone shown any compassion or goodwill towards him. He could observe the happiness and prosperity of others from afar, but never be a part of it.
He didn't enjoy living.
Falling for such a long time really had changed his perspective on life. He knew he had nothing to lose! Death would be more of a relief to a person like him!
He had come to realise that and even accept it, almost being hopeful for it. But now that he hadn't died, he didn't feel regret, but relief.
He realised that no matter how much he didn't enjoy life, he didn't want to die. He had found a new taste for life.
As his resolve to live grew, his eyes finally adapted to the light enough for him to observe his surroundings.
He was surprised to discover that there were symbols on the rocky walls. They weren't engraved into the wall but painted, and almost seemed as if they were wiggling. Moreover, they seemed to be painted directly out of light.
They were causing the surroundings to be so bright.
Raider knew these were probably symbols used to place formations or enchantments because he had seen similar things in the settlement. However, the symbols he had seen there were nothing like the ones in front of him right now.
The symbols in and around the village were dim and flickering, sometimes even invisible to non cultivators. Plus, they didn't emit any light, they were condensed from water. The weaker ones were even still in a vaporous state.
The symbols here were like solid light. It was incomparable.
There was a single tunnel connected to the infinite abyss Raider had just fallen through. This tunnel was illuminated by magical symbols and seemed to be the origin of them all.
With no way back up, this was the only way for Raider to proceed. It might've been his imagination, but he felt almost drawn to the tunnel, maybe because it was the only way for him to live, or maybe because something inside was calling him.
As he started to walk down the tunnel, the people in the Barren Settlement were still on high alert.
Even after a couple of hours passed, they still didn't dare to release the alert. After all, the safety of their settlement was at stake in their minds. This could not be taken lightly.
If someone had come and taken their slave without any traces it meant three things for sure:
One, they knew where the settlement was.
Two, they had information about the Clan.
Three, they were at least as powerful as Clan Chief Soho.
Someone with these means could possibly bring about the end of their Clan and settlement. Better safe than sorry!
Back in the tunnel of glowing symbols, Raider was feeling more things at once than he had ever felt in his life. After the interminable fall, an endless walk awaited him. He was afraid of the unknown but determined to survive, restless from the fall and the walk but glad to be alive. Most of all, he was growing curious. Just what was at the end of this tunnel?
A couple of hours had passed since the clan people had returned after their investigation but it was difficult for Raider to measure time in his environment. Slowly but surely, he progressed deeper and deeper into the tunnel and the symbols on the wall grew more numerous and condensed.
Eventually, he reached the end of the tunnel.
There was nothing there except for a complete skeleton laying neatly on the ground and arranged in a peculiar fashion with the skull in the center and the rest of the bones in a sort of formation around it.
The magical symbols on the walls here were so dense that you couldn't discern them anymore, they seemed to blend together in a way that made the stone seem like a wall of light.
Raider observed the skeleton. Faint light seemed to glow from it in resonance with the magical symbols around it. It was as if the skeleton was the source of the symbols. In fact, Raider had a faint intuition that the symbols were placed here to seal or preserve this skeleton.
It was strangely beautiful. Every single bone was pure white, unsullied by time. There wasn't even a speck of dust on it. What should've been an eerie sight actually gave a holy feeling, like the skeleton of a God.
The light emitted by the skeleton was faint and soft but strangely hurt Raider's eyes when he looked directly at it. Even the blinding light from the magical symbols didn't have this effect.
It was as if no one was qualified to look at this skeleton.
However, as Raider approached the skeleton and looked at it, it seemed to feel his presence and grew a little brighter. The skull in the center shone more than the rest, as if something was inside of it.
Suddenly, as Raider arrived in front of the corpse, a body of light burst out from the skull and circled around Raider and the bones.
Raider felt like this blob of light could easily take his life if it wanted to. Slowly, the light came to hover above the skeleton and change shape.
After the time it takes to inhale and exhale once, the light had taken a humanoid shape.
Raider felt like it was the spirit of the skeleton, or maybe a soul that had possessed the skeleton after its death.
As the spirit congealed into a clear form, Raider could start to discern its features. It seemed like a human man, about thirty years old with a slender yet tall body. The man had long colourless hair, floating around even though there was no wind. His arms and legs were long and skinny and ended in long and thin extremities. He had no facial hair but extremely sharp eyes, nose and mouth. His expression was neutral yet seemed cold.
This man looked like an entity from the worst nightmares.
As the man took form, he opened his eyes with unconcealed joy. He gave the feeling of a kid receiving a present he had been dreaming of.
"Kid... I've been waiting for someone like you..." rejoiced the spirit in a raspy voice.
All of a sudden, it darted forward toward Raider and passed straight through his chest.
It paused for just a second before shooting back and passing through Raider again.
In the space of a few breaths, the spirit passed through Raider dozens of times before coming to a rest above the skull of the skeleton once more.
He looked intently at Raider for a moment, as if in thought.
He raised his hand mechanically and pointed at Raider.
At this moment, Raider was panicking. When the spirit passed through him he felt absolutely nothing and had no idea what was being done to him.
He was used to being tortured due to his identity as a slave.
But here, there was no torture, even though the man in front of him was clearly some sort of human looking devil. Raider had no idea what was happening and was expecting the worst; could it be poison? a curse? a time bomb of any kind?
To Raider, the worst part was the look on the spirit's face when it reappeared above the skeleton. Confusion.
Raider had seen this look before. In the past, he had received several types of attacks from cultivators. Some were physical attacks and hurt a lot, some were magical attacks and hurt more.
However, for some reason, Raider was immune to a few basic magical attacks. These were attacks that kids learned before and after reaching the Puddle Realm. The strangest thing was that he was immune to these techniques even when adults tried to use them on him.
When that happened, the same look would appear on their faces... and then a stronger attack would follow.
When the spirit raised its hand and pointed at him, Raider expected the worst.
His face clenched as he squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the pain. He knew there was no use in running or resisting, that would only make matters worse. Right now, all he hoped for was a quick punishment.
One spirit, high and mighty with its finger pointed at a child. One slave, bravely awaiting correction from an unknown entity. This scene held for about three breaths of time before Raider probingly opened his eyes.
Strangely, nothing was happening.
Once more, Raider couldn't feel anything.
The spirit looked visibly confused and retracted its finger and brought its hand to its chin as it went into deep thought again.
Any person in Raider's place would be relieved right now but he was actually horrified. For this devil spirit to fail twice in doing something to him meant that what would come next would be atrocious.
The closest times he had ever come to being beaten to death had been precisely those times when the clanspeople's attacks repeatedly failed when they tried to hurt him with magic. When that happened, they would fly into a rage and beat him up using physical attacks. There was no way for him to resist that.
"Brat who are you?" asked the spirit after pondering for a while.
"R..Raider! Slave of the Barren Settlement!" declared Raider, afraid to anger the spirit further.
"Raider... Barren Settlement... Where is that?" asked the spirit with a bit of a growl.
"I.. I'm not really sure... Somewhere in the East Canyon." replied Raider a little embarrassed.
As a slave, he was never taught much more than how to read and he didn't have the time or means to learn by himself. The little he knew came from tidbits of conversations he had overheard. He had never even seen a map, how would he know where the settlement was?
Raider couldn't tell anything from the expression of the spirit, even though he could see it quite clearly. The man only seemed to be in deep thought.
The spirit raised its gaze to examine Raider. The latter suddenly felt naked and that everything about him was completely revealed.
"Where do you come from?" asked the spirit.
"Um, here, the Barren Settlement is close to here..." said Raider hesitantly.
"Were you born there?"
"No... I don't know where I was born or who my parents are..." confessed Raider.
There was silence again for a moment as both Raider and the spirit thought about different things. Raider's fear was receding slowly, he didn't feel much aggression from the spirit.
He wondered exactly who this man was before his death. He had never seen this sort of thing in the settlement. He was fearful and slightly curious as to what would come next.
As for the spirit, he was actually in a state of shock. He was an expert that had lived for tens of thousands of years and had been dead for just as long, continuing his existence as a spirit bound to a skeleton in this formation instead of entering reincarnation.
He had lived through countless things and had seen countless people. He could tell, the boy in front of him was a simple cultivationless mortal without anything special about him.
In addition, the purpose of the formation around the skeleton was not only to help it survive and avoid detection but mostly to select a suitable candidate for possession. This was what he had tried to do earlier.
He could not figure out why it hadn't worked. His attempt to directly refine the boy hadn't worked either for some reason, but that reason was not apparent on the body of the boy in question at all!
How could there be such an ordinary person that was so extraordinary?
While the spirit thought about just what kind of person was in front of him, Raider wondered about the same thing.
The spirit did seem evil, and had tried to harm him in some way as far as he knew but its tone when speaking and its attitude from the beginning were never malicious. Raider felt like he was looking at an old man clinging to life.
The spirit suddenly broke the silence.
"Do you want to be able to cultivate?"