Within three months
(A branched skill has been created from the Heavenly Demon Records. Please grant it a name.)
"Hmm, let's see… the Four Beasts, which are also the Four Symbols. Let's call it Tai Yin Si Xiang."
(Tai Yin Si Xiang lvl1 has been recorded in the system logs. Since this technique was created by the host, its level will not increase unless trained.)
The Fruit of Enlightenment is truly powerful. The moment I ate it, a qualitative change occurred in my consciousness. It was like gazing upon the vast heavens.
"Alright, now… all the techniques I have have been trained. Now it's time to examine the Reincarnation Paths."
(Does the host wish to activate the Reincarnation Paths? Yes/No)
I smiled calmly and pressed the 'Yes' button. This technique was the only one left to examine.
(Please select the path you wish to study.)
I looked at the window in surprise. Paths? I understand they're called Reincarnation Paths, but I am the one who chooses the path?
Well, actually, as an experiment, I'll choose the Blood Path. I was truly interested in it.
"I'll choose the Blood Path."
The moment I chose, the world around me began to melt as if it were a dream. Colors intertwined and blended into a vortex of crimson mist.
In an instant, I found myself in a building. I was being held by what appeared to be guards.
"Mercy!" I begged. I was only watching, but my mouth moved on its own, and my voice came out against my will.
"How dare you, you son of sin, steal our family's secrets?!"
The family elder shook his white robe as he shouted at me.
I was tied up in the family judgment hall. There were wounds on my body from prolonged torture, so much so that I trembled from the pain.
"But… my cousin Zhang Li gave me the manuscript!" I protested in a hoarse voice.
Zhang Li suddenly appeared from among the crowd, his face dripping with malice. "Elders, this scoundrel is trying to frame me! He threatened to expose that I have been consuming more pills than I am provided if I didn't agree!"
The words pierced me like knives. I didn't even know pills were being distributed.
Everyone in the hall knew he was lying, but no one dared to oppose the direct descendant of the family.
While no one would stand beside an illegitimate son of the family.
"Unanimous verdict: destroy his dantian and expel him like a dog!" the elder declared.
"Impossible!" I couldn't control myself. My cultivation base, which I had worked so hard on, would be lost just like that?
In my field of vision, I caught sight of my father. "Father… please stop them!" I begged, while already on my knees.
"I… do not have a son like you," my father said—or rather, the person I thought cared for me didn't even look at me.
I was a disgrace from the very beginning. He never wanted me at all.
"Hmph, we let you live because we thought you would know your place, but you even dare to steal our techniques!" The elder could not contain his anger toward me. I was the family's shame, something that should not exist.
Zhang Li stepped forward with a devilish smile. "Allow me to carry out the sentence, elders."
He attacked me, and in an instant, I felt his cold fingers press on my stomach, then… an explosion of pain. My dantian… my core… shattered into a thousand pieces.
At that moment, the two guards released me, sending my body flying to crash against the wall.
I clutched my stomach with difficulty, barely conscious. "Zhang Li… I thought… you saw me as family."
Immediately, Zhang Li leaped toward me with a mocking smile on his face. "Nonsense. Everything I do is for the clan!"
Why… why did I have to be this naive? Why did I trust him from the beginning?
My gaze focused on Zhang Li's fist coming toward me. If I took that blow in my current state, I was finished.
I will not die yet! Not now!
I raised my fist and threw a punch toward Zhang Li, but he immediately grabbed my arm and broke it, shattering the bone.
I screamed from the pain of the bone, but at that moment, Zhang Li grabbed my head and dug his knee into my stomach.
He began beating me relentlessly. I looked toward those I called my clan members. They were smiling as if they were happy to see me being beaten.
When every bone in my body was broken, Zhang Li finally left me.
"We cannot bury this garbage in our family cemeteries. Let's throw him into the Jinxai River," Zhang Li suggested as the rest of the clan members cheered in agreement.
Then I was taken to the Jinxai River. Zhang Li raised me high.
"Don't sleep too long by the riverbank, dog. The crocodiles are hungry these days," he whispered in my ear before throwing me into the rushing waters.
But I miraculously survived. I dragged my paralyzed body to the riverbank, my breaths ragged, my blood mixing with the river water, and I threw myself onto my back.
Why… why am I alive?
Those looks they gave me, those smiles… why do they treat me this way? Am I not human like them?
Why was I born? I should never have been born at all.
I couldn't help but sob. Even the air I breathed caused pain that split my chest.
Zhang Li… the family… father…
Months of training under Zhang Li's personal supervision… all those nights… I wanted to become stronger and repay their kindness. So why… all for what? To become a laughingstock? To find out that everyone I thought was my family considered me a thief, waiting for the right moment to crush me and get rid of me?
I… hate them.
I hate myself. I hate the parents who brought me into all this. I hate the Zhang family. I hate this fate. I hate this world.
Within one month
I crawled like a wounded dog through back alleys, competing even with dogs for bones, but I always failed. Even the dogs urinated on me, and I could only eat food scraps.
I discovered that hunger can be more painful than broken bones.
One night, while searching for food in the garbage behind a restaurant, I saw a small child throwing his leftovers to stray dogs.
He looked at me curiously. "Do you want some?"
He extended his small hand toward me with a piece of leftover meat.
At that moment, I felt an insult worse than anything I had endured. I was lower than even the stray dogs in this child's eyes.
But my hunger was stronger than my pride. I took the meat with my trembling hand and ate it like an animal.
The child laughed. "You eat like my dog!"
Within one year, I was nothing more than skin and bones, surviving only on plant roots that I didn't even know were edible.
After eating what I needed, I headed to an abandoned shrine that I used as shelter.
When I returned, there was someone inside. When I looked, it was a man in a black mask, bleeding from a wound.
I approached him. At that moment, he opened his eyes and looked at me with dead eyes. "Boy, help me bandage my wounds, and I will reward you generously." He seemed to be seriously injured.
This person is a cultivator, isn't he? Then he must have many things worth selling.
I nodded and went outside for a moment, then returned. This time, I was carrying a rock in my hand.
The man opened his eyes. "What are you—"
But before he could say anything, I struck him on the head with the rock, then climbed on top of him and began hitting his head repeatedly until he died.
When I was sure he was dead, I immediately stripped the corpse and began checking his belongings. There I found a scroll: "The Art of Blood Essence."
This art was for absorbing bloodlines. It could make me stronger.
I took the scroll and everything of value from the corpse and threw them into the Jinxai River.
My trembling hands turned the pages. This was an invaluable treasure. A technique that allows stealing others' power through their blood!
I had finally found my path to revenge.
I decided to test the technique first and chose my first victim.
The boy who had given me bread that day was my first victim.
I kidnapped him in a dark alley. My rusty knife cut his throat with horrifying ease.
His warm blood flowed over my hands as I practiced the technique for the first time.
"Ah…!" I felt a strange energy enter my body. My shattered dantian… began to heal a little!
But I felt something different. It was my thirst for blood.
And I sank into ten years of systematic killing. I chose my victims carefully: beggars, lost children, prostitutes… no one missed them.
I traveled across hundreds of cities.
Every drop of blood was a step toward power, toward revenge.
But ordinary blood was not enough. I needed… powerful bloodlines.
A small village at the foot of the mountains. It was said that its inhabitants were descended from the "Ice Phoenix Clan." I entered at night while they were asleep.
My knife danced from throat to throat. Children's blood mixed with their parents' blood.
When I finished, the ground was sticky with red, and the air was heavy with the smell of death.
In the morning, I sat among the corpses, drinking the village chief's blood from his broken skull. My dantian… was working again, but I was not satiated with bloodlines.
Five years after that, absorbing bloodlines also enhanced my physique, and my cultivation quickly advanced.
In a dense forest, I came across a traveling caravan. A wealthy family: father, mother, and their young son. The child, his golden eyes twinkling like stars. "The Sacred Sage bloodline."
I killed the parents quickly. The mother's screams still rang in my ears.
"Don't kill me!" the father begged as I drained his blood. I killed them secretly to be alone with the child.
Then an idea came to me. What if I raised this boy and made him stronger? Then, his bloodline would nourish me far better.
I appeared before this boy and took care of him kindly.
"Become my disciple," I declared before him, extending my hand toward him.
The boy accepted because I told him that some people had killed his parents and that I would take care of him until he completed his revenge.
And to tell the truth, this child… was amusing.
I lived with "Liang" — that's what I named him — as father and son. I taught him martial arts, how to disappear, the arts of deception, and the arts of blood. Every day, the boy was a prodigy, a genius.
Gradually, my desire to use him diminished. This boy had truly filled a place in my heart, and I couldn bring myself to harm him.
I knew that this was also because of his hard work, which made me proud.
After ten years, we returned to my hometown. The Zhang Clan… was still standing.
The moment I entered, I slaughtered them. Every child, woman, or man of the clan's lineage… all dead.
Then I stood before the person I had once called father.
His aged, decrepit body trembled under my iron grip.
His sunken eyes looked at me with astonishment tinged with hidden recognition.
"You… how…?" he whispered in a hoarse voice, his withered hands trying in vain to loosen my grip on his neck.
I smiled. A smile that the innocent child I once was would never have imagined. "Dear father… do you remember your wretched son?"
In his eyes, I saw a flicker of memories, then deep fear. "No… that's impossible… that bastard died in the river years ago!"
"That bastard died." I nodded slowly, then pressed my fingers mercilessly. "I am only what remains."
Crack.
The sound of his neck bones breaking was music to my twisted mind. His corpse fell like a dead tree trunk at my feet.
"Zhang Li… where are you?" I whispered as I wandered among the scattered corpses in the clan courtyard. Blood formed small pools on the dirt ground.
Then I heard footsteps behind me. I slowly turned to see my disciple Liang standing there, his sword stained with the blood of the Zhang Clan dangling from his hand.
"I've finished the eastern wing, master," he said in his calm voice, unchanged since he was a child. His golden eyes — the eyes of the Sacred Sage bloodline — twinkled in the darkness.
I reached out my hand and patted his head. "Good work, my disciple."
Then I turned and began walking, searching for that scoundrel who had destroyed me years ago.
At that moment, I felt great pain in my chest. I looked down and saw the tip of a sword emerging from my chest as I vomited blood.
My blood flowed down the cold blade that had pierced my chest. My eyes widened in shock as I tried to turn to see the traitor who had stabbed me from behind.
"Liang…?" I whispered in a hoarse voice, blood filling my mouth.
My only disciple, the child I had raised as a son, stood behind me with cold golden eyes. There was not a shred of remorse in them.
"Forgive me, master," he said calmly, his hands not trembling as he pushed the sword deeper. "But today will be your end."
I fell to my knees, the world around me beginning to fade. My blood mixed with the blood of the Zhang Clan I had just spilled.
The cruel irony struck me like a hammer.
I was deceived again.
"All… these… years…" I tried to speak as my lungs drowned in blood. "Was it… just… waiting…?"
Liang — no, that surely wasn't his real name — raised his eyebrows in false sympathy. "My father and mother… do you remember them? That night in the forest?"
My mind raced back to that day. The husband and wife I had killed. The mother who screamed as I drained her blood.
No… this is impossible…
"But I… killed them in secret… how did you know?"
Liang looked at me with hatred, a look I saw for the first time in all our time together. "It wasn't hard to deduce. When you didn't kill me, I decided to become stronger to take my revenge on you."
I fell to the ground, my face touching the warm pools of blood. Everything was clear now. This child…
He wasn't a victim. He was the hunter, and I was the naive prey.
In the end, I was still naive.
"I… considered you… my son…"
In my final moments, 'my son's' blade descended toward my neck, and my head flew through the air.