Xiao Lian awoke drowning in his own blood. Rising with difficulty, he looked at the large wound on his stomach. Xiao Lian looked to the side to see the bodies of his family, all dead. The look of despair on his parents' faces, the reluctant face and pained gaze of his sister.
Weeping and sobbing, overwhelmed by grief, Xiao Lian sat in a lotus position and began to cultivate. Xiao Lian's elemental affinity was wood, being the element with the highest healing rate of all the elements. He cultivated for hours on end, doing his best to heal his wound, and yet, during the entire process, his eyes did not stop shedding tears and his heart could not remain calm.
For two whole days, Xiao Lian cultivated. For two whole days, he cried. When he stood up, reviewing the bodies of his family, he knelt on the ground and wept, wailed and cried about this injustice. He beat his chest and cried out to the heavens for justice.
"Why should my family suffer such a fate?! What were their sins? My ancestors sinned against heaven? TO WHOM SHOULD I BOW DOWN SO THAT THEY WILL RETURN?!"
After a few hours, Xiao Lian calmed down a bit, buried his family and paid his respects and burned incenses for each one. Walking through the familiar and simultaneously unfamiliar streets of his village, Xiao Lian saw the destruction caused by the cultivators.
"Today, I vow on behalf of my family, I will avenge my relatives, make them take this blood debt, with blood!" Making that oath, he left.
He was not naïve thinking that anyone would help a nobody like him, he would take his revenge into his own hands!
And so he set out. He walked through many lands, went through much life and death situations. He killed, and was almost killed, he was betrayed, deceived, underestimated. Yet he never gave up and persevered, never forgetting his revenge.
And three hundred years later, the day finally came. But it was not as he thought it would be. He killed everyone involved in the massacre of his village, tortured them, and made them suffer at least a tenth of what he suffered.
The strongest cultivator who attacked the village, who had a mustache, was the son of an elder of the inner seven-star sect. When he learned of his son's death, in his anger and grief, he used all means to find Xiao Lian, and after three years of searching, he found him.
The elder, Lu Meng, took with him a hundred disciples of the inner sect, with four more sect elders, and surrounded Xiao Lian. After two weeks of pursuit, he was completely surrounded in a dense forest.
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"We finally caught you, you worm! Don't think you'll die easily after what you did to my little Yan!" Elder Lu Meng had his eyes injected as he looked at Xiao Lian.
All the disciples looked at Xiao Lian with hatred, while the other elders looked at him like a dead person. Everyone released their power simultaneously, and a battle soon began.
In a matter of seconds, Xiao Lian was wounded, and in two minutes, he was severely wounded. Just as Elder Lu Meng was about to deliver a fatal blow, a huge, shapeless pressure fell upon everyone standing there. The elders were forced to their knees, gasping and wide-eyed, the inner disciples bled from every orifice before falling unconscious. It was not known whether they were alive or dead.
"You know, it's been six hundred years since anyone had the audacity to come on my doorstep and make trouble. I wonder, how do you people wish to die?" A deep, dominant voice arose, carrying with it a murderous intent large enough to turn the air around it into blood-red.
"S-s-s-s-s-senior, we were blind and dared to disturb the senior's rest, if you allow us, I just want to catch my son's killer, and we will leave immediately and never come back." Elder Lu Meng managed to gather courage and address such a terrifying existence.
Walking with some difficulty among the trees, he appeared. With long shaggy red hair, blood-red eyes and a face that would make even some women envious appeared.
His clothes were dirty, and he had a gourd in his hand that exuded a strong smell of alcohol. He sat down on a root of the big trees, and took a sip of his drink. Everyone waited apprehensively, wondering what this senior would do. Xiao Lian, however, was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely, feeling his life slowly fading away, so he cared little about everything going on around him. He had already fulfilled his purpose, even if he died today, he would die in peace.
Xiao Lian looked at that man, San Meili, and for a moment, he was lost in the red color of those eyes. He felt his body turning cold and his consciousness slowly became foggy, and he blacked out.
When he woke up, he couldn't believe his eyes. He was back in the seven-star sect, but the sect that had once been glorious was now burned to ashes, the mountains the sect had stood on were gone. Walking through the sea of blood and fire, he saw a hill made of bodies, the bodies of the people of the sect. And with the sun setting behind that hill, was San Meili, still with his gourd sipping his drink, looking at all he did with undisguised boredom.
"Is that what you wanted? That they would pay for what they did to your family? Well, they all died, but your family is still dead...now what are you going to do?" San Meili said with the same bored face, looking into Xiao Lian's eyes.
That scene could be terrifying to anyone, the smell of burning bodies, the destruction, the pungent smell of blood, but Xiao Lian could only think of one thing: 'Ah, so this is what it's like to be on top of the world.'
He had acquired a new purpose for living....