The Tale Never Ends

Whether because I was carrying myself, or my magic was finally beginning to work, I did not know. But one way or another, the Shiyan Blade screamed as it freed itself from its sheath and flew to my grasp! Without any shred of hesitation, my fingers closed in tightly on its hilt and the first thing I did was to swing it fiercely at the throat of the female demon!

The edge of the Shiyan Blade turned searing white with an insipid smolder. The demoness could not move. She could not understand how did the baby left her arms, nor how did the Shiyan Blade fly from behind her and was now attacking her. Petrified and astonished, even the notion to evade my blow was all but lost from her.

The tip of the Blade barely grazed the demoness’ throat when she finally regained my senses in the nick of time. With a loud swoosh, a smog of dark and foul miasma burst out in front of me and I saw a small yellow-brownish silhouette brushed past my ankles! The demoness had released a pall of foul miasma – the fox demons’ signature defense – and turned into her true form to escape! The rest of her brood followed suit and fled in a heartbeat and none of them remained. The Shiyan Blade began to lead me ahead as if it has a sentience of its own until I realized that it wished for me to release its hilt. My grip relaxed and it shot out of my grasp and returned to its sheath.

Then I heard the soft footfalls of somebody approaching from the deep of the woods. Excitement grew in me, for I know who was coming. The story that I have heard a few times since knowing that I was not Father’s trueborn was coming to life before my very eyes. In just barely moments, the same white-robed figure drifting carelessly out of the woods was indeed Father!

I placed the baby me down, laying myself just beside the unconscious Taoist priest. Father was barely a handful of paces away. His reaction when he found the priest was something I hardly expected. More so, since Father was accustomed to leaving out vital details whenever he told a tale, especially the ones about himself. He merely told me that he chanced upon an unfortunate priest, saying nothing about his lackadaisical lukewarmness even before a man on the brink of Death. He drew closer to the priest and lifted the baby me.

As if struck by a calming effect emanating from Father, the baby me immediately stopped my wailing when Father hugged me. The toddler blinked his eyes at Father with interest and Father smiled at him. Then he whistled. The Shiyan Blade, now returned to its scabbard on the priest’s back, extricated from its sheath and flew obediently into Father’s hand. He took the scabbard and lazily threw the sword into the air. Either by skill or the Blade’s very own sentience, the sword came down and slid perfectly into the scabbard Father was holding. With a flick of his wrist, the sword was gone.

I chuckled with amusement. But this seems hardly the time to admire Father’s prowess in swordsmanship, I remembered suddenly. I crouched down to examine the tall Taoist priest. But there was nothing else I could do for him. His life was hanging on a thread now and the thread could be snapping any moment now.

It was no new news to me that Father could at times be ruthless and callous especially in the past. Knowing that the priest has zero chance of surviving, Father decided to not even try saving him. He walked to the priest and bent down. Then a powerful burst of mana rippled forth, sending me crashing to the ground! Through the tendrils of mists and fogs, Father radiated a strong and powerful aura as he reached and clutched the skull of the dying priest and he sprang up straight. But instead of lifting the priest, he drew out a white, translucent silhouette in the shape of a man from the body of the priest!

Just so easily… I gasped. Just as simple as lifting a cup, Father had separated the Taoist priest’s soul from his body. But it was true. What Father drew out from the body was indeed his soul. With a placid look and voice, Father said, “Tell me what happened.” The shade of the Taoist priest was still at a loss from what Father did; he fidgeted anxiously and fumbled. “I was charged by the chief of my order to locate and bring to him the Shiyan Blade and its Spirit. And that I did. But on my way back, I was waylaid by these vile fox demons who also coveted the prize.” The soul spoke with an emotionally anemic voice, his gaze lost and hollow dad and his expression bare and blank, resembling a mindless machine.

“What is this order of yours?” Father asked again. “The Creed of the Eight Trigrams,” the ghost replied blankly but I almost sputtered. What?! The Creed?! This Taoist?! A member of the Creed!? Father told me nothing about this! But I immediately understood why Father had kept this particular detail from me; I would have wanted only to delve more into the secrets of the Creed if I am aware of this Taoist priest’s identity. Hence, to spare me of wanting to find out more about myself, Father had decimated the entirety of the Creed to prevent me from doing so.

Much of the fog that veiled the answers I was seeking was beginning to thin. And I have Master Six to thank for sending me back through Time to seek out the explanations for myself. Father, on the other hand, would have preferred that I lived the rest of my life without knowing about my true identity as the Spirit of the Shiyan Blade, the very same sword which the legendary Yan Di of the South had wielded.

The Shiyan Blade would have been securely safe in Father’s keeping if I knew nothing about my true existence and continued my life as a common man. The world and I would forever be safe no matter how many times I die and reincarnate. This was what Father had been doing. For my sake and for the world’s.

Then again, the Shiyan Blade is a legendary weapon with godly powers. Why has Father been keeping watch of it for so long? He had been charged with guarding the Dragon-slaying Blade in the first place, but since when he began to watch me and the Shiyan Blade and why? What caused him to change his objective? Could it be… Has something happened to the Dragon-slaying Blade? Was Father preparing to use the Shiyan Blade against it in the odds that it is now in the hands of an enemy?

The Dragon-slaying Blade must have existed since the discovery of the fourteen dragon leys of China, while the Shiyan Blade enjoyed its own prestigious fame as one of the most powerful weapons of ancient Chinese legend since the time of the Wufang Shangdi. There was no telling which of these two weapons were better than the other.

But this theory was not without its flaw. Father should have long trained me in the use of the Shiyan Blade, if that was really his motive! He would never have kept the truth from me! He would never have to wait until Master Six’s dogged insistence before he agreed to pass on to me the Shiyan Blade! Then there was also the matter of true identity: the Spirit of the Shiyan Blade. What does it mean? What is it to me? Am I the reincarnation of the Spirit of the Shiyan Blade? Does that mean that the Shiyan Blade is now only an ordinary sword? That would only mean I have to rejoin the Shiyan Blade as the actual Spirit of the Sword before it could regain its former invincibility. But if that were true, Father should have really begun training me a long time ago!

Weary from all the thinking, fatigue came to me suddenly, urging me to leave all my trepidations aside for now. I leaned on a red pine, sliding down to a sit and slowly drifted away, my eyelids grew heavier than lead every fleeting second…

I found myself still at the very same spot when I woke up, although there were mild differences to the scenes around me. I got up and stretched my limbs and looked around. Something about the forest I was in had certainly changed, but I could not well describe it. I shrugged helplessly and kicked to fly. But instead of rising, I fell into a roll on the ground and hit my hind parts. I spun myself up, rubbing my sore parts and cursed. I see! I was feeling as light as feather earlier, without any throbs of hunger or fatigue. But now, I regained the sensation of my own weight and my stomach was groaning from the pangs of hunger! Have I returned? But why am I here in this red pine coppice?

Reeling with confusion and starvation, I stuck my hand into my pocket and felt in one side my cell phone. It was off; the battery had long gone dead. In the pocket the other side, there was my wallet. I have no more cigarettes left and the notes in my wallet were all creased after being wet. Was it all real? I began to doubt myself, did everything I saw really happened? Or was it just only a surrealistic midsummer’s night dream? But how am I here then, at the place where Father found me? And how do I explain the wrinkled money in my wallet?

But the rest of the contents of my wallet was intact. And that seemed comforting. At least, with money and proper identification, I could still get back home. But I would first need to get myself out of here and find out where was this place. I might need to book a flight or a train ticket if this was somewhere far from Wu Zhong. My stomach rumbled again as if to serve me another reminder of my starvation.

I exhaled heavily. I began walking, hoping that I could somehow walk out of this seemingly endless patch of red pine. Night came quickly, but this really seemed like an endless patch of red pines to me! A whole day’s worth of walking and I was still trapped here! Then I remembered what I saw when I was gazing at this forest from the sky when I was still in the past; this bloody forest sprawled across an entire hillside! It would definitely take more than a day for me to get out!