Chapter 97.1
“Won’t you consider trying it out? Although they say that demonic cultivation is not a good thing, you will become powerful as long as you use it well. Think about it: Your family doesn’t treat you well, probably because they don’t like your qualifications, which are not as good as those of your other brothers. You can use demonic powers to become strong and impress them.”
“Look, they’re bullying you again. You’re a child of the Bu family, but you’re locked up in that little house, without a servant to wait on you while they are sending a lot of resources to your brothers. I have quietly tested you before, your qualifications are better than anyone in the Bu family, but they are burning you.”
“Demonic cultivation is indeed a bad thing, but since you are a good boy, as long as you can control it well and not harm people, isn’t it a good thing?”
The Bu family that Bu Tianhan was born into was an old cultivation family on the continent, with relatives and offshoots scattered all over the continent, and the Bu family could be found in many large and small sects. The children of the family were sent for talent testing from birth, and if they had poor qualifications or were unable to cultivate, even if their parents were the patriarch and madam, they would still be looked down upon, and their status was sometimes even lower than that of the slightly capable family guards.
But Bu Tianhan was tested and found to be extremely gifted, and he became the great hope for the family. His father was the third head of the family and was in charge of a side branch. At that time, everyone praised him for his ability to produce such a wonderful son. Everyone loves vanity. His father was not the head of the family, but now that he had such a promising son, how could he not be happy and proud? His father’s life as a winner was the envy of many women in the Bu family.
Until the age of five, Bu Tianhan had a good life at home, living a smooth life and being respected and loved by all. All the resources his father could get were sent to him, preparing him to become the next great cultivator that could stir up the cultivation world. However, when he was five years old, his days were turned upside down.
That afternoon, he had just returned from an outing with his mother when he bumped into a ragged old man right in front of their home. His hair had turned completely white, his thin hands were pounding on a wooden cane, and his lips were dry and white. The guard of the Bu family was about to drive the dirty old man away when, in a moment of weakness, the mother and son invited him into the Bu family home so that he could rest, eat something, and clean up before sending him away.
Little did they know that this act of kindness would be the start of a catastrophe.
The old man was not a bad person and wanted to give some guidance to Bu Tianhan, who had just embarked on the path of cultivation before he left. Bu Tianhan’s father, who happened to be coming out of the inner courtyard, found out that the old man’s cultivation was not low and that he might be a fallen cultivator from one of the great sects, and he started bragging about Bu Tianhan’s potential. Seeing the old man’s doubtful expression, the third family head was anxious, and he pulled Bu Tianhan in front of the old man and tested him in person.
As a result, the old man’s face was horrified, and he hesitated before pulling the third family’s head to the side to discuss something.
At first, Bu Tianhan did not know what was going on, but his life had changed since then. He was assigned to the most remote and filthy courtyard in the family house, where he ate leftovers, and his father, who had always loved him, never visited him again.
The servants of the Bu family began to assume an arrogant and perfunctory attitude in front of him, and his siblings came laughing and saying things like, “Disgusting freak.”
“Do you think you’re some kind of dragon among men? You’re just a worm in the mud!”
They would climb up the wall of his yard and pelt him with eggs and rotten fruit when he came out to practice his sword skills. At first, he felt so uncomfortable and aggrieved that he cried, and finally he couldn’t resist sneaking out of the courtyard at night to find his mother, only to find that his mother, who had been extremely favored by his father before, was also locked in her room and not allowed to leave.
All the servants in the courtyard had been dismissed, and when Bu Tianhan went there, only his father and his mother were in the courtyard. In the reflection of the light in the room, he saw his father, whom he remembered as a kind man, punching and kicking his mother, angrily rebuking her: “You are a malicious woman who has deceived me for so many years, you have made me lose face!”
“The blood flowing in Bu Tianhan has simply soiled the bloodline of my Bu family!”
After dropping these words in anger, the third family’s head strode out of the room, and Bu Tianhan, who was hiding in the shadows, stood in a daze for a long time. He had already guessed that their quarrel was about him, and he waited for the woman’s sobbing to stop before he stepped into the room with small footsteps.
The woman in a red dress was sitting on the floor crying, probably because of the physical altercation she had just had with her husband. She now looked like a mess, with various bruises and scars visible on her exposed skin.
When the woman looked up and saw him, her teardrops rolled down more violently. She stumbled and crawled to him, reaching out to take him into her arms and murmuring deliriously, “Ah Xing, Mother’s good boy ……”
That was his nickname. He was born at midnight when the night sky was clear and the stars were bright, so he got this nickname, which was what his mother usually liked to call him.
Bu Tianhan was in a daze, wanting to ask his mother what this was all about, why she and his father had quarreled, and why the Bu family had suddenly changed their attitude towards them so drastically. But before he could ask these questions, the woman who had been hugging him with a fond and loving face changed her expression and violently pushed him away.
Unprepared, he fell back, and one of his hands got injured as he braced himself on the floor. He turned his head to find a small pile of broken porcelain that his parents had accidentally broken during the argument.
Bright red blood slowly emerged from his cut palm, but instead of coming up and caring for him as she had done before, his loving mother glared at him with eyes that struck him as strange and frightening, and said angrily, “It’s you! It’s all because of you! If it weren’t for you, this would never have been discovered!”
After that, she began to question angrily, “If only you had ignored that old man that day, you should have let the guard drive him away …… It’s all your fault, why did you spread useless kindness?!”
Her thoughts were clearly in turmoil as she said to herself, “I should never have given birth to you in the first place, my life would not have turned out like this without you ……”
Bu Tianhan was stunned and dumbfounded as his mother, who had always been a gentle and loving person, began to throw things around the room indiscriminately, not caring even when the stool hit him hard, just wanting to vent. Although he was young, he could understand the meaning of his mother’s words, and he could feel the pain they caused.
He returned to his small courtyard in a daze and lay for a long time on a wooden bed made of straw mats, constantly wondering whether he had done something wrong and whether it was wrong to help people.
It was a few days before someone arrived in the small courtyard again and entered the room to wake him up.
“Your mother is dead.” The person who came to him was a house servant whose name he could not recall and who had simply come to inform him of the matter.
After the shock and dismay, he begged him to let him see his mother one last time, only to learn that the family had not announced the death at all. They didn’t even put up a mourning hall for the young madam. They had wrapped up her body in a straw mat and dumped it in the wilderness.
He did not understand what he and his mother had done that was so heinous that the Bu family would treat them in such a way.
It was not until later that he finally understood everything.
It turned out that his mother was from the demon clan and was a demonic cultivator. One day, when she was out on a trip, she accidentally bumped into the handsome third family head and fell in love with him at first sight. However, as she was a demonic cultivator, immortals would not be able to accept her, so without her people’s knowledge, she ran away to a spiritual mountain called “Heaven’s End,” which was located at the top of the border between the demon realm and the mainland. Rumour has it that there is a spiritual spring deep inside the mountain and that if a demon cultivator wants to abolish his or her dao, he or she can go to the spiritual spring and abolish the foundation he or she has cultivated over the years.
It was said that the process is very painful, and unlike the transformation from the immortal Dao to the demonic Dao, a demonic cultivator can’t turn to the immortal Dao even if he or she abolishes the roots of the demonic Dao. Even though they will not be reduced to ordinary people, the good foundation of cultivation is abolished, so their life expectancy will only be as long as the level they were at before going through this process. And even if they can use their spiritual power afterward, it will be very little. Therefore, very few demon cultivators would do this.
But Bu Tianhan’s mother was so overwhelmed by love that she did not care whether her love interest had already married several wives by the time she saw him, and she created all sorts of coincidences to meet and get to know him. She was already of high status in the demon realm and was so beautiful that no normal man could resist her touch. The marriage went smoothly, his mother’s past identity was not discovered, and it was assumed that it could remain hidden forever.
But as a woman born with demonic blood, that seed remained even though she endured the pain of shedding her demonic roots. So the child she gave birth to with the third family head—that is, Bu Tianhan—was born with extremely powerful qualifications that actually originated from her. From the outside, his yuanshen was indeed no different from those of an ordinary human being, and the difference was not noticed at the time. But the old man they kindly took into their home was a long-time practitioner with plenty of knowledge and experience. He recognized the difference in Bu Tianhan’s aptitude at once, pointing out the demonic power within him.
The secret his mother had tried to hide was then revealed. Unable to bear this, she had an emotional breakdown and tried to mend her relationship with the third family head, but she was ridiculed by the other wives, who were jealous of her, until she couldn’t bear it any longer and chose to kill herself.
At this point, Bu Tianhan finally understood everything. After that, he became an orphaned son in the Bu family, and when he was a little older, he was told to do menial work. And the third family head, his father, always regarded him as a disgrace.
All men are proud after all, and the third family head used to boast about his talented son, Bu Tianhan. Now, people outside were secretly laughing at him, saying that the boy’s qualifications were all due to his mother. This made the third family head feel even more humiliated, and even when Bu Tianhan was bullied and brutalized by his siblings, struggling to get up alone in a cold pool and almost dying of illness, he never came to see him again.
At that time, there was a member of the Bu family called Bu Mingfeng, who lived in the third family and had been kind to Bu Tianhan since he was born. He was also the only one who would occasionally come over to see him and bring him some sweets and trinkets bought from outside after what happened later.
Bu Tianhan got to know all these things through him, including the fact that the old man they had received at the beginning ended up staying in the Bu family and becoming a master-like presence for the younger members of the family. He said that in order to repay the kindness of the elders for lending him a helping hand, he voluntarily stayed to give guidance to the juniors so that they could enter the Immortal Gate more smoothly in the future.
This old man’s daoist credentials were indeed quite impressive, and he was in such a sorry state because he had been expelled from a large clan. If he had joined a small sect, he would have been treated as a senior by the disciples, but in a large sect, he would have been irrelevant and a waste of resources. After leaving the sect, he met many enemies along the way and kept fleeing and hiding until he came to this small place by mistake.
He deliberately told the third
family head about Bu Tianhan at that time, gave him all sorts of ideas and advice when he was at his most helpless, and then showed him that his status was enough to qualify as a “backer” for this small place, successfully gaining the trust of the third family head. Then he stayed with the saying of repaying kindness, and naturally became a tall existence in the eyes of others, naturally getting a comfortable “retirement”.
As for Bu Tianhan, he was just an opportunity and a tool that he had accidentally discovered to help him stay.
After these experiences, Bu Tianhan’s temperament changed drastically. He became gloomy and low-key, yet he did not give up his struggle for survival. He always felt that he was born with a purpose, that he was imprisoned by a world that seemed so big and yet so small to him, and he wanted to climb up and reach the top and then ascend.
He felt that ascending was the only way to get out of this place and help him get rid of all his troubles.
Seeing this, Bu Mingfeng kept using the matter to tempt him as soon as he knew about the demonic seed, coaxing him to touch that taboo. The appearance of the demon seed was very serious, and the Bu family was worried that he would go astray and turn into a fearsome demonic cultivator to harm them, so they have been closely guarding his practice, not allowing him to have any chance to further study, and from time to time, someone would come and check his physical condition to ensure that he has not formally entered the practice.
All he could do was simply meditate and find time to practice his sword every day to stabilize his foundation.
At that time, he was ignorant about the world and did not know the depths of human maliciousness, and since Bu Mingfeng was the only one who had been kind to him, he regarded him as the only one he could rely on and trust. Moreover, Bu Mingfeng would make an effort to bring him some books on cultivation, saying that he could practice them and would not be easily detected. He tried, and after a month, the man who gave him a routine check did not find anything different, so he began to secretly follow Bu Mingfeng’s instructions and practice quietly.
Only he was still reluctant to touch the demon seed that was slumbering inside his body; after all, anything that had anything to do with the word ‘demon” should not be a good thing, even if it could help him become stronger so that he could take revenge on the people he hated.
But to his surprise, something happened to his body, and he realized that it was all a set-up by Bu Mingfeng.
A setup that allows his body to fully accept the power of the demon seed so that Bu Mingfeng could take it later.
Bu Tianhan didn’t know where Bu Mingfeng had gotten the cultivation method, and after he practiced it for a while, it triggered the operation of the demon seed in his body, sending him straight onto the demonic path after one night of torment, alarming everyone in the Bu family. He did not see Bu Mingfeng in the crowd, and even later, when he returned to the Bu family to take revenge, he could not find him.
Little did he realize that this man was hiding in the Tiansu Immortal Sect.
Bu Mingfeng’s qualifications were not very good, and he had failed all the sect trials, so he had to stay in the Bu family. He didn’t know how Bu Tianhan had entered the Tiansu Immortal Sect. But seeing his enemy, for whom he had been searching for a long time and had even suspected him to be dead, Bu Tianhan decided to secretly follow him in order to know what was happening.
His breath was so well hidden that Bu Mingfeng did not notice. The last place that Bu Mingfeng came to was actually the courtyard of Patriarch Lin Wuhen.
Lin Wuhen’s courtyard was different from Gu Xiyu’s, and even the courtyard had multiple boundaries set up, so Bu Tianhan was unable to sneak in directly, and he could only place a ray of divine sense on Bu Mingfeng before he was let in. That wisp of divine sense could help him to listen to the conversation between Bu Mingfeng and Lin Wuhen.