While falling to what he thought would be his death for an interminable amount of time, Raider's mind had really gone through a lot of twists and turns. Panic, relief, impatience, anger, he had gone through many states of mind. Mostly, he remembered his life. He asked himself: "What if?"
What if he was still with his parents? What if he was just another regular kid within the Clan? What if he could cultivate? What if he wasn't a slave?
He had played many scenarios in his head fuelled by the anticipation of death.
Seemingly knowing what was going through Raider's mind, the spirit interrupted his train of thought.
"Kid what's your name again?"
"Raider"
"Raider. I have one last way to change your destiny." the spirit paused meaningfully.
Raider was listening, waiting, hoping.
"Take me as your Master. Accept my legacy. Achieve my Dao." said the spirit, almost like a chant.
A strange power was condensing around the area.
Raider was somehow surprised and not at the same time. It was like he had had a feeling all along that this would happen, since the moment he hadn't died, but didn't realise what this feeling was until right now.
Somewhere, it had always been his fantasy to suddenly have a fortuitous encounter. After all, wasn't it everybody's fantasy?
The strange power condensing within the passage of light grew more concentrated as Raider realised his mind was already made up.
"OK!" he said loudly and with determination as the power culminated to peak.
"Good." said the spirit, smiling "I like your attitude, from now on your are this old man's Legacy Apprentice. I'm sure you won't disappoint me." he continued as the power seemed to bind their two existences together and then suddenly vanished.
Raider felt none of that but the spirit did and seemed satisfied by the proceedings.
"Well, come, sit, let me tell you about your Master." the spirit began.
Its attitude was completely different now compared to before. Raider sat down cross legged in front of the spirit, about three meters away from the bone formation.
"I was born on a far far away world a few hundred thousand years ago..." began the spirit. "I have long since forgotten my given name, and have gone by quite a few in my lifetime... you can call me Master Bones."
"Back in my day, cultivation was practiced by training the Mind, Heart and Body to the pinnacle in order to step into a higher realm of existence. I was able to take two such steps. Such a shame, as time passed, most people chose to focus only on one aspect of cultivation. By the time of my fleshly death, finding a 3rd Realm Cultivator like myself was harder than finding a needle in a haystack. I'm afraid there might not even be anymore today..."
As Raider listened, he almost started panting from shock. If what the spirit, Master Bones, his Master, had said was true, then it was truly a legendary figure!
More importantly, this otherworldly being was floating in front of him right now and had even become his Master! This was truly a change of fate!
"...So you see kid..." continued Master Bones, "your Master was quite a powerful fellow in his time" he said proudly, as if he knew what Raider was thinking.
"Now, I wasn't able to impart anything to you in the aspects of the Mind and the Heart, we can only hope that the Body will work or else you will truly have to work on it alone..." said Master Bones with a twinge of concern in his tone.
"But before that" Master Bones interrupted himself as if he had just remembered somthing important "Tell me, what do you know about the Dao?" he asked slowly and mysteriously.
"Dao?" repeated Raider.
"What's that?"
"Haha" chuckled Master Bones. "That's for you to tell me. I believe each person has their own Dao... others disagreed back then. As for what the word itslef means... you decide. And then you decide what to do with that. That's what being my Legacy Apprentice entails. This is my Dao of unrestrained freedom."
"Now, take my bones, just one for now." instructed the Master.
"Your... your bones?" asked Raider to make sure he hadn't misheard. He wasn't a very educated person but was still quite intelligent and pricipled. To him, taking away a dead person's bones couldn't be the start of a good story.
In any other situation, he would have felt it to be disrespectful to take away the bones but here, the owner of the bones himself was instructing him to take one away.
Raider gulped audibly and stood up to hesitantly walk closer to the bone formation.
Closest to him were the legs and feet bones of the skeleton, arranged in a crisscross fashion.
Raider slowly bent down and reached out to pick up the left tibia. His entire arm was trembling.
As his fingers wrapped around the bone, he could feel a warmth pulsing out of it, as if it possessed a life of its own. It felt smooth and emanated a feeling of durability and power.
As Raider pulled on the bone to lift it up, he realised he couldn't move it. He reaffirmed his grip and pulled with all the might his mortal slave body could muster.
Nothing.
He looked up questionningly at his Master.
"Try another one." said the spirit with an encouraging undertone.
Raider gulped and moved towards another part of the formation. Here, the entire right arm bones were aligned in a curve, as if outlining part of a circle. Raider looked back and forth at the bones and their owner kind of hoping the latter would tell him which bone to pick.
After a moment of silence under the observing gaze of the spirit, Raider randomly reached for the longest bone there, the humerus.
It felt exactly like the tibia before it. Warm, almost alive, but unmovable.
He looked up and his eyes met the spirit's. He could see the patience of a teacher in them.
"Observe. Feel. Don't just pick randomly." said Master Bones softly.
Raider let go of the bone and stood up straight. He felt strange. No one had ever spoken to him in such a way. It felt... different, but a good different.
He thought about what his Master said. Observe and feel. He looked closely at each bone. Somehow, the light coming from them wasn't as painful anymore, as if they were begining to approve of him.
He looked at every single bone and spent time checking as many details about them as he could. Every single one was perfectly smooth and immaculate to his eyes. He observed their shapes and positions and relations to the other bones.
After a long period of time, he closed his eyes and focused on his breathing in an attempt to imitate the cultivating Clanspeople he had seen from a distance. He tried to calm his heart and to feel all of his surroundings.
He had no idea what he was feeling for.
After a certain amout of time had passed, he opened his eyes and looked at the bones again. The prickling pain rerturned and a light bulb went off in his mind.
He started attentively observing each bone again but this time he was doing something different.
Instead of simply observing details about the bones, he was feeling the pain they made him feel. He had an intuition that the pain represented a degree of approval and that the bone which made him feel the least pain would be the one that approved of him the most.
When he started truly focusing on the pain in his eyes as they shifted from bone to bone, he realised that he did feel different degrees of pain depending on which bone he was looking at. He could also determine that this was not due to the size of the bone or the bones around them.
Furthermore, the light coming from the skeleton was uniform except for the brighter skull.
As Raider gazed upon bone after bone, he found one to be the least painful to look at, the left radius from the forearm. It lay opposite the other arm in a similar fashion, tracing another part of the formation circle.
There didn't seem to be anything different between the right and left radii, except for the pain Raider felt when looking at them.
He approched this bone and sat in front of it for a while. Instead of reaching out for it straight away he just looked at it.
"Master Bones" began Raider while raising his head, "Are all cultivation experts' bones like yours?"
"Of course not" declared the spirit with a chuckle.
"To reach the 3rd Realm one's body must be one of a kind. Each of them will be incredible treasures after death for sure but they'll each have something different that makes them special." he explained.
"What makes your body special then, Master?" asked Raider eagerly.
"Pick one up and I'll tell you" said Master Bones with a slightly develish smile.
Hearing these words, Raider's face became more solemn and his gaze returned to the left radius in front of him.
He had a feeling this was his only shot, if this bone didn't move, none of them would.
He slowly grabbed the bone in its middle and pulled towards himself.
Before the bone even budged, a bright white light shone from it through Raider's hand. He was blinded by the light again but this time it was strangely not painful, as if closing his eyes was just a reflex. In any case keeping them open would have only revealed a world of white.
Raider lifted the radius away from the formation and held it in his hand for a moment.
"Good job" said Master Bones praisingly.
Raider was still immersed in the moment. He had succeeded in taking a bone and had made his very first step on the long and winding road that was cultivation.
"This bone of mine you just picked up has now acknowldged you. You will be able to wield its power and gradually make it your own and merge with it."
"Each of my bones contains a specific portion of my power. The one you picked up just now, my left radius, holds my understanding of the element of Wind. From now on, you will be able to wield Wind like I once did."
"Now, go forth, make this bone yours and come back once you have fused with it completely. Don't disappoint your Master."
"I won't." said Raider resolutely, holding his Master's bone tightly in his hand.
He turned around and prepared to make his way back to the outside world when he suddenly realised something: he had no idea how to climb the abyss that brought him here!
Back in the Barren Settlement, Soho, Sander and two other Stream Realm cultivators were keeping watch from the four cardinal points of the village. One Stream Realm cultivator was left below the settlement in order to watch over the rest of the Clanspeople. Soho's son, Alexander, was fuming at this moment. "Arrrgh!! How could that stupid slave steal my moment?!" he lamented to his mother and brother. "My dear boy your moment is yet to come." soothed his mother, Serena. "Becoming Clan Chief is merely a step on the ladder for you." she said, almost fanatically. She was a particular woman. Incredibly strong within the few Lake Realm cultivators and very distinctive in the way she treated people. Anyone close to her could expect her unconditional support and attention. Anyone else was given the coldest shoulder and the most intrepid indifference.
"I said show yourself!!" boomed Soho with even more power than before. Even the three on his side felt pain from the pressure of his voice. Raider, on the other hand, still heard nothing. He could see that the Clan Chief was saying something but couldn't hear what it was. After half a breath of time, Clan Chief Soho shot a meaningful look at Sander who in turn exchanged looks with the other two Stream Realm cultivators. An instant later, the three of them flew out from behind Soho simultaneously and in coordinated trajectories. As they moved, they performed hand gestures in sync and each shot a large beam of water towards the wind-cloaked figure. Before Raider could even react, the three beams of water slammed into what seemed to be a wall of wind. The water was scattered into mist which shrouded Raider in even more mystery. Without ev
Just wind. ... ... ... Raider opened his eyes slowly and what he saw left his terrified of his newfound power. Gusts of wind were still surrounding him and maintaining him afloat and that was a good thing because the ground below him had been ravaged by the wind leaving no place to stand. A good tenth of the settlement had been razed to the ground in a straight line. As far as Raider could tell, nothing but gashes into the rocky canyon remained. One could see a formation spanning underground, probably protecting the underground hiding place. The three Stream Realm cultivators had been blown away from the settlement and were lying on the ground hundreds of meters away in three different directions. Soho was still in the air about ten meters away from the wind-clad Raider, uninjured. Nobody but him knew if he had been
——PART 1: RAIDER ORIGIN—— It was a cold night in the East Canyons. The sound of the wind was overshadowed only by that of the torrential rain pouring down. Nevertheless people were celebrating in the Barren Settlement. Tonight was a special night, it was the night the Clan Chief had chosen to announce his successor. The Barren Settlement was called so because when humans first arrived here the land was absolutely barren. Nothing could grow here, and yet humans could survive. The only reason for that was because every single one of those humans were cultivators. From their birth, these humans were born with cultivation and thus didn't requ
"Aaaaaah", he kept on screaming and screaming for an indefinite amount of time as he kept on falling and falling. The abyss he had disappeared into seemed to be infinitely deep and was completely pitch black. So dark that he couldn't he see his own hands. As Raider kept on falling, the kids above ground had gathered around the spot where they had last seen him. However, there was no hole. "Where could he have gone?", asked one of them. "Was this trash able to cultivate after all?", suggested one of them. "Nonsense. Let's go back and tell my father.", said the one who had been floating on puddles. He seemed to be the leader of this group. As the kids ran back to the settlement at their fastest speeds, much faster than they had chased Raider, the latter was still falling into this abyss. 'What the *** is going on?', he asked h
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 memb
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 Rai
"Do you want to be able to cultivate?” Raider's mind went blank upon hearing this question. His whole life he had been told he could not cultivate and had to watch others do just that. He had to suffer the life of a mortal while others had it easy. Worse, he was forced to do dirty work for those who had it easy and could simply wave a hand to accomplish what would take him an hour to do. Of course he wanted to have the same abilities. But at the same time he wondered if that would truly make him happy. Not everyone in the Clan was happy. Sure, they had it easy, but they all had their own difficulties. Social classes were well defined and merit was extremely important. Resources were split according to one's class and one's standing within the class, as such, there was a lot of competition within each class. Raider didn't wan
Just wind. ... ... ... Raider opened his eyes slowly and what he saw left his terrified of his newfound power. Gusts of wind were still surrounding him and maintaining him afloat and that was a good thing because the ground below him had been ravaged by the wind leaving no place to stand. A good tenth of the settlement had been razed to the ground in a straight line. As far as Raider could tell, nothing but gashes into the rocky canyon remained. One could see a formation spanning underground, probably protecting the underground hiding place. The three Stream Realm cultivators had been blown away from the settlement and were lying on the ground hundreds of meters away in three different directions. Soho was still in the air about ten meters away from the wind-clad Raider, uninjured. Nobody but him knew if he had been
"I said show yourself!!" boomed Soho with even more power than before. Even the three on his side felt pain from the pressure of his voice. Raider, on the other hand, still heard nothing. He could see that the Clan Chief was saying something but couldn't hear what it was. After half a breath of time, Clan Chief Soho shot a meaningful look at Sander who in turn exchanged looks with the other two Stream Realm cultivators. An instant later, the three of them flew out from behind Soho simultaneously and in coordinated trajectories. As they moved, they performed hand gestures in sync and each shot a large beam of water towards the wind-cloaked figure. Before Raider could even react, the three beams of water slammed into what seemed to be a wall of wind. The water was scattered into mist which shrouded Raider in even more mystery. Without ev
Back in the Barren Settlement, Soho, Sander and two other Stream Realm cultivators were keeping watch from the four cardinal points of the village. One Stream Realm cultivator was left below the settlement in order to watch over the rest of the Clanspeople. Soho's son, Alexander, was fuming at this moment. "Arrrgh!! How could that stupid slave steal my moment?!" he lamented to his mother and brother. "My dear boy your moment is yet to come." soothed his mother, Serena. "Becoming Clan Chief is merely a step on the ladder for you." she said, almost fanatically. She was a particular woman. Incredibly strong within the few Lake Realm cultivators and very distinctive in the way she treated people. Anyone close to her could expect her unconditional support and attention. Anyone else was given the coldest shoulder and the most intrepid indifference.
While falling to what he thought would be his death for an interminable amount of time, Raider's mind had really gone through a lot of twists and turns. Panic, relief, impatience, anger, he had gone through many states of mind. Mostly, he remembered his life. He asked himself: "What if?" What if he was still with his parents? What if he was just another regular kid within the Clan? What if he could cultivate? What if he wasn't a slave? He had played many scenarios in his head fuelled by the anticipation of death. Seemingly knowing what was going through Raider's mind, the spirit interrupted his train of thought. "Kid what's your name again?" "Raider" "Raider. I have one last way to change your destiny." the spirit paused meaningfully. Raider was listening, waiting, hoping. "Take me as your Master. Acce
"Do you want to be able to cultivate?” Raider's mind went blank upon hearing this question. His whole life he had been told he could not cultivate and had to watch others do just that. He had to suffer the life of a mortal while others had it easy. Worse, he was forced to do dirty work for those who had it easy and could simply wave a hand to accomplish what would take him an hour to do. Of course he wanted to have the same abilities. But at the same time he wondered if that would truly make him happy. Not everyone in the Clan was happy. Sure, they had it easy, but they all had their own difficulties. Social classes were well defined and merit was extremely important. Resources were split according to one's class and one's standing within the class, as such, there was a lot of competition within each class. Raider didn't wan
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 Rai
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 memb
"Aaaaaah", he kept on screaming and screaming for an indefinite amount of time as he kept on falling and falling. The abyss he had disappeared into seemed to be infinitely deep and was completely pitch black. So dark that he couldn't he see his own hands. As Raider kept on falling, the kids above ground had gathered around the spot where they had last seen him. However, there was no hole. "Where could he have gone?", asked one of them. "Was this trash able to cultivate after all?", suggested one of them. "Nonsense. Let's go back and tell my father.", said the one who had been floating on puddles. He seemed to be the leader of this group. As the kids ran back to the settlement at their fastest speeds, much faster than they had chased Raider, the latter was still falling into this abyss. 'What the *** is going on?', he asked h
——PART 1: RAIDER ORIGIN—— It was a cold night in the East Canyons. The sound of the wind was overshadowed only by that of the torrential rain pouring down. Nevertheless people were celebrating in the Barren Settlement. Tonight was a special night, it was the night the Clan Chief had chosen to announce his successor. The Barren Settlement was called so because when humans first arrived here the land was absolutely barren. Nothing could grow here, and yet humans could survive. The only reason for that was because every single one of those humans were cultivators. From their birth, these humans were born with cultivation and thus didn't requ