"Father! Grandfather! Where are you all?" a boy with black hair and delicate features called out from inside a hole in the ground. His name was Yue Tianxuan. He was 16 this year, and he lived in a small farming village and had a happy life with his grandfather, father, and his many friends. He didn't know where, or who, his mother was, but he was perfectly content with what he had right now.
When his father had told him to go inside the makeshift cave that they had dug together as a fun secret hideout, his father had looked panicked. He didn't notice that though. He just thought it would be perhaps another night outside his home, but instead of sleeping on the surface, they would sleep inside the manmade cave.
When he got in though, his father made sure he went to the deepest part of the hideout, told him to be quiet for a few hours, and then quickly threw in tons of dirt and rocks that were piled around to block the trap-door like entrance. He had given no explanation whatsoever.
At first, Yue Tianxuan didn't realize what was going on. What just happened only registered in his mind by the time the entrance was nearly completely blocked. "Dad! What are you doing?" No response. The truth dawned on him. He was... getting buried alive? And by his own father, no less?
Everything was dark. While he wasn't scared of the dark, being alone in such a dark cave was not a good experience for a 16-year-old boy. He didn't dare to move from fear. It took a long time for him to finally regain his composure.
'I should probably get out of this cave first. Just standing around doing nothing isn't helping anything at all.' He thought about shouting for help but thinking about the fact that this cave was around 10 meters below the ground, with his weak shouting voice, he realized no one would be able to hear anything. This cave had been a year-long project where they had made sure multiple times that the dirt wouldn't collapse by making a whole new cave wall using stone slabs. Looking back at it all, how did his father do it?
Dispelling those thoughts, he tried to brainstorm other solutions, though to no avail. Yue Tianxuan heaved a sigh and walked up the stone slope to the previous entrance. There was no other solution. He sighed again and started to dig upwards with his fingers.
After many painful hours, with aching fingers, Yue Tianxuan had finally dug a small hole to the surface.
Actually, he should have been able to finish much faster had it not been for the fact that his father had somehow plated another thin layer of stone near the outside of the cave. He had no choice but to try to punch or elbow the layer of stone to break it open, and it was only from luck that he had been able to find a weak spot that allowed him to break open a tiny hole.
Putting his mouth to the hole, he quickly called out, "Is there anyone there? Help! I can't get out! I'm hungry! Hello?"
Alas, there was no response. Suddenly, a smell of blood assaulted his nose through the hole. It was as if the whole village had a slaughter-fest and killed many of their livestock in front of his secret cave. Yue Tianxuan shook his head to dispel those ridiculous thoughts.
With no other choice, he forced himself to try his best to punch the rocks around the hole to make it bigger. Somehow, this time, the entire plate of stone shattered like glass. With a surprised face, he collapsed onto the ground to rest his aching body. He took a deep breath and froze in shock.
The scent of blood that wafted in from the entrance was so pungent that it had almost clogged his nose the moment he breathed it in.
He quickly scrambled back on his feet popped his head out of the entrance. "What is that bloody-!?" His expression froze and slowly turned into horror as he saw the scene in front of him.
The first thing that hit him was the smell of blood. The smell was so thick that he had almost immediately thrown up whatever vestiges of food he still had in his stomach. Then was the smell of burnt flesh and wood. Corpses were strewn across the ground. Some were so horribly disfigured and burnt that they were completely unrecognizable. There was blood everywhere. It indeed was a slaughter-fest, but of humans instead of livestock.
"Wha... What happened here?!?! Father! Grandfather! Where are you? Nono, this isn't real. This is just a dream. Wake up! WAKE UP GODDAMN IT!" Sadly, it was no dream.
With a frantic expression, he pushed himself out of the hole with all his remaining strength. He quickly got up and staggered towards the first body he saw.
'Isn't this uncle Tie? And Aunt Du? That's Tingsheng?!' All of these corpses were once his friends and people he regarded as family. Yue Tianxuan was staggering through trying to find the body of his father and grandfather. Tears poured down his face.
After hours of searching, he saw them. Two corpses. His father and grandfather.
"No. Nopenopenopenope. This is not real. Nope. Not real. Fake." Even as he tried to deny reality, he knew that, deep in his subconsciousness, his father and grandfather were dead. He had already run out of tears left to cry.
A wail so dark and full of resentment resounded out that had you heard it, you would have fallen to the ground in fear. It seemed a sleeping slaughter god has awakened inside the body of Yue Tianxuan, ready to kill anything and everything in the world. His aura was full of bloodlust and killing intent thick enough that you would be able to see that it was warping the space around him. He wanted vengeance. For the people who destroyed his village to live a life worse than death. He wanted to destroy this unfair world that had taken his family from him. He wanted to kill. His pupils had also turned a demonic mixture of purple, gold, and black. Then, suddenly, as if he had run out of energy, he collapsed.
Hours later, he had woken up to the sounds of a large beast running towards the village. He had no recollection of the phenomenon that just happened.
"Dad. I'm still sleepy…" he mumbled, before opening his eyes a tiny slit to his father's bloody face.
Memories of what happened flooded into his brain. His eyes opened wide for a second. He sat up and tried shaking his father, pinching himself as hard as he could, drawing blood, only to realize that this really wasn't a dream. Hate overwhelmed him again.
In the distance, he saw around 10 youths wearing robes riding on three, large tiger-like beasts. towards the village. When they arrived, the one in the front, which looked like the leader of the group, leaped off his horse and walked to Yue Tianxuan.
Yue Tianxuan looked at the group with a stoic expression, though darkness could be perceived in his eyes. He made it obvious he had no intention to greet them.
The youth walked over to him looking at the village, and quietly and slightly fearfully, said, "It seems that your village was raided by bandits, and those bandits aren't weak either. They were around Qi Condensation 4th stage, with the leader at most the 6th stage."
"Qi Condensation…? What the bloody hell is that?" Ye Tianxuan muttered darkly, in a voice full of hate. Everything that had ever mattered to him had all disappeared. He only felt emptiness.
The leader didn't answer. He first dug two holes in the ground and laid the corpses that were Yue Tianxuan's father and grandfather respectively gently into them before burying them again. This way, they could at least have a proper burial.
Seeing that Yue Tianxuan said in a hoarse voice, he muttered, "Thanks."
"Your welcome. Do you mind telling me your name?
"Yue Tianxuan."
"You can call me Ye Tian." The youth replied rather friendlily, extending his hand for a handshake. Yue Tianxuan looked at the outstretched hand and after some hesitation, he slowly extended his own hand for a light handshake.
Looking back at the rest of the 9 people, he gestured for them to come over.
Pointing to one of the emptier beasts, Ye Tian made an inviting gesture. "Hop on."
"Where to? I have nowhere to go," Yue Tianxuan bitterly laughed.
Ye Tian gestured to the scene of destruction everywhere and asked, "Don't you want power? Revenge? We are outer sect members of the Lingxi sect, a place where you can get power. Strength for revenge. Isn't that what you want?"
"Power? How can I get power?" Yue Tianxuan's ears immediately perked up when he heard that.
Ye Tian explained what the world was like. Yue Tianxuan figured out that he was currently located in the State of Duanmo, a large area that was located in the vast Immortal Martial Continent. There are currently three known cultivation realms, being the Body Strengthening, Qi Condensation, and Houtian respectively. After that, there's the Xiantian realm, which is nothing more than a legend at this point. Each realm has 13 smaller sub-layers, with the first 4 levels being the beginning stage, levels 5-9 being the middle stage, and 10-12 being the late stage.
In Body Strengthening, to advance, you have to strengthen your muscles and bones by tempering them many, many times. This way, by the time you arrived at peak Body Strengthening, your external body should be harder than stone. This step is needed because the vessel of your strength is located in your body. If you had tremendous strength but your body was too weak to utilize it, then just using a portion of your strength would cause you to explode. To put it simply, this was the stage where you build a very simple foundation for the future.
As for Qi Condensation, it's when you start to condense your qi. Qi is the thing that allows you to use magical artifacts that have miraculous abilities. Qi could be used for anything as simple as drying clothes to even splitting the heavens, though no one has even come remotely close to that realm in the past. If the body is the vessel, then qi is the liquid that resides inside the vessel. In this realm, you are able to open some of your meridians. The maximum possible is 12 meridians opened, though normal Qi Condensation would be lucky to even open 4-5. From that point on, opening other meridians gets exponentially harder. At the peak of this realm, you should be able to have qi flowing in every section of all of your meridians at one time when at peak condition. This does mean that the more meridians you opened, the harder it is to advance. However, when you do advance, you get much stronger than others who unblocked fewer meridians than you. This is why sometimes a Qi Condensation expert could be much stronger than another Qi Condensation expert in the same realm. Ye Tian was in this realm too, being a first-layer Qi Condensation expert who had opened 1 meridian.
After Qi Condensation is the Houtian Realm. At this point, they can condense a dantian, which is like a place where you can store qi. When it is first condensed, it probably has at most a cubic foot of space. In this realm, you expand your dantian to your utter limit. Each person's limit is different. The reason that people in this realm are so rare is that to condense a dantian, your qi reserves have to be very great. Because your meridians aren't good at storing qi, usually you would need at least 10 meridians opened in Qi Condensation which would be very difficult without enough talent and opportunities.
Lastly, there is the legendary Xiantian realm. Not much is known about it except for the fact that when you reach Xiantian, you are able to tread in the sky like it is the ground. It is rumored that you would be strong enough to destroy mountains and split seas, for as for whether or not that is exaggerated, no one knows.
There are also magical beasts. They are beasts with power far beyond normal beasts such as tigers and lions. They also have different ranks. The highest level known so far is peak third rank. Their ranks are also ranked similarly to human cultivation, with the first rank being at around the same power level as the Body Strengthening stage, the second rank at the Qi Condensation stage, and the third rank at the Houtian realm. You could also put a spiritual contract on them allowing you to control their actions along with their life and death. This way, you could get your own beast partner. This was the case with the beast that they were currently riding on, which was a nameless beast that had been found in the wild as cubs by Ye Tian's group. They seem to have strength that peaked at mid-Body Strengthening.
In this world, the only thing that mattered was strength. As long as you are strong enough, then you can get anything you desire. Otherwise, no one would care enough about you to spare you a second glance.
The reason why he had never even heard of these before was because the village he lived in was so remote that no one had even cared to come there. Perhaps their founders had known about these facts, but they might have wanted a peaceful life and didn't mention it to their descendants. The people in the village did know that there was a whole new world out there, but seeing that no one who left the village ever really came back, many were discouraged and instead wanted to just live a normal life.
There were two things that didn't make sense, though Yue Tianxuan didn't notice either. Number one was that somehow, the village hadn't been destroyed despite the fact that they were so weak for so long. It was as if no one could find it. The second was that a whole group of Qi Condensation experts actually went to wipe out a poor village when even a mid-stage Body Strengthening could. You should know that Qi Condensation experts had their own pride, and they definitely would feel like it is an insult to them for them to do such an easy task using their full power.
These were not the things the Yue Tianxuan was thinking about currently though. He was thinking that there was finally a way to get revenge. Revenge. It was the only thing that mattered to him currently. 'I will get revenge, no matter what it takes. Even if I have to sell my very soul to the devil himself.' His eyes glittered with expectation and firmness.