8 - Followed

Xu Xin woke up from his nightmare with a gasp, tears already streaming down his face. Because of his demeanor, most of the people who met him often forgot that he was only fourteen years old and still a kid.

Being a kid, he had never experienced the death of someone he loved before, and the first time he experienced it was in such a cruel and horrible way.

He would be lucky if he would ever be able to love someone again after that, and if he did, he certainly wouldn't love them to the level that he loved Qi Meixiang.

For a few minutes, all he did was sit there, his head in his hands, crying. His heart had been cracked into pieces, and it had still not recovered even if his body had.

A few seconds later, he stopped crying and stood up, wiping the tears from his face.

He then let his killing intent towards his brother spread out, and everything within a mile of him went quiet as a somber killing intent rolled out over everything like a plague, silencing all it touched.

He then went around, collecting some resources after letting the killing intent fade away, after which he went into the city and sold them.

He was only a kid, but he was being forced to live with such an emotional scar.

Some people would say that it was worse than death, but he would say that there was a reason he was still alive, a reason why he had been given a second chance, and he would say that the reason was so that he could kill Xiao Wei.

He just temporarily rented a place to stay in the city, and he went there, just spending the whole day there, doing nothing but working out.

His increased healing allowed him to work out continuously without causing any damage, so he did so without hesitation.

He only stopped a couple times to eat food, which he did so more often than he needed so that he could build muscle. For the next few days, this was the only thing he did, and some people were wondering where he had gone. After all, he was an extremely odd kid, so he caught a lot of attention.

Every time he went out, he went and got food before coming back, doing nothing but that. During this time, people saw him grow bigger and get stronger, and it made them curious as to who he was, because only a week later, he broke through to the eighth stage of the body rank.

After another week and a half, he broke through to the ninth stage of the body rank, the final rank.

During this rank, one would prepare to break through to the true realm of cultivation, the martial arts path.

The martial arts path, though not the only realm of cultivation, was the most common, and it was what made up 99.9% of all people in the kingdoms. Although it was called a path, it was, in reality, a realm of cultivation, and only a very lucky few ever got past it.

At the peak of his life, before his fall, Xu Xin was at the absolute limit of the ninth stage of the martial arts path, and he was stronger than someone who had broken through to the realm above that, the spirit realm.

His father was at the spirit realm, along with a bunch of others, but Xu Xin was the youngest pseudo spirit realm cultivator in the history of the kingdom, and once he broke through, his legacy would be cemented.

In the end, his legacy had been cemented, but not in the way he wanted. Instead of being regarded as a hero of the kingdom that would lead them into a new age, he was branded as a traitor and sentenced to a brutal death.

Now his face and name was the most hated in the entire continent just below the Blood Order Patriarch.

Having gotten a second chance at life, he made a promise to himself that he would rise up and take back the shame and humiliation he had experienced, and make sure those responsible lived out the rest of their days in endless agony, and if he couldn't do that, then he would at the very least kill them.

He had a very big issue with everything related to revenge, and he always tended to take it further than it needed to go, but he honestly felt like the people who did this to him would be getting off easy if he only killed them.

His way of life could be described like this: get hit hard, hit back harder. This applied to every aspect of his life, including his issues about respect.

It even applied to things that weren't negative; for example, if someone gave him a worthwhile gift unprompted, he would go out of his way to make sure that he more than payed that person back for it in the future.

He had realized that this was something he did, but he didn't really care since it had never made a negative impact on his life before.

However, with his recent trauma of watching the person he loved most in the world be brutally murdered right in front of him, it went hyperactive, leading him to feel an absolute need to destroy Xiao Wei's life in a way far worse than his own was destroyed.

It was this sole purpose in his life that led him to push himself to his limits, going beyond the limits of what others thought would be impossible.

Now, because of this undying hatred, he had managed to recover at an insane speed, and although it wasn't quite as fast as his 'original body', it was far faster than his current body should have been able to support.

Now, he was on the final stage of the body rank, almost ready to break into the realm of the martial arts path.

For several days, all he did was work out all day long, not giving himself a single chance to rest.

However, right at the end of his progress to the peak of the body rank, he ran out of money, which meant that he would have to go into the woods again to get more resources to sell.

This had happened several times already, and if not for his excellent knowledge about finding those resources, it would take him a much longer time to do so.

As he had run out of money, he went into the woods, looking for resources that were used for people on the martial arts path to cultivate with.

These resources contained natural condensed chunks of Qi, which was the energy that people used to cultivate.

These chunks of Qi sometimes even had an element to them, which were extremely helpful to the people who cultivated that element.

Xu Xin had gone through several entire books filled to the brim with how to find these resources and what they looked like, so it was tens of times easier for him to find them compared to other people.

As he was going through the woods, finding resources, he heard a cracking sound behind him. He knew that it was a person, because he had heard the same person following him since he left the populated city.

However, he just continued to ignore them. He wanted to know their goals before doing anything, so it was better to pretend he didn't know they were there, at least for now.

It was different with the bandit in that he had reacted before he understood what was really happening, meaning that if he pretended he knew nothing, he might have ended up dead.

However, if he didn't react now, it made no difference to him, so he was too lazy to deal with it right now.

As he went along his way, there were a few instances of minor, easily ignorable sounds that clued in Xu Xin on the person's position

As he went through the woods, the person followed him, but he didn't really care. It made no difference to him anyway.

As the day came to an end, he started to head back to the city, only picking up a few more resources along the way.

During this time, the person following him still didn't come out, so he continued on his way.

Just as he was about to leave the forest and enter the range of the city, he finally got tired of waiting and yelled out, "You've been following me since I left the city, and you still haven't done anything even though I'm about to go back in. What do you want?"

He spoke in the direction of where he knew the hidden person was, and he had an annoyed expression on his face, while his voice reflected his annoyance as well.

There was no response even after a few seconds, however, which further annoyed him.

"Get out here and tell me what you want. I'm not in the mood for this." He was getting annoyed right now since he liked his privacy, and having someone watch him this whole time was truly annoying.

After another few seconds, there still wasn't any response, so he decided to just walk up to the person who was watching him.

He heard shifting in the bushes when he walked towards them, and there was nobody there when he got there, but he had heard where they went, so he just went there. He continued this for another couple minutes before finally giving up.

It wasn't that he couldn't find them, but rather, he was too weak, and this person didn't want him to find them even though he knew they were there.

He was just too lazy to deal with them, because if they meant him harm, they would have done so the moment he pointed out that he knew they were there.

Since he was too lazy to deal with this, he just continued on his way, about to leave the forest.

But as he slightly expected, the moment he was about to leave the forest, he heard a voice ring out behind him, saying "Wait!" He recognized it, and he couldn't help but laugh when he heard it.

"Oh, no wonder you were trying to hide from me. I hope that this time you don't try to kill me." His voice contained a grand sarcasm as he laughed throughout the statement.

That's right, the one who was following him was the apprentice of the archer, the one who had tried to kill him previously, and it was now clearly evident that she likely had hid in order to hide her identity from him to avoid more mockery.

However, the moment she revealed herself, she had been mocked by him once again. She got angry, but she contained it as well as she could and calmed down.

"My master told me to find you. Please come with me." She tried her best to sound nice and inviting, though it was clear that she was against this idea.

He was happy to hear that she was calmed down even after his insult, and he responded with a perfectly calm face and voice, showing he was serious and no longer joking around.

"Restraint is one of the most important skills that you can learn, but most people neglect to learn it, often costing them their lives." He was deadly serious as he spoke, giving advice to this girl.

He had now turned around, and his aquamarine eyes were locked onto hers.

Looking into his eyes, she once again got a strange feeling from him. His eyes were perfectly still, and every move he made was extremely elegant and perfect, as if a dance by a trained dancer.

His next words, however, came as a shock to her. "I have no interest in meeting with your master or anyone else. I will make my own path, and I don't need someone else to think they can pave it for me."

After saying this, he turned around and left.