Yan Ling didn't respond to Liang Chen's question, her mouth moving slightly as she seemed to search for a way to best word her sentence. Seeing her like this, Liang Chen only turned even more uneasy and nervous, grabbing onto her shoulders with trembling hands, his eyes filled with a pleading light.
"Yan Ling, please, no matter what the situation is, I need to know."
Even if his parents were buried in a mass grave, at the headquarters of the Qing clan, or even if they were just buried on some random plot of land, Liang Chen needed to know. He had to know where he could look for them, had to know where they finally got to rest in peace. Faced with the pleading eyes of the usually stalwart and calm Liang Chen, Yan Ling could only nod her head.
"Okay, I'll take you to the place. But you have to promise me that you'll be calm once we get there."
Yan Ling's expression was a mixture of seriousness and concern, showing that she was truly worried that Liang Chen would do something stupid. Of course, this only served to further increase Liang Chen's unease, but he still gave several rapid nods of his head.
"I promise."
Yan Ling let out a deep breath and grabbed Liang Chen's hand, dragging him deeper into the forest, heading for the mountain that stood at the center of Sky Piercer Forest. Liang Chen only grew even more nervous when he saw the direction they were heading, they couldn't have buried his parents in this forest, right?
Yumao noticed the solemn atmosphere, so he popped out from Liang Chen's dantian and coiled himself up on Liang Chen's shoulder, nestling close to his neck in an attempt to comfort him. The three of them were able to easily move through Sky Piercer Forest, none of the Demonic beasts living in it daring to attack them.
As long as the Demonic beast was below Rank 4, equal to the Heaven's Gate realm, they wouldn't dare get close to Liang Chen and Yan Ling, who had incredibly strong bloodlines. While there did indeed live Demonic beasts of Rank 4 or higher in Sky Piercer Forest, most of those lived on the higher parts of the Sky Piercer mountain, so they didn't encounter any of them while moving.
They quickly reached the foot of Sky Piercer mountain, which started out like a slowly inclining hill which eventually turned into a nearly vertical incline when it reached the halfway point of the mountain. Once you crossed that halfway point you would encounter the truly terrifying Demonic beasts that lived on the mountain, so some considered it to be the line that separated life and death.
The speed of the group slowed down somewhat after they started ascending Sky Piercer mountain, Yan Ling seemingly trying to give Liang Chen some time to calm his nerves and prepare. Two hours after they started to ascend Sky Piercer mountain, Yan Ling stopped walking, indicating that they had reached their goal.
Liang Chen quickly scanned the surroundings, but there was nothing around them. They stood on a small circular outcropping that stretched a few meters out into empty air, a fall of a few kilometers awaiting them if they stepped over the edges of the outcropping. There were no gravemarkers, no bumps in the earth, no signs that anyone had been buried here.
Liang Chen took a few uncertain steps forward, continuously scanning the area. Since Yan Ling had brought him here, this was where his parents should be buried. So why was he unable to see anything? As he continued to check the surroundings in an uncharacteristically dull manner, Yan Ling spoke up in a bitter manner.
"Your parents were never buried. After they were executed, the Qing clan cremated their bodies and scattered their ashes to the wind from this location. This was the only thing that was left here when I first arrived here."
Yan Ling swiped her interspatial ring and took out a yellow crystal the size of a human's eye, walking over and gently handing it to Liang Chen. Liang Chen accepted the crystal, but his mind was completely blank, his gaze dull and hollow. They had been cremated and spread to the wind?
There was a belief that was very prevalent among most people on this planet, and that was that upon death, your soul would return to the great wheel of samsara and await its time to be reborn. But there was a requirement for this to happen, and that was that one had to be buried, their body returning to the earth in one way or another.
Even if one got eaten by Demonic beasts, they would eventually return to the earth, either as feces or when the beast died, allowing their soul to become a part of samsara again. But if one got cremated and had their ashes spread to the wind, they would never return to the earth, their ashes would follow the wind and continue moving for all eternity, their soul forever barred from returning to samsara, forever unable to attain rest and peace. It was the greatest punishment one could sentence someone to, a sign of how great one's sins were.
At one point, Liang Chen also followed this belief, but after coming in contact with the cultivation world, he was no longer so certain. But whether or not this belief was true or not didn't matter right now, what mattered to him was that not only had the Qing clan forced his parents to become scapegoats, they had even given them a punishment like this.
They knew very well that his parents were innocent of their accused crime, and just executing them was enough to sell the silly story that they had cooked up. Yet they still gave them this burial, the burial reserved only for the greatest of sinners. They had laid down their lives for the reputation of the clan, but even then the clan decided to desecrate their bodies like this.
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Qi slowly started to seep out of Liang Chen's body due to his unstable emotions. When the Qi entered the crystal that he was holding, the crystal suddenly lit up with a bright light. The Qi moved through the crystal, passing through an array that was hidden inside it. Once the Qi passed through the other side of the crystal, the array caused the Qi to gather together and form an image.
The image featured three people, a child, a woman, and a man. The woman was tall and had clear blue eyes, cherry-red lips and long black hair tied into a loose ponytail, the man had a rugged figure and features that looked like they were carved from stone, his skin was somewhat tanned, he had short brown hair, and his eyes were a deep black, like the night sky. Standing in between these two was a young child who seemed to only be around one year old, he had short black hair, smooth and delicate features, and deep green eyes.
Liang Chen felt as if everything around him froze when he saw this image, for he knew it very well, he now also understood what sort of crystal he was holding. The crystal was a special type of material that was very sensitive to Qi, and thanks to an array carved into it, one could connect their Qi and mind to the crystal, engraving whatever they were seeing into the crystal, allowing one to see it whenever they wished.
This particular crystal and image was something Qing Xiang had created for Liang Chen's father, Qing Feng, it was a gift to celebrate Liang Chen's first birthday. Since this crystal was here, it was likely that Qing Xiang had visited this place and left it behind as a sort of gravemarker, marking the place where Liang Chen and the rest of his family were resting.
Qing Xiang had never seen Liang Chen's new appearance after he started cultivating, nor did he know that Liang Chen had managed to increase his cultivation after Qing Xiang left the city again. He only knew that Liang Chen had been forced to flee the city, and since Qing Xiang didn't know about Liang Chen's strength, coupled with the fact that there had been no news about him, Qing Xiang likely believed Liang Chen to have already died.
Liang Chen's name and appearance had popped up on the Mortal Titan list, but he had changed so much since his time in Green Rivers city that it was unlikely that anyone would be able to recognize him, so it was only logical for Qing Xiang to believe that Liang Chen was already dead.
Looking at the image, tears involuntarily started to run down Liang Chen's face, the Qi seeping out from his body turning violent. The earth beneath him cracked, the air around him lighting up with arcs of lightning, his emotions an absolute mess. His heart was filled with fury at how the Qing clan had treated his parents grave, sorrow because of the fact that they were dead, hatred at how the Qing clan had killed his parents for something as pitiful as their reputation, a tinge of joy that he finally had a picture of them, but also self-loathing.
Ever since the execution, Liang Chen had thought about his parents several times, forced to relive their execution everytime he closed his eyes to rest or sleep. So he thought he had been able to remember their looks perfectly, that their appearance would forever be perfectly ingrained in his mind. But looking at the image in front of him, he realized that he had been wrong.
The last time he 'saw' his parents was during the second trial of the Mystic's Hidden Realm, where he had been forced to break through a joyous illusion based on his memories. In that illusion, his mother had brown eyes and black hair, and his father had brown eyes and brown hair. It was just a minor change, the color of their eyes being slightly off, but it was a sign that he had slowly started to forget how they truly looked, their appearances distorting within his own mind. So little time had passed, but he had already started to forget what they truly looked like, this simple fact filled Liang Chen with an intense self-loathing.
More and more tears started to uncontrollably stream down Liang Chen's face, all the sadness and sorrow he had felt since his parents' execution hitting him at once. All the emotions he had forced himself to drown out while cultivating bubbling to the surface, striking at every inch of his body like a furious tidal wave. More and more Qi started to billow out from his body, the air growing thick with lightning and poison, the earth around him corroding from both poison and an increase in the flow of time.
He had drowned them out for so long, bottling them up and keeping them within him so that they wouldn't break him, so that he could use them to push forward through any pain. But he was still just a child, even with the increased flow of time he had used while cultivation, now that they came rushing to the surface, he was unable to stop his tears from flowing, his emotions from going on a rampage.
As his tears continued to pour down his face, obscuring his vision, he suddenly felt something warm embrace him, a sweet fragrance filling his nose. A somewhat pained voice gently floated into his ears, somewhat calming his rampaging emotions.
"It's okay, it's fine to cry. You're not alone, so it's fine to just let it all out. Even if you are stronger than others, even if it's you, it's fine to cry. So just cry, let it all out."
His tears eased up somewhat upon hearing this voice, allowing him to just barely see that it was Yan Ling who was embracing him in a tight hug. The lightning and poison that was raging around him struck her from time to time, but she only grit her teeth and did her best to endure it, continuing to comfort Liang Chen.
Seeing this, Liang Chen forcefully reclaimed control over his emotions and the Qi that was billowing out from him, calming it down so that it didn't continue to hurt Yan Ling or Yumao, who was still coiled up on Liang Chen's shoulder and doing his best to endure.
The lightning and poison around him started to avoid Yan Ling and Yumao, but it didn't retreat into Liang Chen's body, still reacting to his strong emotions. Once the Qi had calmed down, Liang Chen returned the hug that Yan Ling was giving him, burying his head in her hair as he continued to cry.
He gave vent to all the emotions he had drowned, emptying out all the sorrow and loneliness he had felt, all the pain he had endured. And for the first time since his parents were executed, Liang Chen acted like a child his age, leaning on someone else and freely crying.