NOVEL NEXT Chapter 19 - Decadent Traitor
46th of Season of Earth, 56th year of the 32nd cycle
Newt stopped before the closed gate, wondering why his clan had allowed vines to smother and conceal the fearsome ancestral guardian statues which flanked the main gate. They spat on thousands of years of tradition for the sake of greenery blooming with white and purple flowers.
Nobody had noticed him yet, which was even more unacceptable. The security his father insisted on had grown so lax, he reached the gate without being challenged. He examined the once black walls painted white from up close and felt his stomach churn. Based on everything he could see, Newt concluded his uncle was trying to undo the family history and spit on their ancestor.
The most terrifying thing was, a part of him understood. Newt had grown up hearing the stories of how his clan had grown weaker and weaker, smaller and smaller, until they were reduced to their current state. Not a regional giant amongst cultivators, but a local power among mortals, slightly better than wealthy landowners.
Newt could have understood his uncle if he had destroyed the tradition to remake it, to try to ascend. But that is not what he saw.
Newt looked at the massive wooden gate, about to knock, when he pushed it open instead. He was not there to act civil, he was there to wreak havoc. The gate swung open, followed by two startled cries as wood smacked the bored guards..
“Who goes there?” they shouted, but Newt stepped in without answering them.
The men scrambled to block Newt’s path and pointed their spears towards him.
“Stop,” the older guard, whom Newt recognized, shouted, his face red with embarrassment and anger. Then he recognized the scrawny youth before him.
“Young Master?” the guard choked a sob, tears trying to escape his wet eyes as he lowered his weapon.
The younger guard seemed confused, but followed his senior and withdrew his spear.
Newt found himself embarrassed. He wanted to say something to the old guard, but he had no idea what the mature man’s name was. He probably caught his name at some point, but when he was the Young Master, common guards were beneath Newt’s notice.
“It is I… Good Sir,” Newt added after thinking how to address the guard. When he was a child, his father had taught him that ‘Good Sir’ was a great way to address someone beneath him, who seemed honorable and respectful.
I wonder why I found it so difficult and beneath me to show these people basic respect and courtesy before spending three years in a mine? It was a shameful fault, one which Newt would correct.
“Thank the heavens you are all right!” Newt’s cheeks burned with shame when he heard the joy and relief in the guard’s voice. “Your uncle is destroying everything. He is selling your family’s reserve of spirit gems to pay for feasts and banquets, he has added nineteen young women to his harem in less than three years, hosting opulent weddings…”
The guard kept talking, and Newt could not help but wonder why a common guard would care. He took a moment to realize why the man was so devastated by what had happened. Some of the servants and guards come from branch families, descendants of those who lacked the talent or drive for cultivation. Or, more recently, the descendants of those the clan could not afford to raise as cultivators. The guard was probably Newt’s distant cousin, crying over the state of his ancestral home.
“What is your name, Good Sir?” Newt finally mustered his courage to ask.
“Blackstone, Young Master,” Blackstone said, not sounding the least bit offended because his young master did not know his name.
“Blackstone, what of the elders?”
“The new patriarch imprisoned the two who disagreed with his… design.” Blackstone spat the word. “The rest supported him. The clan lacked resources to purchase adequate spirit beast cores for their descendants to awaken spirit roots. Since their cultivation had reached a bottleneck, and their descendants were mortal, they agreed to sell everything relating to cultivation and become a mortal lineage.”
“That is madness,” Newt muttered, and Blackstone nodded.
“They don’t think so,” Blackstone said. “The mine is depleted, there is no need to stay strong to resist sects and other families, because we have nothing of interest. If anyone comes asking for our ancestral techniques, the elders have agreed to hand them over without resistance.”
Newt was sixteen, yet he nearly suffered a heart attack when he heard what level of sacrilege the family had stooped down to.
“They would hand out ancestral teachings to anyone who asked?” he stuttered, struggling to control his rage, yet the air around his skin still started simmering as faint red scales covered his body.
Blackstone was nodding when he noticed the phenomenon.
“Young Master, you—” he started, and his younger colleague withdrew a step.
“Where is my uncle, and where are these heretical elders?”
Blackstone gulped. “They are in their residences.”
Newt nodded, and stormed off towards the main mansion, the patriarch’s family’s residence. Servants ran when they saw him, hoping to escape getting caught in the carnage they expected. Newt paid them no mind and slammed the door open.
Three young women, barely a year or two his senior, looked at him.
“Who are you?” One of them asked, rising from the table where they shared tea and gossip.
Newt ignored her and headed to the audience hall.
“I am speaking to you, peasant!” the woman shouted, and the familiar, haughty tone he once used stung Newt like a slap, but he had more important matters to handle than a single shrew.
The audience hall’s door slammed open, revealing an empty chamber. Thankfully, the chamber walls were not painted over, still covered in intricate paintings depicting their founding ancestors’ majestic feats.
“Guards, a thug has entered the premises!” the shrew shouted, running behind Newt, and the young man could finally endure no more.
He controlled his strength, but a mere slap still sent her flying, blood oozing out of her mouth. The young woman was out cold on the floor, her cheek swelling. For a second, Newt was worried he had killed her and heaved a relieved sigh when he saw her chest moving.
“What’s happening?”
Newt caught a drunken slur and the hair at the back of his neck bristled. He spun around, his heart pounding. There he was. Newt’s uncle was a handsome man, no different from his heart demon. He appeared less than thirty years old, his robe was crooked, revealing a bare breast, firm, but free of muscle, hinting at a body of someone who never had to work nor fight his entire life.
“You!” Newt’s uncle shouted, the drunken haze retreating, but not leaving him completely.
Newt did not care about his uncle’s circumstances. They were in the same realm, and his uncle was a genuine threat, not a heart demon. One wrong move, and he would pay with a limb, or with his life.
Newt charged. He had no weapons, but neither did his uncle. He lacked techniques, but his uncle had obviously neglected his training for a very long time. In Newt’s mind, they were equally matched. And in an equal match, initiative and attitude mattered the most.
Red spectral scales covered Newt’s skin, and rough rock, just as immaterial covered the scales a moment later. Meanwhile, his uncle stared at him. The speed at which Newt moved, the distance he covered in every bound were clearly beyond normal humans. Which left one logical conclusion; the boy was a cultivator.
Unaccustomed to battle, Newt’s uncle focused on the less important matter. Instead of focusing on his enemy, he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. To awaken a spirit root, one needed to absorb and refine the core of a spirit beast. But where could Newt find something like that in the darkness of the abandoned and thoroughly explored mine?
The erratic train of thought came to a crashing end as Newt’s fist connected with his uncle’s chest. Newt paused, watching the drunkard fly across the room and strike the far wall without offering any resistance.
His heart demon would have struck him dead twice over. He was prepared to dodge to the side, the blow being merely a feint, but when his uncle failed to move, when Newt’s third eye failed to register a stir of spiritual energy moving through his enemy’s body, Newt added force to his feint and committed, despite believing it a trap of some sort.
Newt’s uncle smashed into the wall with a boom, blood spraying from his mouth, and he fell down, unconscious. Newt stood there, his fists clenched, heaving for breath, as he realized he did not want for the events to unfold the way they did.
He wanted his uncle to fight him, for him to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by a hair’s width, he wanted… Something. Anything. He did not want to strike his uncle and accidentally kill him in one blow while the man struggled to come to terms with what was happening before him.
Wait. Did I really kill him?
Newt suddenly felt sick. He wanted to defeat his uncle and have him face justice for what he had done. He did not want to kill the man without hearing what he had to say, without knowing why he had betrayed his father and their ancestors.
Struggling for breath, Newt sprinted towards the crumpled shell of a man.