Zhao Yan was not particularly smart or talented. His only claim to distinction was being Zhao Ming's son and nothing more. Still, that did not mean he failed to work hard. He trained his body from dusk to dawn each day, then cultivated thoroughly through the night, all because he did not want to disappoint his father. Truth be told, his father was not overly fond of him. Though Zhao Yan was his firstborn, he was the child of a woman his father did not love, which made Zhao Ming's affection a precious commodity. However, when Zhao Yan was a boy, a wild dog had chased him down, and in that moment, he tasted his father's love for the first time. It was a warm feeling, akin to being wrapped in thick blankets, and from then on, knowing his father held some love for him, he worked harder than any of his brothers and sisters to impress him.

His rewards were usually praise and encouragement, and each time he received them, he felt as if his heart were a blooming sunflower. When his father was granted command of this army, Zhao Yan used his status to be assigned here, knowing he would have plenty of chances to impress him.

All of that was gone now. His father was dead, and his murderer stood below him.

"Bastard! How dare you kill my father!"

With a snarl, his face contorted into unrelenting fury, he thrust the gleaming silver spear—a treasure from his mother—at Liu Xing's head. As he unleashed the attack, his heart filled with hatred so consuming it painted his eyes red. At that moment, he was no longer human, but an incarnation of rage.

The spear whistled through the air. It was the best attack he had ever unleashed, yet Liu Xing was suddenly gone from its path. His movement was so smooth and swift that for a moment, Zhao Yan thought he had thrust the spear toward the wrong spot. Then, with a movement too fast to perceive, a palm strike landed on his chin, snapping his head back and launching him into the sky. He was lucky he did not bite through his tongue, but his brain rattled from the impact as if struck by a giant hammer.

The world spun as Zhao Yan rose higher and higher. Dizziness washed over him. His anger blazed, yet it felt strangely muted, as if some other feeling was holding it back.

A hand suddenly grabbed his ankle, stopping his spin. Zhao Yan looked down and saw Liu Xing. His eyes shone with blue light and pierced straight through him. Before a profound fear could creep into his heart, he was thrown down, hitting the deck back-first an instant later. A mouthful of blood erupted from his lips. Wind escaped his lungs. A sharp pain assaulted his back, as if some of his bones had shattered, and his right foot twisted at an unnatural angle. Still, the fact that he was not a bloody pulp and the deck had not exploded from the impact meant Liu Xing did not intend to kill him. He knew Liu Xing could have easily destroyed it, even though these ships were built with enhanced wood more durable than the strongest steel.

Zhao Yan gritted his teeth as he tried to rise. His face snarled with pain and anger, yet he would not let this pain stop him from attacking the bastard who had killed his father.

Liu Xing landed gracefully in front of him. In a feat of arrogance, he shouldered his stone blade, his posture relaxed, as if Zhao Yan were no match for him—which was true. Zhao Yan understood that he could not defeat the man who had killed his father, yet the fact that he was still alive meant Liu Xing was an arrogant opponent, which gave him at least a chance to deal some damage. After all, few cultivators walked around without treasures, and Zhao Yan had one that could wound even a Core Splitting cultivator.

"What's your name?" Liu Xing asked nonchalantly, though he laced his voice with qi, enabling it to travel afar.

"My name is Zhao Yan, and you need to remember it because it is the name of the man that will kill you!" he shouted.

The treasure he possessed was a necklace. It did not need to be touched to be activated, but it needed to be fed qi. A cultivator like Liu Xing could sense when he sent qi to his necklace, though his arrogance might make him ignore it. Still, to ensure he could activate the necklace with a certain amount of qi, he needed to distract Liu Xing.

His opponent began to look around, which gave him the perfect opportunity to send some of his qi toward the necklace. To mask his efforts, he also looked around, pretending to see what Liu Xing saw. He could see his people. Some of them were clinging to, standing on, or hanging from the ropes that tied the stone turtle. Some stood on the decks, some on the masts, and some even floated in the sea below. Each and every one of them looked at him and Liu Xing, as if this were a duel that could not be disturbed. Still, as he saw the confused expressions on the faces around him, an uneasy feeling crept into his heart, as if he had forgotten something important.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"So, Zhao Yan," Liu Xing stopped looking around and stared straight at him. The lightning surrounding his body began to disperse. "Can you tell me why you all didn't react when I killed the general? Did any of you see the black spear possess one of your own and kill two people? Are you all trapped under some kind of a technique?"

"What are you talking about?" Zhao Yan snarled. "Of course I saw you turned my father into ash!"

When that happened, his eyes had widened in disbelief, and even now, he still could not believe that his father, the man who had earned the epithet Spear of the Empire, was dead.

That was why he had rushed to kill Liu Xing.

[][][]But as he contemplated Liu Xing's questions, there was that moment when his eyes snapped toward the stone turtle. At that moment, he had also intended to capture Liu Xing's women. He thought that the fight between him and his father was none of his business. It was only after Liu Xing's attack dispersed and his father turned to ash that he suddenly realized the gravity of the situation.

Suddenly, he realized that he was the only one trying to attack Liu Xing. The others were still wholly focused on getting to the turtle, even though their general was dead.

As he thought about it, a hint of unease, of doubt, began to worm its way into his heart.

"How about the black spear? Didn't any of you see that the spear has a mind of its own?" Liu Xing continued. "From my perspective, I was fighting a spear that was holding the general, not the other way around. It was a demonic spear, one that possessed a man," he shot a glance toward a hole in the deck, "and killed two of your own." He looked toward two remains that looked like dried dirt, the wind picking dust from them.

Zhao Yan's heart suddenly skipped a beat. He… had actually seen all of that happen. When the spear clattered on the deck, three men had rushed toward it, disrespecting his father and letting their greed guide them. One had successfully reached the spear, or rather, the spear had successfully reached him, and then…

Zhao Yan's eyes opened wide. How could he have dismissed that? Was his father's spear really demonic?

The revelation did not strike him alone. People all around the ships had their eyes widening in surprise.

"I saw that spear strike Skinny Gao. It entered one ear and came out the other!" a man exclaimed.

"Not only that, the spear then sucked him dry until he became dust! It was horrifying. Horrifying, yet, why am I only realizing this now?"

"I remember now! Six months ago, a junior from my sect died, his body found rotten. He was the first victim of the Ghost! That night, I actually saw General Zhao Ming leaving the west gate of my clan with a bloody black spear. And yet, I never thought he was the killer!"

More and more chatter began to sound out from the men around him. Zhao Yan gritted his teeth, feeling that his father was being slandered, that they were calling him the mysterious killer who had started with mortals, then a Lock Opening cultivator with only one lock open, and so on. There was no way his father was the killer. However, even as he wanted to clear his father's name, he… could not. He, too, began to remember many occasions when his father had acted suspiciously. There was the time he came home late at night with a bloody spear and the time he arrived with blood smeared on his face as if he had just drunk it. There was also the night he laughed maniacally like a demon and the day his uncle died almost three months ago. There were many more occasions like these.

It was as if his brain had been shrouded in a mist, making many memories vague, and that mist was now lifted.

His hands and feet began to tremble, not from rage, but from fear.

Fear that his father was truly a demonic cultivator.

Zhao Yan decided to crush this feeling. He refused to believe it. It wasn't a mist of forgetfulness that had lifted; Liu Xing was drowning him and everyone else in a despicable technique that affected their minds.

All of these memories were illusions!

"People, don't be swayed by his words!" Zhao Yan shouted. "My father is an honorable man! There's no way that these memories suddenly appearing in our minds are true. It's likely that Liu Xing is using a technique to manipulate us!" He paused, letting his words linger, then continued. "Moreover, the fact is that he killed my father, a general of the Mirror Tide Empire! An offense like that is punishable by death!"

"But Young Lord—"

"My father is not a demonic cultivator! I will not back down until evidence presents itself!"

Zhao Yan was fighting his own mind. An occasion came to his mind. It was a dark and peaceful night with a full moon illuminating the sky. That night, his father came to his room without saying a word. He stood at the foot of Zhao Yan's bed and looked at him with menacing, hungry eyes, as if Zhao Yan were meat and he were a tiger. Zhao Yan had been jolted awake by his father's presence and asked him what he was doing in his room.

His father had just smiled and said, "Nothing, I just wanted to visit you."

His mind began conjuring ideas about that night, and even though his face, his voice, and all his being wanted to banish the terrible thoughts about his father, he felt overwhelmed by them.

Still… he could not just let Liu Xing go.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.