“Your mother, Tang Jia was a beautiful soul. She was always kind and cherished everyone she met; she was truly one of a kind. Song Guang and Tang Jia had two children, the eldest, you” he nodded towards me.

  “And…”, he struggled, hesitating a lot. His voice trembled a little as he carried on, “your little sister Song Zhu.”.

  My mind reeled. I had a little sister. I cursed violently inside; I could tell from the way he talked something bad happened to her.

  He shifted uncomfortably and continued, “together you all lived happily, no enemies and no struggles due to your father’s skill and mothers’ talent with money. However, somehow a strange rumour began to circulate, apparently your father was in possession of an extremely powerful sword. It was rumoured to be a family heirloom.”

  He turned to look at me, “even the people closest to him never heard a whisper about it before, so I am unsure if the sword even existed. Tragically thought it was enough to bring trouble.” He turned back and looked at the ground, voice on the verge of whispering.

  “We believe it was the Death Sect. the- they struck in the dead of night. The details are vague, all we know is that only you and 2 other servants survived that night. We tried to learn what happened, however whenever we brought it up with you it would cause you to scream and ramble incoherent things. Maybe the memory loss is a good thing, Duyi. That night did something to you that couldn’t be healed by medicine.”.

  He shifted again, a little used to the stress of the conversation now. “We tried asking the 2 servants that survived; however, it was too late. They committed suicide together by the time we came to them, they left a note. It said, ‘This must be Hell because demons roam here’.”.

  At this point I was as pale as a ghost, I expected something bad, but this? This was brutal.

  “You turned to substances to escape the pain, to be honest I don’t blame you.”, his demeanour shifted completely, his fists clenched, and a vein bulged on his neck. The next words were spoken with conviction.

  “I cannot forget what happened. I will never forgive what they did. They will pay, I swear it.”, I could feel his honesty through his words, and I could feel a similar rage within myself.

  I didn’t know my family personally, but I felt a deep connection with them, it was deeply unsettling, yet it also felt very natural.

  I could only reply with a simple “Thank you.”, we sat in silence for a as he let me process things for a while.

  I decided. I must get stronger. This isn’t my home world; this is a fucked up place and I will not succumb to their trials.

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  I stood, “let’s train.” I stated, Li Tian gave a wide grin, and we returned to the arena.

  “So,” I said, picking up a wooden sword, “what’s the deal with you guys,” I started waving my sword around, “going beyond normal strength and speed?”.

  His eyebrows raised a little, “ah you must’ve forgot about Qi, well, while we are not cultivators, we can still circulate some Qi and use it to enhance our muscles.”.

  He walked us over to the secluded corner again whilst narrating, “If I were to strike without Qi”, he did the same slash as last time, this time it was a lot slower and less powerful, “it wouldn’t be as strong.”

  Then he repeated the slash with the same speed and power as before, “but if I put some Qi into it, things change”, he flashed me a smile as if to say ‘See, easy!’.

  I nodded, understanding the theory behind it, “so how do I get this ‘Qi’?”. This caused him to chuckle a little

  “Haha, you? Sorry Duyi, but you can’t yet,” he used his sword to poke my arm, “no offence but there is no way your body can handle Qi right now. Remember, we are not cultivating yet, we are just using Qi temporarily.”.

  That made me painfully aware of my much weaker body, “What’s the difference between this and cultivating?” I had to ask.

  “Well, Cultivators absorb Qi and store it within themselves, they use it to refine themselves, while we are merely taking some Qi from the environment and using it for a one-time use, I am merely a mortal. I walk around in a body that has no Qi, yet even the lowest level Cultivator would be walking around brimming with it. Our full force Qi empowered strikes are just their normal ones.”

  So far, understandable. “Is there a requirement to use Qi?”, he leaned on his sword, considering how to answer me.

  “Well, yes. Everyone has something called spiritual roots. It’s like an organ, like your heart, but it doesn’t reside in your body.” He shrugged, “don’t ask me where it is because I don’t know though.”.

  He continued, “Technically you can absorb Qi if you have working spiritual roots, which everyone has at birth. But there are different kinds, I’m not too familiar with the tiers of them, but I know some are a lot better than others. They will accumulate Qi faster and are able to refine it to be more pure.”. He was a little distracted, trying to balance on his sword with just his hand, clearly one to be easily distracted. But thankfully he continued to explain.

  “Every 7 years the Cloud Sword Sect conducts a testing of the spiritual roots, to see if we are qualified to enter the sect, if we so choose. They are the only ones who are wealthy enough to own testing equipment in this area. Until then we can only vaguely understand our roots from feeling. For example, I know my roots are relatively good compared to those around me, and I’m fairly certain they align to fire in some way.”.

  “Do you know my spirit roots?” I was curious to ask, I quickly added, “And when is the next Cloud Sword Sect testing?”.

  “Hm, unfortunately I don’t know your spiritual roots, you never really took interest in Cultivation or the Martial path, although I believe your father had strong fire spiritual roots. As for the Sect testing? I believe it will come around in 3 months, are you interesting in coming?”.

  “I’ll consider going, what about you?”, he flashed his signature smile and answered, “Naturally I will be going.”. Clearly an ambitious guy.

  I was satisfied with all I had learnt today, now it was time to train. “Let’s start?”, Li Tian nodded, “Alright, remember the basics? I want you to attack me as best you can, I will only defend and point out your mistakes.”.

  I stretched as a bit of a warmup an felt a pang of excitement.

  This will be fun!

  10 minutes later I realised I was an idiot.