Chapter 223: Volume Finale: Prisoner of Fate
February 11, 2015. Outskirts of Hengcheng City, 6:55 AM. The Little New Year.
The sky had yet to brighten. Snowflakes drifted down from the pitch-black heavens, dancing in the wind. They blanketed the earth in white and carried with them a biting chill.
In the mountains on the outskirts, the area around the silent Tang Family ancestral hall was deserted. There was only the sound of the wind and the falling snow.
On the other end of the mountain path, on a small hillside several hundred meters from the hall, a young man with a short crew cut was staring intently at the location.
Despite the biting wind and temperatures well below zero, the young man wore only a thin layer of clothing—a faded white shirt and a pair of jeans, washed so often they had turned pale. Such attire offered no protection from the cold. In fact, the young man’s face was deathly pale, completely devoid of color, as if he might collapse into the snow at any moment.
Everything was strange.
The Hengcheng City Tang Family’s ancestral hall was located deeper in the mountains than Tang Family Village. Reaching it by car would take over forty minutes, but this thinly-clad young man had no vehicle with him, not even a bicycle.
Not only that, but although the Tang Family ancestral hall was in a secluded location, it was usually guarded by several Spirit Awakening-level Transcendents accompanied by Resentful Spirits. Recently, however, no one had appeared, nor were there any Spirit Bodies lingering about.
It was as if the entire Tang Family had vanished.
Too many things didn’t add up, but the young man knew the reason for all of it.
"I was supposed to be the one to get my revenge..." The pale, corpse-like young man clenched his fists. Only then did the veins on the back of his hands become visible, blood pulsing within them. "But by the time I got out, the Tang Family had already been wiped out..."
"Dad, Mom, what am I supposed to do now? The Tang Family is gone. The people who killed you are all dead... What on earth am I supposed to do?"
His confused voice echoed. A faint, pale gray Spiritual Light began to emanate from all over his body. As the Spiritual Light spread, his body gradually faded, undergoing Voidification, until he finally took on the form of a Spirit Body—something ordinary people could neither see nor perceive.
Only an increasingly lost and helpless voice could be heard, reverberating through the Spirit Realm.
’This power I’ve suddenly gained... what’s the point of it?’
The young man’s name was Tang Yuan. As his name suggested, he was a member of the Tang Family of Hengcheng City.
The Tang Family was composed of a main branch and five major branch families. Tang Yuan was born into one of these branch families. Because his father possessed a decent Cultivation Talent, he was held in high regard and had married a kind and beautiful woman. Their family was harmonious and happy, a happiness that peaked with Tang Yuan’s birth.
He had almost died at birth from a weak heartbeat, so his parents named him Tang Yuan. They hoped he would have many "yuan"—connections—with the world and the friends he made, allowing him to live a happy life. Plus, combined with their family name, it sounded cute.
It was indeed a beautiful wish—but Tang Yuan was not fated to have that connection with his parents.
When Tang Yuan was four, his father, who was close to reaching the Awakening Tier in his cultivation, died prematurely from a backlash of yin energy during a training mishap. A few years later, his mother also left abruptly. It was said she had remarried... but Tang Yuan didn’t believe it. He often saw his mother crying as she looked at a family photo taken before his father’s death. ’How could she just abandon her child and leave all by herself?’
But his disbelief was pointless. A few years later, at the age of ten, Tang Yuan heard news of his mother’s death—an accidental drowning, they said.
’But Mom was an excellent swimmer...’
Left alone in the Tang Family, Tang Yuan faced no particular discrimination. He seemed to have no Cultivation Talent and was physically very weak. As an individual, he posed no threat, and thus he received neither discrimination nor attention. He was like a Ghost living in the Tang Family—no parents, no friends, no connections.
Despite living in a large compound with nearly a hundred people, part of a great family of several hundred, the only thing Tang Yuan had ever felt was the most profound loneliness.
Fortunately, schools existed. In childhood, relationships between classmates were always simpler, not driven by ulterior motives or overthinking. As long as their personalities clicked, even a somewhat withdrawn Tang Yuan could make friends.
The Tang Family didn’t place many restrictions on the orphaned Tang Yuan, at least maintaining a semblance of fairness expected of a great family. Upon his coming of age, they handed over his father’s entire inheritance—everything except what pertained to the Extraordinary—to Tang Yuan. Of course, this was essentially the same as being kicked out of the family.
His father’s inheritance wasn’t much, but it was enough for him to work his way through college. Had things continued that way, Tang Yuan might have lived an ordinary life, and his desire to uncover the truth behind his parents’ deaths might have slowly faded.
That all changed during the end of his senior year of high school. After the Holy Ascension Selection Test, Tang Yuan went out for a rare night of karaoke with his friends. They ended up in a conflict with some local thugs, which escalated into a brawl.
He couldn’t recall what he was thinking at the time, but he figured he must have been trying to stand up for his friends. For some reason, at some point, one of the thugs suddenly died on the spot. And the person visibly closest to the body was Tang Yuan.
