Chapter 224: Volume Finale: Prisoner of Fate
"I didn’t kill him... I was just pushed over here!" Such a feeble defense carried no weight. All his ’friends’ and the brawling thugs stared at him in horror.
Accidental homicide, public brawling, irrefutable evidence. Coupled with the fact that Tang Yuan was already an adult and hadn’t turned himself in, he was sentenced to five years in prison without much fuss.
During his sentence, a few friends did come to visit a couple of times, but they gradually stopped coming. After all, they had only received a warning and could continue their schooling. Their lives were slightly tarnished, but they could still move forward.
There was no need to waste time on a convict.
As for his relatives from the Tang Family, they completely cut off contact after one initial visit to inquire about the situation—the Tang Family would not accept a criminal from one of its branch families.
"I originally thought that after your deadbeat father died, just kicking you out of the Tang Family would be enough. We’re all relatives, all part of the Tang Family, so there’s no need to extinguish a bloodline."
The one who had come to inquire was a white-haired old man with a sinister smile. The clan elders called him Third Uncle, but to Tang Yuan’s generation, he was Third Master. Facing the silent Tang Yuan, he simply smiled and shook his head. "To think you’d sever your own path forward. Saved me the trouble, unlike the others. Heh."
Those few short sentences revealed far too much. Third Master’s brazen attitude was a blatant admission that Tang Yuan’s parents had not died of natural causes. His expression was utterly detestable.
But at that moment, Tang Yuan’s heart was a pool of stagnant water; he couldn’t even summon the energy to hate. He was like a walking corpse.
Five years later, his sentence served, he was released from prison. Everything he had once known was completely different. His former classmates and ’friends’ had long since graduated from the Academy and were working all over the country, while he was just an ex-convict who had squandered his education, without so much as a change of clothes to his name.
The little money he had left might keep him from starving for a month or two, but the lease on his apartment had long expired, and someone else was living there now...
He walked to a place he once knew, but everything had changed and the people were gone. All his belongings had vanished. He had no parents, no friends, no relatives—no one who knew Tang Yuan. And in turn, Tang Yuan no longer knew this world.
Standing on the bustling street, standing before the door to his former ’home’, Tang Yuan once again felt a loneliness more profound than any he had ever known.
And in this crushing loneliness that made him question the very meaning of his existence, amid the rising tide of the Spiritual Energy Revival, he Awakened.
[Spiritualization]
It was impossible to know if it was a sudden, atavistic reawakening of the Tang Family’s innate affinity for Spirit Bodies, if he had met some special condition, or if Tang Yuan was simply a genius whose dormant Talent couldn’t be activated by the low concentration of Spiritual Qi in the past. In any case, the lonely Tang Yuan had obtained an equally lonely power... He could transform into a Ghost, and anything he touched—be it living or inanimate—would also undergo Spiritualization along with him.
A stray dog, a rock—both could be Spiritualized, completely cut off from the physical world. In his Spiritualized form, he could fly, pass through walls, and was effectively invisible to ordinary people. He possessed all the abilities of a Spirit Body and could wield them better than any mindless Resentful Spirit. It was this very power that saved him from freezing to death during a sudden cold snap; his Spiritualized form was insulated from all changes in external temperature.
For a time, this sudden power terrified Tang Yuan. He had no idea what it meant. Fortunately, the Zhengguo Government had been publicizing information about the Spiritual Energy Revival, which gradually helped him understand the source and significance of his new abilities.
"I will have my revenge... For my parents’ deaths. I *will* find their killer!"
Clinging to this newfound purpose, Tang Yuan returned to his hometown to gather information on the Tang Family... only to be shocked to discover that the family was already on the brink of collapse.
The upper echelon had been wiped out, the family businesses frozen, and all their Transcendents rounded up and placed under guard. The remaining ordinary members of the Tang Family were living in constant fear... Tang Family Village was still under lockdown. Floating in mid-air and looking down upon the half-ruined ancestral home, Tang Yuan once again lost his reason to live... He was adrift, a walking corpse.
Leaving the ancestral hall, he used Spiritualization to return to the city. Once again, Tang Yuan heard a public announcement from a screen on the side of the road.
[The Zhengguo Government calls on all citizens who have Awakened special abilities to report to an official registration office.]
’I... I’m a criminal, after all... If they find out about my abilities, will they... dissect me?’
It was an irrational fear. But Tang Yuan hadn’t gone to college, had forgotten whatever biology he once knew, and subconsciously loathed the idea of interacting with the government that had framed him. He instinctively recoiled from such a future. ’I’ll never go!’
But his savings were almost gone. Without a degree, Tang Yuan couldn’t even find manual labor jobs and had to survive on odd jobs. He started using Spiritualization to live under bridges or in the stairwells of apartment buildings, no different from a vagrant.
And as he lived this life, a seed of resentment began to sprout in Tang Yuan’s heart. It made him want to scream, but no sound would come out.
’Why? Why did it have to be me? Why did Mom and Dad have to die? Why has no one ever cared about me? Why was I framed as a murderer for trying to help a friend?’
