Chapter 42: Ancient Vow
’For three years, they lived together,’ Teacher Shu Jiu continued, his voice cutting through the heavy vibration of the academy bell.
The students remained entirely frozen in their seats, completely ignoring the fact that the semester had officially ended.
Even Damien had leaned entirely forward, his sharp jaw set as he listened.
’The Iron Man played the role of the Human husband flawlessly,’ the teacher said, his eyes hollow.
’He helped raise the child, he chopped the wood, and he provided for the woman. But as the child reached its third year, this heavy weight began to reject the lie. Iron cannot adapt to a falsehood forever. He looked into the mirror one morning and realized this beautiful life was nothing but an act of supreme betrayal, he was cheating the woman, cheating the memory of the dead, and cheating his own cultivation. Unable to bear the crushing guilt any longer, he used a specialized wisdom path worm to erase every single memory of his existence from the woman’s mind, and he vanished into the night.’
Evan’s dark eyes narrowed under his messy hair.
’An erasing of the memory... a clean slate. But a lie that deep always leaves a scar on the soul.’
’Yet, his return to the magical realm brought no sanctuary,’ Shu Jiu muttered, turning his gaze back to the frost rimed windows.
’The elders of the Iron Sect discovered his thirteen-year desertion and his slaughter of a mortal. To the sects, a core disciple who goes to the other realm for a human is a disease. They stripped him of his titles, branded him a traitor, and violently kicked him out of the mountain gates. Homeless and broken, the nameless Iron Man wandered until he settled deep within a nameless, desolate forest on the borderlands of The Spectral and The Iron Men Sect.’
The teacher leaned heavily on the podium, his voice dropping into a chilling whisper.
’And that is when the true catastrophe began. One evening, as he sat alone in the dark woods, the suppressed guilt, the broken laws, and the foreign mortal residue within his system caused his inner core to violently fracture. His aperture went entirely corrupt and foul, rotting from a pristine metallic sheen into a putrid, black-green abyss. In a horrific display of spiritual mutation, his very aperture tore itself out of his chest, splitting apart to manifest into three grotesque, flesh bound creatures.’
A few students gasped, their faces turning pale in the winter draft.
’Those three creatures were named Yin, Yun, and Yan,’ Shu Jiu said, his knuckles turning white against the wood.
’They were the first three Half-Deads to ever walk this realm. From the very moment of their gruesome birth, they did not possess the weak foundations of fledglings, they inherently wielded the catastrophic power of an Adept level cultivator. Starving and devoid of human reason, the three entities immediately turned on their creator. They brutally devoured their own father.’
’Did he die?’ Damien asked suddenly, his cheeky demeanor completely replaced by a sharp, predatory curiosity.
’No,’ Shu Jiu replied coldly, looking directly at Damien.
’He did not die. The iron within his bones and the corruption of his soul fused with the virus of the entities. He became a Half-Dead himself, but an incredibly intelligent one. A creature of pure, calculating malice who retained his core disciple intellect. In the ancient texts, he is named Qing Yang, the First and Strongest Half-Dead. Over the last two centuries, that desolate forest has transformed into the ’Forest of the Dead,’ currently acting as home to a thousand or more Half-Deads... and horrifyingly, nearly half of them possess that same human intelligence.’
The teacher paused, letting the grim reality settle over the room before his gaze hardened.
’Meanwhile, on the other realm, a mirror tragedy was unfolding. In the Non-Magical Realm, the mortal woman, having been intimately tainted by the corrupt iron-path essence during that fateful kiss, began to change. Her flesh withered, her mind fractured, and she turned into a Half-Dead as well. A weak one, yes, but a carrier nonetheless. And just like that, a silent, ravenous apocalypse began to fester simultaneously in both their world and ours.’
Evan’s heart hammered against his ribs beneath his wolf-skin cloak. The sheer scale of the story was massive.Though, he was the one who killed all of them, it still seemed like a broken horror.
’Teacher,’ Evan called out, his voice sharp and steady despite his racing pulse.
’Why would a single kiss trigger an entire species mutation? What caused the aperture to rot like that?’
Shu Jiu stared directly into Evan’s dark eyes, a grim, solemn expression on his face.
’Because of an ancient, reality-binding Vow established between the Non-Magical and Magical realms during the First Cycle. A cosmic law written into the very fabric of our world’s Qi. The Vow explicitly dictates that the people of the magical and non-magical realms shall never intimate with one another. The Iron Man didn’t just break a sect rule, Evan. He fractured a universal decree. The Half-Deads are the universe’s natural executioners, born to punish the breaking of that ancient covenant.’
Shu Jiu stood up straight and picked up his leather-bound book.
’The lesson is over. Pack your things, and may whatever gods you pray to protect you.’
The tension in the room finally snapped. The students began gathering their parchments in a hurried, terrified silence.
Evan stood up smoothly, adjusting the heavy wolf pelt over his shoulders and pulling his brownish leather gloves tight.
Beside him, Damien rose as well, casting one last lingering, unreadable glance at the front podium before flashing his usual arrogant, brilliant smile at the lingering girls.
Evan didn’t spare him a second look.
He turned his back on the classroom, stepping out of the drafty stone hall and walking down the grand, echoing corridors of the academy for the very last time.
When he pushed through the heavy iron-reinforced exit gates, the crisp, biting winter air immediately slammed into his face.
The sky above was a heavy, bruised shade of gray, dropping massive white snowflakes that danced lazily through the freezing atmosphere.
All around him, younger fledglings were laughing and celebrating the end of the semester, completely ignorant about the five-year countdown ticking toward the 13th Cycle, or the intelligent monsters lurking in The Forest Of The Dead.
Evan stepped into the deep snow, his boots crunching loudly against the frozen ground.
He stood right on the edge of the academy grounds, looking past the frosted pine trees toward the towering, majestic iron gates of the First Court in the distance.
He had hidden his true power as an Initial Stage Awakened Vampire for six long months.
He had endured the loneliness, the isolation, and the whispers of failure.
But as he looked up at the grey winter sky, a dark, unyielding smirk finally cut across his rugged, stubbled jawline.
The academy period was over.
The time for hiding in the shadows was done.
