Hanchen, completely ignorant of the great trouble that was rapidly approaching, stopped in a mortal village surrounded by tall mountains, each filled with house-sized holes.
"Finally, I arrived at the Martial Devouring Mountains!"
Realizing this simple fact, he let out a sigh of relief. These last few weeks, for some reason, it seemed that the Divine Storm Sect and the Xiao clan were both putting more effort into capturing, as he had seen a few of them around, almost getting caught thrice already.
Thus, to loosen the chase, he decided to go near one of the Kingdom's danger zones: the Martial Devouring Mountains. It was said that, if one got too close to the mountains, as long as their cultivation was above Qi Refining, and had not reached Void Ascension yet, there was a chance that they would be sucked in by one of its holes. From then on, they could be trapped inside for any duration ranging from a decade to a millennium, very likely to never be seen again.
For these reasons, most cultivators avoided this place. At most, it was protected by a few Qi Refining level ones, something his current self could deal with pretty easily even without his Earth talent.
"Ahh… finally, I can rest a bit" he sighed.
Going to the village's tavern, he got a room using a fragment of spirit stone and, settling down on the modest bed, he allowed himself to relax a bit.
'Alright, Qi Building level and above cultivators can still enter the village, as it's far enough from the Martial Devouring Mountains, they just need to avoid using too much spiritual energy, since it would make it easier for the mountains to notice them and suck them in even from here. But restrained or not, I should still not let my guard down!'
With this in mind, he proceeded to directly fall asleep… forgetting to even put up a basic defensive formation.
In the middle of the night, he opened his eyes, feeling some movement in the room. Tensing up, thinking he was under attack, he faked sleeping and discreetly used a wood spell on the floor, instead of directly attacking the intruder. And a few seconds later, as roots had spread on the wooden floor…
"Gah! What… what is this!"
The intruder, panicked, shouted, but his body, up to the chest, had already been completely wrapped in thick roots, and even his arms were immobilized. Panicking even more, he desperately tried to escape, but to no avail: he was completely stuck!
He tried to shout more but, quickly, Hanchen jumped off his bed and covered his mouth, ensuring he couldn't scream any more. After over twelve years of hiding, being chased, and fighting for his life, even though he remained naive, Hanchen had nonetheless hardened significantly, and the sequence of actions in which he restrained the intruder was just as smooth as possible:
"Alright, let's see what kind of assassin they sent… hm?-"
He raised an eyebrow at the view of the intruder: it seemed to be a child, looking to be ten, maybe eleven years old. It reminded Hanchen that he started cultivating around the same age and, quickly, his aggression diminished, and he took his hand off the kid's mouth. The latter looked as if he was about to start crying.
"Listen, this cultivator will not hurt you, but if you start making noise again, I will definitely cover your mouth with roots for another incense stick of time, is that understood?"
The kid, keeping his tears in, hastily nodded:
"Y-yes, yes… senior cultivator, no, senior immortal" he said, shaking. "I, uh, I had eyes but failed to see Mount Tai! I was desperate to obtain enough to buy food for my old mother, and I sinned, I beg the great immortal to show his boundless graciousness and spare my life!"
"..."
Hearing this, Hanchen felt a pang of jealousy: he was nearly three times the age of the kid but if he was put in this situation, he wouldn't even be able to speak half as well!
"Ahh… don't worry, I am not planning on harming any child at any point of my life" he sighed, snapping his fingers.
In another few seconds, the roots disappeared and the child was freed.
"Thank you, lord immortal, I will never forget your kindness!" the child eagerly said, ready to run out of the modest room at full speed.
"I didn't say you could leave now" Hanchen said, making him stop in his tracks. "You still tried to rob me so before you leave, I at least have to give you a sermon, come here"
As Hanchen tapped on the edge of the bed, just beside him, the kid hesitated to make a run for it but, in the end, he obediently sat beside him.
"First, let me ask you something: what do you know about the Five Virtues?" Hanchen asked.
The kid looked at him with eyes that clearly indicated that he had no idea what Hanchen was talking about.
"Don't worry, it is not particularly complicated, these simply designate the five most important virtues for a person" Hanchen said. "In the clan I come from, we were all taught these, and then left to decide which was the most important. Mmh, since it has come to this, why don't you try to guess which five they are?"
The kid looked at him and, seeing he was seriously asking, he began racking his little brain in order to find:
"Uh, to be kind to others, to not do anything bad and respect the rules, to act and speak correctly, and uuh… I don't know…"
"It's alright, it's alright, you already managed to guess three of them: benevolence, righteousness, and code of behavior, that's already very good. The two last virtues are wisdom and trustworthiness. Now, did you get them all?"
The kid thought a bit before replying:
"Uh, if I got it correctly, the five virtues are benevolence, righteousness, code of behavior, wisdom and trustworthiness, is that right?" he said hesitantly.
"Yes, that is perfectly right, you really are a smart kid" Hanchen praised. "So tell me, which one do you think is the most important?"
"Maybe… righteousness? It's important not to hurt or do bad things to other people"
"Is that why you entered my room to plunder me?"
"...
I'm sorry, great cultivator…"
"Ah? We went back from immortal to cultivator? Tssk tssk…"
Hanchen rubbed the kid's hair, making him frown in discomfort for the duration of it, before stopping.
"Anyway, my master, back when I was still part of the clan, believed that the most important virtue was the 'code of behavior'. More precisely, that anyone choosing a role in this world should always act in a way that fits it"
Sighing, he looked at the ceiling, reminiscing past times:
"It is something that happened over a decade ago, which caused me to leave the clan" he said. "Back then, when he saw my potential, my senior brother Xiao Fengyu realized that I was threatening his position as the main disciple of our master, the grand elder of our clan. Rapidly, he deceived master into sending me to a dangerous mission, stealing precious items from a powerful sect. But what master did not know was that he had previously warned the sect of my infiltration to plunder their treasury.
I was caught, and barely managed to escape. To avoid a large-scale conflict, my clan put the blame on me and the only person that could have helped me at this moment was my master. But as she believed in the absoluteness of the code of behavior, she saw her duty as the grand elder, her duty to make the clan prosper, as something more important than even her own disciple, she abandoned me, and only granted me a certain period of time to escape before our clan and this other sect started to chase me"
The child, hearing him, felt for him, looking at him with sadness in his eyes. Seeing this, Hanchen quickly wiped away the melancholic look that had shown up on his face, replacing it with a smile:
"Well, you can probably guess it by now, but the code of behavior isn't a virtue I attach much value to" he said. "In the same way, I don't believe righteousness and wisdom are the most important either: during my constant escape, I made many decisions that led me to almost be caught, and had to make many compromises to avoid this fate, so if there is one thing I learnt, it's that you can't always be righteous or wise, that's simply impossible, and trying isn't something very sane either"
From his storage bag, he took out several silver coins and began playing with them, fiddling them between his fingers.
"So, I could say the most important virtue is trustworthiness, especially after the betrayal I went through" he continued. "But instead, if I had to choose one, I still think I would choose benevolence. Sometimes, it's inevitable to have to make selfish or stupid choices, maybe also to hurt other people, so at the very least we should try to go past that to do some good, right?"
He shoved the coins in the kid's hands:
"Go on, take that as a reward for listening to my stories, and don't say a word of it to anyone else" he said, before adding: "And remember, if you ever get the occasion, try to do something nice for someone else, that'd make me happy"
After that, he finally let the kid go, and fell back in his bed.
'Ah, I mentioned Xiao Fengyun's name, now he'll know I come from the Xiao clan' he thought. 'With everything I've said, if he decide to tell the story, I will definitely be found, I'm so stupid…'
He sighed again. Still, in these last years, even though he often felt alone, he went through so many things, met so many mortals and comrades of the Qi Refining realm that treated him better than most members of his clan ever did…
"Ah, that made me lose too much sleeping time, I'm so tired…" he complained out loud, before sinking back into sleep.
The next day, as he woke up, his attention was caught by some commotion happening in the village. Apparently, a group of peculiar people had just arrived, catching the mortals' attention. Hanchen, feeling his instinct warn him, still ended up succumbing to his curiosity and, using his Shadow Embodying True Physic to discreetly get closer, he observed the group in question, composed of two people and a gigantic beast walking beside them.
Seeing this, even Hanchen himself couldn't help but find them strange. One was a sixty-something years old man, still relatively handsome for his age, a beautiful woman who seemed to be in her early twenties, and a human-sized fox, calmly standing beside them in a very peaceful way. It looked almost like… a Spirit Beast?
After de-activating his Earth talent to look at them closer, he flinched as the old man turned around and seemed to look at him.
"Oh, hello young man, you seemed to look at me strangely, perhaps we happen to know each other?"
Hanchen shook his head:
"Uhm, no, I don't believe I ever saw you before, senior" he said.
"Really? Well, it is true that you do not seem familiar" the man said, smiling. "Well, now that we talked to each other, it is almost as if we knew each other, isn't it? My name is Ba Ke, happy to meet you"
Hanchen, a bit uncomfortable, presented himself as Han Chen and, for an instant, believed he saw a trace of contempt on the old man, but didn't pay it any attention as it quickly disappeared.
The man had changed a lot in the last twelve years. Before, he looked like he had not eaten for years, his body skeletic and his cheeks sunken, and he was wearing rags, covered in blood stains, going along with messy, unmaintained hair, without mentioning his crazed killing intent. Now, however, he looked as robust as one should be in their forties, with a relatively handsome face, a clean look, and a harmless expression.
Which was why Hanchen didn't recognize him: he was none other than his fake master, who had successfully tracked him to the Martial Devouring Mountain, Zhang Baotian!