Condemning the Heavens

Xue Wei followed the younger version of himself.

It was quite amusing to see his younger self look at the overseers with veneration every time. The three overseers were all Earth Warriors, so the veneration he once felt for them truly made him understand the term, being a frog at the bottom of a well.

Still, this was from his childhood so the memories made him smile. Although he had not been able to remember this before, he had a feeling that it was real.

The reason he came to such a conclusion was that it felt so right and correct to him the more he saw.

Xue Wei continued to walk behind his child self, who left the training grounds and went into the village itself.

Suddenly, his face contorted. He stared into the distance, where two figures were walking.

His heart started beating rapidly. His eyes narrowed and his mind entered a state of disarray.

There, he saw one of his most important people, his uncle, walking down the road. However, by his side was the one he hated the most, Chu Huiyin.

Both of them were walking casually side by side down the main road, gazing to and fro as if they were looking for something specific.

Xue Wei had stopped in his tracks. According to Xiao Lei, he had come to the village after the Primordial Beast attack and taken an abandoned Xue Wei back with him.

But now it seemed as if he had been there before the attack. And he was accompanied by a Primordial Beast that was known to be incredibly ferocious and bloodthirsty to the point of madness.

A foreboding sense of danger started rising in Xue Wei's mind. He saw how the young version of himself walked into his uncle.

When he was a child, he had never registered Xiao Lei’s stunned and shocked expression for what it was. But now that he was older and scrutinizing them in detail with the power of hindsight, he realized that both of them showed signs of utter discomfort and shock when they looked at him.

Why would they feel like this just from looking at him? Xue Wei was puzzled, but then the child excused himself and started leaving.

Although what he saw seemed very real, he could not hear anything whatsoever. The Thousand Illusion Formation was apparently capable of recreating images of the past, but there was an eerie quietness surrounding Xue Wei as the old, forgotten memories played out before him.

Xue Wei hesitated for a moment. Should he follow his younger self or should he follow the two older experts? Xue Wei paused in indecision, but he eventually decided to follow his uncle and Chu Huiyin.

He could guess that his younger self had gone off to cultivate at home in the shop, but he already knew the result of this attempt, so there was not much to explore there.

The two moved around for some time before they entered a small alleyway. Both of them seemed to be arguing animatedly; Chu Huiyin was livid with anger while Xiao Lei's eyes were glistening with happiness and a strange kind of vigilance.

After arguing for some time, Xue Wei saw Xiao Lei slap Chu Huiyin hard, who was sent flying from the slap. As to what she had said that warranted the aggression, Xue Wei did not know, but his eyes became much more intense when he saw the undisguised, burning anger in Xiao Lei's eyes.

Xiao Lei hissed a few words before he left Chu Huiyin's side and walked in the same direction that the younger Xue Wei had left earlier.

Xue Wei did not hesitate and followed behind Xiao Lei. He sent a final glance at Chu Huiyin and saw her eyes brimming with hatred and anger, but she held it back and remained slumped on the ground.

Xiao Lei seemed in a hurry almost, and although he seemed excited, there was undoubtedly a bit of fear and worry in his eyes.

Xue Wei followed his uncle to the house that belonged to him and his father. The sense of crisis in his heart grew increasingly strong at this point.

Xue Wei rushed into the apothecary shop after Xiao Lei stepped inside.

His father stood by the counter and turned towards the doorway with a smile on his face, intending to greet the newcomer. However, the moment he turned around and spotted Xiao Lei, guilt and grief appeared all over his face. Even Xue Wei could sense from this that something had happened between the two men, and that it was clear that his father had done something he felt guilty about.

Xiao Lei spoke with Xue Wei's father for some time, but the conversation became more and more heated as it went on. Although Xue Wei could not hear what they were saying, he could see their body language.

Suddenly, Xiao Lei’s arm grew scales and turned into a claw, a transformation that Xue Wei was all too familiar with, the sight of which multiplied the amount of questions in his head.

Why would he say that he did not have the Azure Dragon Scripture before Xue Wei had turned fifteen years old if he himself was cultivating the same scripture?

But his thought process was quickly cut short when he saw how Xiao Lei suddenly extended his transformed arm and impaled his father’s chest.

His eyes widened with shock. There was a menacing and rage-filled expression on Xiao Lei's face; it was clear that he had lost his patience and decided to end whatever was between them.

Xue Wei's eyes widened until they could go no further. His head started throbbing, and he could not understand what was going on.

His father’s face was frozen in a rictus of surprise and agony. At that exact moment, the young Xue Wei had walked out of his room and appeared in the shop, before witnessing the scene of his father being killed right in front of him.

The world turned blurry, and Xue Wei opened his eyes to the sight of the stone room. He was shaken to the core. His heart beat rapidly, and he felt like screaming out loud.

Why would Xiao Lei kill his father? He did not doubt that Xiao Lei doted on him the most and cared for him more than he did himself, but he had killed his father!

Xue Wei could feel nothing but coldness wash over him. His father had been killed by the person he trusted the most, and this person whom he trusted the most seemed to be an acquaintance of Chu Huiyin, the one who had played him like a fool back in the Heping Kingdom.

How much of it had been Xiao Lei's plan? What was Xiao Lei's plan? Xue Wei was unsure and felt more terrified the more he thought about it. His heart started to throb wildly, and he felt as if he had lost something valuable. Yet the world seemed clearer than before.

Many things suddenly made sense, for one why Primordial Beasts had destroyed his hometown.

Xue Wei could not make heads or tails of his feelings. He did not exactly hate Xiao Lei, but he no longer trusted him either. Why would a notorious Primordial Beast Hunter travel together with a specimen of the very creatures he hunts? Furthermore, it seemed as though he was much stronger than Chu Huiyin considering the manner in which he slapped her earlier

If he were a true Primordial Beast hunter, then she should have been kill on sight for him, but that was not the case. Rather, it almost looked like a subordinate-superior relationship.

"I will get an answer when I speak with him face to face," Xue Wei muttered to calm himself down. His unsettled heart slowly relaxed.

Had this been before his core had hatched, Xue Wei was certain that he would have most likely gone insane from losing himself in his emotions due to his odd proclivity for violence.

But his temperament had changed and gone through a thorough metamorphosis because of the hatching of the infant Azure Dragon inside him. Now he could stay calm no matter what he faced. Even this kind of typically soul-rattling news at most made him feel uneasy, but it did not take long at all for him to calm down.

"I’ve changed quite a lot..." Xue Wei muttered to himself, but he was grateful for this. As he calmed down and felt that his rigid body finally relaxed, the formation that was locking him in place also deactivated.

"Congratulations," the voice of the Moon Prince reemerged in the room, with the oscillation of Qi in the same spot. "This test of the heart was to make you relive the most impactful memory of your life. If you could calm yourself and take control of your ‘heart’ within the time it takes an incense stick to burn, then you would be considered passed. You passed and can now claim the reward. It is in the room of the second trial."

Xue Wei was excited and hurried towards the door that led to the next trial. This kind of challenge was harder for him because of the tragedy he had experienced in the past, but the thought of this made him recall Wang Xiaoyun and her family’s downfall. What she had gone through was in no way easier. He feared that she might not be able to beat the first trial.

Still, right now he had no time to think about how the others were doing. He needed to clear the ten trials and get his hands on the inheritance and the treasures from the treasury.

As long as one of them managed to succeed, all of them would benefit, but Xue Wei was competitive. He would not give up before he had given it his all.

As he entered the second chamber, he found that this one looked the exact same as the previous one. Inside the chamber, there was a small stone table with a jade bottle on top of it.

Xue Wei stepped towards it and picked up the bottle. There were three pearl-like medicinal pills inside. All of them had a milky-white luster, and they looked exactly like pearls.

There was no medicinal scent; it was clear that the pills were of highest purity and that no smell could escape because the properties were perfectly concentrated within.

Xue Wei did not know what kind of pills they were, but he quickly placed them into his storage ring. He proceeded to curiously scan the room.

There were two stone statues in the room, and they seemed to each have a formation of runes inscribed upon their chests. Xue Wei wondered if they would suddenly start moving for some reason

Stone was a hard matter, but considering that they were cultivators, destroying rocks was not difficult.

Xue Wei approached the statues and began studying the formations on their chests.

The runes were somewhat familiar; some of them he had seen before, but they were intertwined differently than they had been before, and there were a couple new ones he had not seen before.

"Intriguing." Xue Wei nodded his head. He was quite interested in these formations, but he did not even know the basics of how formations worked.

"Welcome to my second test. Insert your Qi into the chests of these two stone statues and fight them head-on. Their strength will be adjusted to suit yours."

Xue Wei wanted to know how they work. He placed a hand on their chests and inserted a strand of Qi that had the appearance of an azure dragon into each one.

A rumbling sounded out from within them. They started to move slightly, before they suddenly woke up from their inanimate state and took a step out from where they stood. They began walking towards Xue Wei on unsteady legs.

The more they walked, the more they regained their motor skills. The heaven-and-earth essence around them churned and was sucked into the stone statues, charging up their previously empty energy reservoirs for the upcoming battle.