Success? Failure? (3)

"Ah, I'm going to think about a few things." Fanxin smiled and said, "Go on without worrying. I'll be fine."

"Little Black, take good care of her, understand?" Fanxin looked at the Little Black Cat and instructed.

"Got it. Don't worry." The Little Black Cat nodded, patting its little chest as it replied.

Fanxin immediately left and headed deeper into the forest. A moment later, he vanished from Ren Fang and the Little Black Cat's sight.

"What's he going to do?" Ren Fang asked, puzzled. She had noticed that Fanxin wasn't in a very good mood, and she was worried something might happen.

"I don't know, but don't worry. Fanxin grew up here, so he'll be fine. Let's go," the Little Black Cat said at once.

Fanxin valued his life dearly, and now that he knew he had parents, he was even less likely to do anything rash. So it wasn't worried about him at all.

"That's true. Let's go, then." Ren Fang nodded slightly and stopped dwelling on it.

The Little Black Cat had been Fanxin's good friend for over a decade. If it was so certain he would be all right, she had even less reason to worry.

She took the Little Black Cat into the forest and began gathering mushrooms and hunting wild rabbits and pheasants.

Fanxin entered the forest and, upon reaching its very center, sat down cross-legged and focused his mind entirely on his brain domain.

He had sent the Little Black Cat and Ren Fang away because he had just discovered fragments of images in his brain domain that didn't belong to him.

He didn't want Little Black and Ren Fang to disturb him. He wanted to examine those things carefully and find out exactly what they were.

After calming his mind, he studied the fragmented images.

First, he saw many people dressed in black training clothes, practicing together in a vast open space. They trained hard and diligently.

The scene abruptly changed. He saw a man and a woman happily playing with a little baby. The baby was still swaddled and had yet to open his eyes. Clearly, he had only recently been born.

He saw the happiness in the man and woman's eyes. Clearly, they loved the child dearly. After a moment, however, their faces filled with worry, as though something was troubling them.

Before long, the scene changed again. This time, he saw flames towering into the sky as countless masked people armed with weapons attacked a place. The people in black training clothes he had seen earlier were resisting with all their might.

But the masked people were formidable, and they were no match for them. Before long, they fell one after another, meeting violent deaths.

The masked people were vicious, killing everyone they saw. Before long, everyone in black training clothes had been killed. The masked people still didn't stop, continuing to search for anyone who might have slipped through the net.

Soon, they found the man, the woman, and the newborn child.

The masked people didn't hesitate. They immediately attacked again, assaulting the three of them frantically.

The man was powerful, however, and held off their attacks. But there were so many masked people that even he was struggling.

There weren't many people on his side. Aside from his wife, there were only a dozen or so elderly men. The masked people, meanwhile, seemed endless.

They were at an absolute disadvantage. If things went badly, all of them would be killed.

But just then, the baby still wrapped in swaddling clothes began to cry. His cries were piercing, and the moment he cried out, an invisible force spread outward.

More than half the densely packed masked people fell in an instant, leaving everyone stunned.

Everyone who was still conscious looked at the swaddled child. The masked people were terrified, cold sweat pouring down their faces, as though they had encountered something dreadful.

The people in black training clothes, meanwhile, looked shocked.

Before long, the people in black training clothes seemed to have made a decision. They attacked the masked people with all their might, fighting with no regard for their lives. They fought their way outward, shielding the couple and their swaddled child with their bodies.

Their goal was to get the couple and their swaddled child away.

Their ferocity overwhelmed the masked people, and they tore an opening through their ranks. In the end, the couple and their child were sent away.

The people in black training clothes, however, all died fighting there.

The scene abruptly changed. The couple fled from place to place with their child in their arms. People pursued them relentlessly, and each time they were attacked, they suffered several more wounds.

Even so, they never gave up, enduring it all. They had yet to find a safe place for their child. They absolutely could not die. If they did, the child would be doomed; the people pursuing them would never let him go.

After a long time on the run, they met an old man who seemed to be on good terms with them. He not only helped them treat their injuries, but also helped care for the child.

But the good times didn't last. Their pursuers caught up with them there, and this time, an extraordinarily powerful figure was among them. The couple and the old man were no match for them and were ultimately forced to flee in defeat. They managed to escape only because the old man sacrificed the lower half of his body to block their pursuers.

The old man could control the earth. Taking the couple and their child with him, he escaped underground from that troubled place, disappearing without a trace.

Their pursuers searched for a long time but couldn't find them. Even so, they didn't give up and continued searching across the world.

The old man brought the couple and their child to a deserted island. The couple lived on the island for only a while before leaving. They entrusted the child to the old man who had only a head.

With that, all the images vanished.

"That old man with only a head must be Grandpa Nick. And that couple must be my father and mother." Tears streamed down Fanxin's face after he watched all the images.

He knew his parents had been forced to entrust him to Grandpa Nick when he was still in swaddling clothes, because they were being hunted. If they had kept him with them, death would have been his only fate. Grandpa Nick, on the other hand, could control the earth and travel deep beneath it. If the bad people came, Grandpa Nick could take him and escape immediately.

"Soul Clan, what kind of race is that?" Fanxin murmured to himself.

In the images, he had seen the character for "soul" on the chest of everyone in black training clothes. He knew it was probably the name of a clan. But he didn't really understand what kind of race the Soul Clan was.