"Don't worry. I won't kill you."
"I want you to live—live well."
"I want you to remember that everyone around you who loved you died because of your weakness."
"If you want to hate someone, hate yourself."
The young man laughed as he left.
Only Jian Chen remained, kneeling before a mountain piled from over a million heads.
The scene shifted once more.
Jian Chen began begging the great righteous Immortal Gates.
Dragging his broken body behind him, he crossed ninety-nine mountains, waded through ninety-nine rivers, and knelt before ninety-nine Immortal Gates.
"Please, Immortal Gate, uphold justice for the Sword Household!"
He knelt before the first Immortal Gate, his forehead striking the cold stone steps until blood streamed down.
The Immortal Gate remained tightly shut.
Above the mountain gate, an elder looked down at him without expression.
Jian Chen knelt for three days and three nights. At dawn on the fourth day, someone threw him out of the mountain gate like a dead dog.
He kept walking.
The second Immortal Gate, the third Immortal Gate, the fourth...
Some Immortal Gates would not even open their doors. Some opened them, took one glance, and shut them again. Others simply blasted him away with a palm gust.
"You, a mere remnant of the Sword Household, think you deserve to seek aid from our Immortal Gate?"
"The Cultivation World is a place where the strong devour the weak. Your Sword Household was destroyed only because you were too weak."
"Hatred? Can that thing fill your stomach? Get lost!"
"Come bother me again, and I'll kill you too!"
Jian Chen knelt before ninety-nine Immortal Gates, and his knees shattered ninety-nine times.
No one helped him.
Not a single one.
The cultivation world was one where the strong devoured the weak, utterly devoid of reason.