My Family Had a Treasure Like This All Along!

The demon-hunting party traveled fast, each person leading a spare horse. The sun had only just set when they reached the outskirts of town. Their torches wound toward it like a long dragon, lighting the spoils piled on several wagons: the hides, bones, and meat of demon beasts, one of the North's most important products.

The autumn demon hunt was one of the most important events of the year in the North. Whether the year brought plenty or famine depended largely on this one haul.

The North's soil was poor and its climate cold. What grain its fields produced was barely enough to fill bellies, while winter demanded vast stores of firewood and food. So every late autumn, before the snow fell, caravans from the Central Plains brought great quantities of grain. They traded the harvests of fertile lands for the materials the Northerners gathered from demon beasts.

Demon beasts were rare in the Central Plains. A single hide and a few bones could often be traded for enough grain to feed an adult for a month. For Northerners, the hunt was a matter of life and death come winter.

That was why the North's able-bodied men set out each autumn to fight demon beasts to the death, bringing back their hides, bones, and meat in exchange for indispensable grain.

It was dangerous, of course. If a hunting party lost no more than a fifth of its people, that was cause for celebration. Year after year, countless sons of the North stained the wasteland with their blood and became food for demon beasts.

To Northerners, that was fair. Winter was harsh on every living thing in this land. Everyone needed to stockpile food, humans and demon beasts alike.

The hunt was simply a struggle over the means to survive. If I win, your hide, bones, and meat are mine. If you win, my flesh and blood are yours. Fair and square.

That was also why the North produced the fiercest soldiers in the Nine Provinces. To Northerners, risking their lives for wealth, honor, and status was only natural.

Succeed, and you were a hero. Fail, and so what? Everyone died eventually. Did it make such a difference whether death came sooner or later?

In this harsh land, life was not so precious.

But Pan Long had never seen it that way.

He believed life was precious, that every life deserved respect. Even if someone had to die, their death should at least mean something. He would not dare ask for a death as weighty as Mount Tai, but one as light as a swan's feather was hardly worth it.

Of course, the best outcome would be for no one to die at all—for everyone to live safely and share in peace.

That was probably impossible. So all he could do was put his own life, and those of his family and friends, first.

Amid the cheers of those who had reaped a rich harvest and the sobs of those who had lost loved ones, the Pan Lineage returned home. Pan Lei sent the steward and everyone else to oversee the handling of the spoils, keeping only his son behind.

"I imagine you have questions?" he said with a smile.

Pan Long nodded repeatedly and asked what had been on his mind for days.

Pan Lei looked even more pleased when he heard his son's questions. "Good! Very good! I'm glad you thought of so much. And I'm even more glad you didn't jump to wild conclusions, but waited until I came back to ask!"

Then he raised his brows mysteriously. "Here, take a guess. Why did I hide the fact that I was injured?"

"I'm guessing you fought someone on that last trip," Pan Long said without hesitation. "But they didn't recognize you, so you hid your injury to make it harder for them to track you down."

He frowned slightly. "What puzzles me is that martial arts are a far clearer mark of a person than their build or looks. Your Iron Palm is famous for a thousand miles around. If they fought you, they could easily trace it back to you. Hiding the injury... seems unnecessary."

Pan Lei laughed. "Who told you your old man only knows how to fight head-on with his Iron Palm?"

Pan Long's eyes widened as he stared at his father in shock.

Pan Lei swept his left hand across his waist. A cold gleam flashed through the air as he whipped a dagger about, thrusting at least seven or eight times in an instant. Pan Long's eyes could make out only seven or eight streaks of light; there might well have been more.

"You... you..." he stammered. Then he hurriedly lowered his voice. "Dad, you know swordsmanship too?"

"Ha! I do a lot more than know swordsmanship!" Pan Lei said proudly. "Your old man's greatest skill isn't Iron Palm. It's Left-Hand Swift Sword!"

"All these years in Dingfeng Town, I've shown only my Iron Palm. But when I traveled under another identity, I used only Left-Hand Swift Sword." A sly grin spread across the rugged man's face. "You may have heard of my other identity—Left-Hand Sword Jin Biao. That's me."

Pan Long no longer knew what to say.

What the hell? This was straight out of a martial-arts novel! No, even in one of those, it would be something like, My left-hand sword is fast, but my right-hand sword is faster. Who spent his days as a master of hard-hitting martial arts while secretly living as a lone swordsman?

And from what Pan Long had seen, his father's swordsmanship was fierce and intricate, built on speed and precision—the complete opposite of the heavy, powerful style he usually displayed. By rights, his father must also have a nimble style of movement to suit his identity as Left-Hand Sword Jin Biao.

Yet in all these years, Pan Long had never seen his father practice swordsmanship for even a day, much less any light and agile martial art!

Martial arts had to be practiced every day, or one's skill would decline. Where had his father found the time to train this utterly different style to such a level?

Could his old man actually be a hidden martial-arts prodigy, capable of mastering swordsmanship famous across the land without much practice?

Left-Hand Sword Jin Biao was a renowned lone swordsman of the North, far more famous than his father was under his real name!

"Dad, when did you find the time to practice swordsmanship?" he could not help asking.

Pan Lei roared with laughter. Under his son's shocked, admiring gaze, he took a Bamboo Slip from his robes and handed it over. "The secret of my martial arts lies here. Take it. From today on, it's yours."

"What... is it?" Pan Long took the Bamboo Slip in confusion. It felt rough in his hand, not at all like a treasure.

"A Classic of Mountains and Seas Fragment. It can open a realm of its own and turn illusion into reality." In a calm voice brimming with pride, Pan Lei said something that nearly left his son stupefied. "A peerless treasure passed down through generations of the Pan Lineage."

"Inside it, you can open an independent little world for training. No matter how long you spend there, only an instant passes outside, and you won't age from it." Pan Lei tried to make it sound like nothing remarkable. "What's more, when you kill a monster with spiritual energy, the Fragment can absorb and store that energy. Once it has stored enough, it can temporarily make your imagination real, creating a world with mountains, rivers, and living creatures. That world can only exist for a time too, but if you find something valuable there and bring it out, the thing itself will be real."

"What?!" Pan Long cried out before he could stop himself.

It could make an imagined world real—and let him bring treasures back from it?

If he imagined the world of Journey to the West and brought out one of the Flat Peaches Monkey King had stolen when he wreaked havoc in Heaven, wouldn't eating it grant him immortality?

That was absurdly powerful!

"Of course, the treasure has limits. The more extraordinary something is, the harder it is to create." Pan Lei smiled and explained, "One of our ancestors wanted to create the legendary Deathless Grass. He saved spiritual energy for twenty years, but even in the world he made, the Deathless Grass remained an illusion. It never became real. I suppose... a rare treasure like that would require a staggering amount of spiritual energy. No mortal could possibly gather enough."

Only then did Pan Long breathe easier. That made sense, though he was a little disappointed too. Why did his family's treasure need to make sense? The less reasonable it was, the better!

"Creating an ordinary world doesn't cost much," Pan Lei continued. "I've fought hundreds of battles in the worlds it made over the years, and that's where I trained my swordsmanship. The greatest advantage of training there is that you can't truly die. Even if someone kills you, you're merely thrown out for a while and lose everything you brought in. Compared with the precious combat experience you gain, that's nothing."

Pan Long nodded slightly. His father was absolutely right.

Experience in a fight to the death was priceless. Trading a few possessions for it was a bargain.

"It was the experience I gained fighting inside this treasure that let me roam the North with nothing but a sword." Pride showed on Pan Lei's face as he spoke. "On my last trip, I ran into those stupid women from the Purple Cloud Palace. With one sword, I killed five of the so-called Purple Cloud Six Fairies. They weren't bad fighters, but when it came to fighting for their lives, they weren't fit to carry my shoes! That's what experience gets you!"

Though Pan Long had already been shocked several times that day, he could not help being astonished again.

The Purple Cloud Palace was a renowned sect, headquartered in Jiaozhou by the Southern Sea, with a branch in the North. Most of its members were women. Their swordsmanship was exquisite, their palm strikes insidiously vicious, and their manner cold and ruthless; they often injured people over the slightest disagreement. The Purple Cloud Six Fairies led its northern branch. All six were Innate Masters who had dominated the North for over twenty years.

Over the years, they had traveled through Yong Province and Jizhou, staining their swords with the blood of many famous martial artists. Pan Long alone knew of several families they had slaughtered down to the last member.

No wonder his father had hidden his injury. He had killed masters from the Purple Cloud Palace!

"Wait! Dad, you fought all six of them alone and killed five?" Pan Long could not help asking.

"It was four against six at first, but they ambushed us and killed the other three in one go," Pan Lei said casually. "Just as well. I didn't have to hide my strength anymore. Still, the Purple Cloud Palace really is formidable. One of them managed to escape. Since they weren't all dead, Left-Hand Sword Jin Biao had no choice but to 'die.' What a shame."

He spoke as if it were nothing, but Pan Long no longer knew what to say.

They ambushed you, and you still fought six Innate Masters from the world-famous Purple Cloud Palace on your own, killed five, and regretted letting the last one escape? My God, Dad, when did you get this fierce?

Are you the hero of some martial-arts novel?

"Right, that's all in the past. No need to dwell on it." This time Pan Lei really did speak lightly. "I'm passing the treasure to you now. Spend the next few days pouring your True Qi into it and refining it until you become its master. Once your grandfather arrives, you can try it out properly and learn how to use it."

He patted his son's shoulder. "A-Long, I've probably gone as far as I can in this life. The Pan Lineage's future will rest with you."

Pan Long nodded again and again. He did not know how to answer. All he knew was that his vision had grown watery and blurred.

This new book had a difficult birth. I went through several ideas, from immortal fantasy to urban superpowers to an American-comics-style vigilante, and then... to whatever genre this is now. I'm not even sure myself...

Haha, I finally got it written. Even I think that was no small feat.

(The end of this chapter)