Tragedy

"It's her?" Kang Dabao was surprised when he saw who it was and murmured to himself.

It turned out that the person he had seen earlier was actually the widow of the Daoist Wu.

"Wasn't she sold to a Niu Gui'er in Dazhaifang by Great Zhai Market? How did she escape? Did a patron redeem her?" Kang Dabao recalled what Second Sister Song had said at the time and felt somewhat strange.

But then I thought again, who can really tell which of the prostitute's words are true and which are false?

"But what's this foolish woman doing here?" Kang Dabao pondered again. A female cultivator at the Qi Refining Second Layer must have some purpose in coming here, right? It couldn't be that she's here to have an affair, could it?

That's not right either. She's a widow who's been widowed twice, and nobody cares about her. Who is she trying to impress by acting all sneaky?

"No, could she also be looking for that cave abode?" Just as Kang Dabao was thinking this, he saw the woman look around for a while, as if to make sure that no one was around, before dragging a sleeping boy out of a grove of trees.

The boy looked to be only five or six years old. At this age, most children are just beginning to develop Spirit Root and have not yet begun to cultivate.

But Kang Dabao saw that the boy had already entered the Dao, but his foundation was unstable and his movements were as unsteady as Zhang Gou'er's.

He immediately frowned and thought to himself, "This is probably some kind of potent medicine used to force growth. Tsk, this child 'Dao Foundation is destroyed. Unless he encounters some great opportunity in the rest of his life, it will be almost impossible for him to break through to the Middle Qi Refinement."

After the woman held the boy in her arms, a look of deep maternal love appeared on her face.

She sighed deeply, then cast a spell for a while, her hand gestures changing more than ten times, before uttering an obscure syllable in the boy's ear.

Hearing the sound, the boy slowly opened his eyes. Upon seeing the woman, a sweet, innocent smile spread across his face, and he called out in a clear voice, "Mother!"

The woman smiled and responded, affectionately stroking the boy's head. "My Ai'er, Mother will now take you to pay respects to the Wu Household ancestors."

"Okay," the boy replied sweetly, a childlike smile on his face.

The woman then took out a gleaming gold compass, calculated the directions, took the boy's hand, took a few steps, and then stopped and stood still.

Not long after, Kang Dabao saw a complex curse seal appearing on the gray stone wall in front of the mother and son. The woman spat out the word "Edict" again, and the curse seal began to rotate upside down. Grass and stone debris were scattered on the stone wall. The vortex formed by the curse seal grew larger and larger, until finally a fluorescent cave with a radius of one foot was formed.

"Let's go." The woman looked back for a moment before gently lifting the boy's arm, and the two stepped into the cave together.

Kang Dabao stayed in the concealment formation for a while and finally gave up the idea of calling Jiang Qing and Pei Yi to help.

If we alert that thieving woman at this moment, who knows what might happen.

"Damn it, a thieving woman in the Early Qi Refining Stage dares to come in with a baby, do you think I wouldn't dare to go in? Even if I'm going to be sneaky, this isn't the way to be sneaky, is it?"

Thinking of this, Sect Leader Kang Da put away the concealment array plate, used a Breath Concealment Technique, and walked to the cave entrance according to the direction where the mother and child's feet had been placed, which he had just memorized.

After hesitating for a moment, Kang Dabao finally gritted his teeth and stepped inside.

Upon entering, Kang Dabao felt no dizziness or other unusual sensations. He simply felt a white light flash before his eyes and found himself standing on a dusty, gray ground.

Before them was a wide-open doorway. The mother and son who had come in earlier must have already gone inside. At this moment, only Kang Dabao was present.

Above the door are four strange, large characters that appear to have been carved with a knife and axe, crookedly imprinted on the stone wall.

"The third character is 'Wu' and the last character is 'Ying'? This seems to be the Mountain Barbarian Script. Moreover, why was it deliberately distorted when it was carved? What does that mean?" Kang Dabao had not seen the Mountain Barbarian Script for many years, and he was quite surprised to see it here.

Since the last Shannan Circuit uprising, Chief Steward Shen Lingfeng has gone to great lengths to erase all traces of the Mountain Barbarians's existence within the region, intending to completely eliminate all signs of their past existence.

This led to the near-total erasure of the Mountain Barbarian Tribe, a once thriving large tribe in the surrounding counties, and even the disappearance of their history.

As for scripts like the Mountain Barbarian Script, very few low-level cultivators in Cloud Horn Prefecture can recognize them.

The reason why Sect Leader Kang Da could still barely recognize two characters was because among the spoils of war left behind by Patriarch Zhang of the Chongming Sect in the past, there were quite a few items belonging to the chieftains of the Mountain Barbarians tribes.

Master Kang Dabao often showed these items to his disciples to admire and boast about, praising Patriarch Zhang's martial arts skills and explaining the origins of those items.

"So, this is the tomb of Wu's Wu?" Kang Dabao frowned, feeling a little uneasy. The Mountain Barbarians referred to the strongest among their leaders as "Wu," which meant that the owner of this tomb was at least a Foundation Establishment Late Stage cultivator in his lifetime.

At this moment, a woman's voice rang out from inside the cave, "Ai'er, remember this: our Wu Household is descended from Gu Huntong, the Grand Marshal of the 'Great Rong Kingdom' army. Inside is our ancestor's coffin. Come forward and pay your respects."

Upon hearing this, Kang Dabao felt a surge of excitement. He tried to probe with his Divine Sense, but finding nothing unusual, he felt relieved.

The boy followed the woman through a passageway whose walls were inlaid with pure pearls. At the end of the passageway, the woman took out a hexagonal token, and the stone wall of the passageway flipped up, revealing the main chamber of the tomb.

The woman led the boy into the main room. Following his mother's instructions, the boy obediently walked to the huge black lacquered coffin in the center of the main room and respectfully performed the three kneelings and nine kowtows before standing up.

"Your great-grandfather, Lord Quanyi, died young. Your great-grandfather, Lord Changming, was a pitiful mortal. Your fathers, Endao and Fengdao Dao, were also unfortunate and died tragically at the hands of bandits," the woman said to her son, her voice filled with sorrow.

Kang Dabao chuckled inwardly upon hearing this. The story of this wicked woman murdering her husband had already spread throughout the surrounding states; how could it be concealed?

Even if you're just telling this child he's too young to understand, won't he be embarrassed when he grows up? But then again, you can't exactly tell your son that it's because his mother hooked up with his father that she took advantage of his uncle, can you?

"Ai'er will definitely avenge her father in the future, and will bind that Evil Cultivator Niu Gui'er and the Double Brightness bandit Kang Dabao and bring them to Mother for execution by a thousand cuts." The boy's voice rang out in the tomb chamber, his childish voice quite pleasing to the ear.

Kang Dabao was at a loss for words. From the other party's perspective, "avenging their father" was naturally a matter of course. So, he couldn't just sit and wait to die. This mother and son couldn't live today no matter what.

But if it were truly about brutally killing a child who still had their hair in pigtails, something that crossed moral boundaries, even he, Sect Leader Kang Da, had never done it.

But given the situation, how could I dare not do it? Aren't I afraid of suddenly feeling a chill on the back of my head while I'm sleeping?

"My dear Ai'er!" The woman gently pressed her forehead against her son's head, a hint of reluctance and pity flashing in her eyes.

"When Ai'er grow up, I will protect my mother." The boy's innocent smile was crystal clear, but the next moment, a large amount of blood suddenly gushed from his mouth.

This sudden turn of events made Kang Dabao's eyes widen in disbelief. He even instinctively looked at his hands, "It wasn't me, I didn't."

But then, a weak voice echoed in the empty tomb, "My dear mother, Ai'er is in pain, Ai'er is in so much pain."

"Ah! Ah!" The woman's screams and the slicing sound of the blade against flesh rang out at the same time. Her eyes were bloodshot and her expression was extremely crazed.

The boy's voice gradually faded away. Only then did the woman put down the dagger and tightly embrace her son with her blood-stained hands. "Ai'er dear, Ai'er, don't blame your mother. I'm doing this to avenge your father. I can only say you have to suffer. It won't hurt anymore soon, Ai'er dear, my dear, soon. It won't hurt anymore soon."

"Poisonous woman!" Kang Dabao watched the scene unfold from the shadows, his eyes wide as if they were about to pop out of their sockets.

The phrase "human tragedy" is simple to say, but the shock one feels after witnessing it firsthand is indescribable.

The mother wept bitterly as she pulled out steaming organs from the womb of her still-breathing child.

The scene was so tragic that even the self-proclaimed Sect Leader Kang Da, who had seen many grand occasions, couldn't bear to open his eyes and watch any longer.

"This is the child I carried for ten months, my very heart and soul! You wicked woman! You wicked woman! You madwoman! You insane old hag! How could she bear to part with her like that!"

Without Kang Dabao asking, the woman closed her son's clear eyes, stopped crying, and began to comfort herself, "The Wu Household is a disgrace to the bloodline of the Great Rong Capital Marshal. For over a hundred years, generations of them have been useless, unable to even cultivate a Late Qi Refinement Refining cultivator. They have been guarding the Capital Marshal's treasures for a hundred years without being able to retrieve them. It's all their fault that my son was ruined!"

If it weren't for my father enduring humiliation and submitting himself to that scoundrel Wu Quanyi, poisoning him to death, and thus obtaining the secrets left behind by the Grand Marshal, he would have spent decades tirelessly searching and researching the Great Rong Kingdom's records and diligently studying alternative Secret Method, thus delaying his Dao Path and passing away with regret.

On his deathbed, he passed on the Secret Method to me, a woman, instructing me to act as a woman, to feign friendship with two useless people, and for my son to sacrifice himself for the Great Rong Kingdom. Without the sacrifices of three generations of my Qiang Household, these treasures would likely have remained sealed away for who knows how many years before they were revealed. By then, would the Great Rong Kingdom still have a chance to rise again?

"This woman knows how to comfort people. If she hears these words a few more times, she might actually believe them herself." Kang Dabao gritted his teeth in anger, his face turning ashen.

The woman chattered on and on for quite a while before finally calming down.

She abandoned her own son's body, only using her blouse to wrap the organs that seemed to still be throbbing, and crawled on her knees to place it directly in front of the black lacquered coffin.

The wicked woman took a deep breath, sat down cross-legged facing the coffin, formed the wisdom mudra with her right hand, pinched the eight trigrams with her left hand, and repeatedly chanted a spell that sounded like a witch's incantation.

When he recited it for the ninth time, blood and sweat began to seep from every pore on the woman's face, and the organs in front of the coffin emitted large plumes of heat and gradually began to dissolve.

By the time he recited it eighteen times, the pile of organs had already turned into a pool of pus and blood. The woman's Blood Qi and vitality seemed to have been drained, and her flesh and blood were withered, leaving only a thin layer of skin clinging to her bones.

By the time he had recited it for the twenty-seventh time, the strange color on the pus and blood that had formed from the internal organs had disappeared, replaced by a layer of Golden Light, giving it a sacred feel.

The woman had long since lost control of her body; smoke rose from her head as she collapsed to the ground, her eyes unfocused, yet the incantation she uttered remained perfectly fluent.

As the woman struggled to utter the last, difficult syllable, and just as she finished reciting the thirty-sixth incantation, it seemed as if the last trace of life had been drained from her body. She lay on the ground, no longer resembling a living person, her empty eyes staring blankly at the coffin.

Then, the golden pus and blood formed from the internal organs transformed into a stream of light, striking the front of the coffin and revealing a complex Mountain Barbarian Script.

The enormous coffin began to shake violently, causing the entire tomb chamber to tremble. Large plumes of dust filled the empty stone chamber. Mud and gravel rained down from the top of the tomb chamber, making even the hidden Sect Leader Kang Da feel a chill.

Fortunately, the shaking of the coffin did not last long. As the tremors of the tomb chamber stopped, a gap about the width of a child's arm appeared between the tightly sealed lid and the body of the black coffin in the middle of the tomb chamber.

A look of wild joy instantly appeared on the woman's withered face, and her empty eyes regained their sparkle. Her long hair, already damp with the evaporated blood vapor, clung to her sticky skin, making her look filthy, dirty, and disheveled.

She didn't care about any of that now. She struggled weakly for a long time before she stood up again, ran to the coffin, and without thinking, reached her withered arm into the crack of the coffin.

She kept taking things out of the coffin one by one, even though it was extremely painful to just stick out a finger, but the look of ecstasy on her face showed no sign of fading.

The treasure in the coffin was a miraculous elixir, which made the wicked woman reach out faster and faster.

She pulled out more and more treasures until her Storage Bag was full, then she put them on the ground;

The ground was covered with them, so she didn't hesitate to place the treasures she had taken out on her son's corpse, and then continued to rummage.

"This is Second Tier Law Artifact, this is Hong Grade Cultivation Method, this is... this is the Purple Empyrean Wood that my father Rizali recorded, the most precious material in the hands of the Grand Marshal, the main ingredient for refining Third Tier Law Treasure! Haha, and there's also Flowing Light Sand, a whole peck of it! What is this? Is this a pill? A pill used by the Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators? Put it away, put it away, it's all mine! Mine! And what is this, what is this? Haha, this is the Six Harmonies True Yang Jujube, a treasure that can help Fire Spirit Root cultivators Foundation Establishment! Fire Spirit Root, haha, I have it. I have fire."

The woman, who was holding the sacred object, suddenly felt a pain in her chest and instinctively looked down to look.

She saw it; a black dagger was plunged into her heart, its dark blade becoming even more intensely colored with her blood.

Before she could cry out in pain, the black short blade swiftly sliced upwards through her body, evenly cutting through her neck, chin, mouth, and nose.

Until her head was easily sliced in two by the short blade, the wicked woman heard a crisp sound and then lost consciousness.

Kang Dabao then cautiously entered. His original intention was to wait until the wicked woman had taken all the treasures and left the tomb before making his move in the outer room.

But as soon as he heard the man utter the words "Six Harmonies True Yang Jujube," a rare treasure, he could no longer suppress his murderous intent and was willing to take the risk.

As soon as Kang Dabao entered the main tomb chamber, he saw the boy lying under a dazzling array of precious objects.

His small face was pale, and his clear, spring-like eyes reflected his mother's features.

His little mouth was still slightly open, as if he were still whispering, "Mother, it hurts."

Sect Leader Kang Da's sigh was deep and powerful, as if all his resentment was squeezed out of his chest and slammed heavily to the ground, kicking up dust and making a muffled sound.

"I truly wish it were something I, a man of utterly lacking conscience, had done."

Thank you to Qingfengzhiyu for the Extended Net Moon, and thank you to readers 2019072823392700, JianV, Junzixianzhao, Kaibuliaodianle, 2081002232137336, Daodanxiongmao, and 20191210172412926 for the monthly Extended Net Moon.