When grey woke up, he saw himself tied up and facing a tree. The moon was high up in the sky. "What,w-where am i?" He said and managed to turn his head to the side.
When he turned, he suddenly felt a stinging pain in his back and tears swelled up in his eyes. He let out a yell. The stinging pain continued and you could hear the sound of flesh being flogged harshly by a leather whip.
Grey weeped loudly and shouted but the pain still continued. After close to an hour of consistent flogging, when he was half unconscious did the pain finally stop.
He felt himself being untied and roughly lifted up and placed on the shoulders of a burly man.
He was disoriented, and could not even lift a finger after that harsh flogging, he could not even tell where he was until, then felt his body being thrown away to the ground like a rag doll.
"Don't even think about coming back. All your possesions are gone" he heard a voice say just before losing consciousness.
When he woke up the next morning, his head felt heavy and his body very sore and hurting.
He remembered everything and the voice that told him not to come back. Then he started to cry, for he knew he had been banished. He was no longer allowed into the village and had to survive and fend for himself now. After a while though, he stopped crying and cleaned the tears from his eyes.
With great difficulty, he managed to stand up and look at his surrondings. He was in the outskirts of the village. Just outside the nearby forest. It was partcularly safe and familiar to him, so he let out a sigh of relief.
He walked into the forest with a detached expression on his face which sometimes showed a grimace. The forest was a place he knew well because he usually spent most of his time here, so in a few minutes, he came across a small river.
It was the lake he usually took a bathe in. He slowly took off his clothes and got in.
He washed his body for a few minutes and wanted to come out when a small glint caught his eye.
He looked over to where it came from and saw something shining in the water. When he went closer and looked down, he saw it was small silver crystal no bigger than the length of his finger.
'Weird, what is that doing here?'. He bent down and picked it up. When it was out of the water, it let out a silver glint of light that almost blinded him. It was now clear where the light was coming.
"What is this thing?" Just as he said that, the silver crystal shined a purple light and the entire crystal turned purple.
It flew out of Grey's hands and dove straight into his chest. Grey did not even have time to react, much less block or dodge the crystal which was already half way into his chest now.
He screamed in pain as it effortlessly flew into his chest without any resistance and grey could feel it lodge into his chest, right next to his heart.
He let out a pained cry as blood flowed down and painted the water red. He was losing a lot of blood and coupled with the pain and his weak body being peirced through, he felt he would soon faint. But then the wound in his chest from the entry of the crystal closed up rapidly.
The blood he lost seemed to flow back and enter his body. The feeling of losing consciousness soon departed and as the wound finally closed up, he felt revitalised. Like his body was swirling with energy and before he knew it.
'Bang' A loud bang rang out in his head.
'I just broke through!!' He said inwardly in surprise and before he could even say anything else, 'Bang', he made another breakthrough.
'What!!'
He brokethrough two whole stages of the Qi Condensation realm immediately. One had to know that in the village, they had only one cultivator. And he himself was only in the fourth stage of foundation building.
By making a breaktbrough twice, he was in half the realm of the guy.
The reason for such a low number of cultivators was because, to cultivate the body had to have a special constitution.
Without that constitution, no one could cultivate no matter how hard they tried. Grey had already been tested and he did not have the constitution of a cultivator. So how did he manage a breakthrough?
His only answer was the crystal shard. Its entry into his body was the catalyst for his breakthrough. He felt the crystal shake with a strange power and the qi within his body, swirled and went into all the parts of his body. His body parts would absorb them and he would feel more qi enter his body until his body was full to capacity.
When the qi stopped swirling, he knew he had finished one cycle of qi tempering.
'I can't believe it. The small crystal shard that i found was actually a treasure. But where did it come from?' He said inwardly but couldn't think of how the crystal got in the river in the first place. It was not there for sure yesterday.
Then suddenly, he felt a slight tug in his mind and he disappeared. He saw himself in a dark place with no light at all. He could only see himself and nothing else.
'Where am i?' He asked but couldn't think of anything. 'Am i dreaming? Could this all be a dream?' But when he pinched himself, he felt real pain.
"But if am not dreaming, where am i?" Suddenly a heard a voice whisper that he couldn't understand. It sounded like someone muttering to himself "Hello, i-is anybody there?" The voice did not answer but the muttering continued and it grew louder and louder but he still couldn't hear what the voice was saying. "Hello,w-who a-are you?" Feeling scared, Grey asked again while stammering.
Then the mumbling suddenly stopped. The air inside the dark place seemed to drop by a couple degrees and Grey felt a great pressure descend on his shoulders.
The voice spoke again. "My name is none of your business for i am not a name... i am a consequence. I am the silence that breaks the brave shadow that stands where the gods fall. I am the light that burns instead of heals. I don't warn, i arrive, i don't threaten i am the result of the stars and the void remembers me. I am the last slayer of the divine."
The voice seemed to speak with madness amd Grey couldn't help but fear. He did not know how he got here and the scary voice that put such heavy pressure on him.
"My time is almost out and yet i have not departed unto this generation my legacy. So i will give to you." Then the mighty pressure that grey felt holding him down disappeared and a strange power entered his body.
But it didn't swirl in his body like with the crystal shard. It went straight to his brain and instantly, he felt agonizing pain.
He fell to the ground and blood rushed out from his ears. He felt like his head was going to explode any second now. But along with the pain,came knowledge. He could see techniques and cultivation arts he had never heard before, entering into his brain without caring for his sake.
When the techniques finally stopped, the pain also stopped. As he looked up with red eyes, he could see a handsome middleaged man of looking at him.
There was indifference in his eyes as he looked grey.
"What did you do to me". Grey said in a hoarse voice.
" You are now the next godslayer. From now on you will practice the Great Void Immortal techniques until the end of your days."
"Why?" Grey asked.
"The world needs the Great Void" The voice said coldly and grey could feel his body about to be expelled from the dark place but he raised his head and shouted. "WHY!!"
The man had already began to walk away and grey could only see his back. He looked to be dissipating into nothingness but he still turned back and answered. "Because you have no choice"
Then he was expelled from the dark place and fell into the water again. Still shocked from everything that had happened. He didn't move for a long while.