Chapter 9 – Down the cliff
For the next few days, Wang Lin relied on the birds that were sucked into the cave and splattered on the wall for food. He spent most of his time carefully observing the stone bead. Every time dew appeared, he would smear it on his arm. He did this until his arm was fully recovered. He knew this dew was extremely valuable, so he collected some in the skull of a bird.
On this day, he sprinkled the dew he had been collecting throughout the past few days on a piece of cloth and carefully warped the bead in it. After making sure it wouldn’t fall off, he arrived at the entrance to the cave when the suction force stopped. He used his teeth to tear apart his clothes and tied them together, then tied one end to a rock and the other around his waist and slowly climbed down.
Wang Lin had climbed down about five or six meters when his hand slipped. His body dropped quickly, but luckily his clothes were tough and gave him time to swing toward the cliff and grab onto a branch before the cloth tore.
Cold sweat glistened on Wang Lin’s forehead. When he looked down, he estimated that he was still 20 meters up. With one hand, he grabbed a branch and with the other hand he grabbed the the cloth and tied the cloth on to the branch, Only then did he feel relieved.
He carefully moved back toward the cliff edge and then started to descend again. When he was 10 meters from the ground, the cloth had stretched to its limit, Wang Lin jumped down without a second thought.
His clothes couldn’t bear the weight and began to split apart, but still help lighten the fall. Wang Lin felt the wind caress his face on the way down, as well as branches breaking under him, slowing down his fall. He positioned his body just right as he landed, toes pointing downward, and rolled into a ball as he touched the ground.
The ground felt like a stone knife that pierced his body, creating various deep cuts, especially a cut on this leg. It was so deep that you could see the bones.
Wang Lin, with blurry vision, gasped for breath. He struggled to put the cloth that was around his neck that contained the bead into his mouth and sucked some dew that was in the cloth. After a while, he struggled to sit up and, with trembling hands, took the cloth and squeezed it above the wound on his leg as a few drops of dew came out.
A cool feeling emitted from the place the wound was. After having done all this, Wang Lin fell to the ground and prayed for no beasts to attack him before he recovered.
At that a moment, he heard a shout from the distance.
“Tie Zhu, where are you?”
Wang Lin was stunned. He listened closely and realized that it was his dad’s voice. Without time to think, he used all the strength left in his body to shout, “Dad! I’m here!”
A rainbow approached from the distance, it circle around the cliff near Wang Lin for a while then descended. A sword of light came down and dissipated, revealing a Heng Yue Sect disciple with Wang Lin’s father in his arm, frowning at Wang Lin.
When Tie Zhu’s father saw his son, he immediately burst into tears. He ran up to Wang Lin and hugged him. While crying he said, “Tie Zhu, what were you thinking? Why did you have to be so stubborn? Have you ever thought about how your parents would live if you died?”
Wang Lin was stunned. After thinking about it, he realized his dad misunderstood, and thought that he was trying to commit suicide. After looking at himself and seeing how battered his body was, he couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh.
The Heng Yue Sect disciple, surname Zhang, gazed over Wang Lin. He looked to the cliff above and saw the clothes that had been torn earlier. With a few leaps, he climbed up until he reached the cave. He felt a force try to suck him in and showed a surprised expression. However, he quickly recovered and jumped down like the force was no big deal. He said, lowly, “Your kid wanted to suicide but was saved by this natural suction force from the cave. Now that Wang Lin has been found, let’s go back to the sect and have the elder make a decision.”
The Heng Yue Sect disciple rolled his sleeves, grabbed the father son duo, and quickly left that place. After a while, they arrived at the foot of the mountain of the Heng Yue Sect, then climbed the steps and approached the peak.
Coming back here like this caused Wang Lin to have mixed feelings. At the peak, there were many people with ugly expressions. The disciple Zhang quickly went up to one of them and whispered something. The old man’s brow wrinkled and said with a cold voice. “Since the person was found, send him to the guest room to reunite him with his mother.”
In the room, when Wang Lin’s mother saw her son, she immediately burst into tears and ran up to hug him. After hearing from his parents he finally knew what was going on.
When he ran away from home, his parents returned to the Wang family to find his fourth uncle. The three of them feared for his safety, so they went to find Wang Zhuo’s father. With the pressure of his fourth uncle, Wang Zhuo’s father reluctantly got the family members to help ask the Heng Yue Sect to help.
This is the first time the Heng Yue Sect has encountered something like this opted to ignore it at first. However, the reason why Wang Lin ran away from home was due to not being accepted into the Heng Yue Sect. Although the Heng Yue Sect didn’t care about the life and death of a mortal, if he were really to die and the news of it spread to the villages nearby, parents won’t want their kids to try to enter the sect. Concerned about the future, they sent out a few disciples to search the area. Wang Lin’s father was still worried so he followed them.
And that’s what caused the scene before him.
After a while, someone sent in some medicine. Tie Zhu’s mother hastily thanked the the person who delivered it, and carefully fed it to her son. This was indeed medicine produced by an immortal sect. The effect was extremely good. After drinking it, Wang Lin felt that he had recovered quite a lot, and his wound began to ache a lot less.
Wang Lin’s parents were unceasingly bestowing words of comfort upon him. He wanted to explain everything to them, but he was unsure if they would believe him.
At that moment, in a Heng Yue Sect hall, several elders were sitting around listening to the disciple Zhang describe how he found Wang Lin. At the end of the long table, a red faced man said disgruntledly, “What does the life and death of a mortal have to do with an immortal like me. Look at the other immortal schools, which of them are like us who send people to find a kid who tried to suicide because he wasn’t selected. This is shameful!.”
Next to him, a middle aged man with a cold face said, “What elder Ma said is correct. In all the sects within the state of Zhao, only our Heng Yue Sect is like this. But if that kid really died in our mountain range, parents will fear their children would all try to suicide if they were rejected. Then, who would dare to send us their children?”
An old man in robe took a sip of tea and said slowly, “In reality, isn’t it because our Heng Yue Sect has declined that we must select disciples that are suitable for cultivation from mortals? If it was 500 years ago, who would care what the mortals think?”
Finally, an old man full of wrinkles sighed and said, “If this youth tried to suicide once, he could try to suicide again. Bah, to prevent this issue from continuing let us just make an exception and accept him as a disciple.” After he finished speaking, he gave a side glance to the middle aged man.