A Cultivation Tale: The Godly Punisher

Alex then began to wonder what the man was doing there. He looked back at the woman and at the three-piece necklace held in her hand.

"Isn't that the necklace instructor Jennifer said was the key to open the door of a vault?"

Then he looked at the man again.

"But what's this bastard doing here?"

Then he kept quiet and tried to understand all that was going on before him.

"Daughter, I am sorry I wouldn't be there to see you transition to a beautiful young woman. I shouldn't have gone for the sage-stage cultivator inheritance. I was purely after my own gain. Look at me now. My vitality is draining away." The sickly woman lying on the bed said regrettably.

"But mom, what really happened? You always told me that you were strong and that no one would be able to overpower you. How did you come to be like this? You are now a mortal. How were you reduced to this state? Please don't hold anything back. Tell me all that happened. I want to know" The young girl in front of her said morosely.

"Jennifer, I always told you those to make you train yourself harder. I know how your mind works. You would want to be better than me. You would want to hone yourself so that you could become more powerful than me since I am your role model. So I said those to set a high target for you" The woman said.

The young girl before her, Jennifer by name, began to sob. Tears streamed down her eyes while the old man beside her rubbed her hairs.

"Jennifer, it's okay." The man said.

Jennifer nodded. Then she looked at her pale mother on the bed and asked "Mom, I still believe you are strong. But how was your attacker able to do it?"

The woman smiled even though she was going through a lot of pain. Then she said "Actually, we once fought for the inheritance and I defeated him. Then he left. But I never knew he would come back and use underhanded means against me. He used a cultivation poison on me, but I was still able to fight and seriously injure him before the poison started tearing apart my cultivation, rendering me crippled." the woman replied sadly.

Jennifer looked at her mom's pitiful condition and couldn't help but have her eyes emit a wicked glow. She asked "Mom, were you able to see the person who did this? I promise that when I get stronger, I would rip apart that person's head"

Her mom shook her head weakly. "Jenny, I couldn't see the man's face. He was wearing a mask. Even if I saw his face, I would never tell you. I can't let revenge be your source of inspiration for cultivation. So, just forget about me and focus on your cultivation life. I can't let you carry the burdens of a dead person." she said painfully. Her heart was full of pain.

Jennifer nodded sadly. She looked at her mother and felt really bad at the way she looked.

She went closer to her and took her hand in her's. Then she hugged her mom and said with tears streaming down her eyes. "Mom, I promise I would do my best to grow stronger. I will grow powerful that tens of thousands of worlds would know my name. And when I reach that stage, the stage where I can look into the pasts and future, I will go for the man that took you away from me. No matter what you say, I will always carry your burden in my heart. I must kill whoever did this to you mom. I promise."

Jennifer's mother couldn't say anything again. She just hugged Jennifer and allowed her tears to impact her body and flow down it.

She rubbed her daughter's back affectionately but weakly. There was no strength in her again. She said to Jennifer with difficulty "It's okay. Don't cry again. Mama's already proud of you. And I know you would make mama proud in the future. Just do your best to grow stronger so that you can withstand and eliminate every trouble that would come your way. I trust you my girl. It's okay."

Once she said this, her hands fell off Jennifer's back. There was no life or vitality in it again.

When Jennifer felt that her mom's hand suddenly dropped off her back, she raised her head to look at her. Then she saw that she was no more, that she had given up the ghost.

She burst into tears and grabbed her mom. She shook her mom's lifeless body as she shouted "Mom, please wake. Don't go yet. I still have things to tell you. Please mom."

The old man just shook his head pitifully and came to Jennifer's side. Then he patted her. "Jennifer, she's gone. No amount of shaking and shouting will bring her back."

After a while, seeing that there was no response from her mom's cold and stiff body, she stopped and placed her mom properly on the bed. Then she carried a sheet of cloth and spread it over mom's body.

Alex looked at the woman and felt bad for her. Then he looked at the seven year old Jennifer and smiled. Then he looked at the man that slayed Nadja and his eyes shone an evil light .

He wants to kill this man but he knew he was too weak to do so. He really hated him. He was the first person that Alex had marked for death. Once he got stronger, he would come for his head. That was his silent, unbreakable promise to Nadja and her child anyways.

Then he began to wonder why he was here or why he was shown this vision. So he began to make deductions in his head. He recalled that as he saw the principal, he was suddenly shown this particular scene.

"Is this the power of one of the god-eyes? Clairvoyance?"

He knew he doesn't have the ability to look into the past or into the future. Then he surmised it must be the sudden activation of a god-eye. A god-eye that allowed him to see the past and probably into the future.

"It can't just come up without a reason right?"

Then he began to think that something must have stimulated the eyes to suddenly reveal that scene to him.

"As soon as I saw the principal, I was shown this vision. Or was he the... the..."

When Alex arrived at this deduction, his breathing rate increased and his heart began to beat wildly.

"The principal is this man?"

He couldn't be sure.

He looked at the man's body and tried to match his features with that of the principal. He saw it matched a hundred percent. It was like the principal just having another face. They looked exactly the same in terms of body physical characteristics, morphological appearances.

His brows tightly furrowed as he still wasn't sure. Since he was still being shown the vision, which meant the eye was still operating, he decided to control it power for his own use. He wanted to be sure if the man was the principal. He wanted to confirm if he was the one that hurt Jennifer's mom.

Then he focused on the eyes and willed it to take him to the scene where Jennifer's mom went for an inheritance. He was only trying his luck. But surprisingly, it worked.

The scene he was seeing at the moment vanished and was replaced with another.

Deep in a mountain range in an underground cave, he saw Jennifer's mom fight a masked man. She was very strong as she was able to withstand the waves of violent energies that erupted from the collisions of their attacks without an armor. It didn't even cause her to stagger. But the man was sent hurling into the distance with a miserable shriek coming from him when the waves struck him.

Seeing the woman was domineeringly powerful, he surrendered and left the place. The woman then proceeded to acquire the necklace after going through trials for it.

When she came out of the cave, she was suddenly ambushed by the masked man who risked getting very close to her. Then he threw a large amount of grey-colored powder in her face.

She wasn't expecting this and before she could cease her breath, she had already taken some of the powder in.

She instantly felt weak as the powder turned into poisonforce energy that circulated her body through her energy channels.

It began to ruin her meridians and contaminate her cultivated energies. While at the same time having a sickening effect on her.

She felt nauseous, weak and her vision became blurry while great pain racked her lungs and the organs in her abdominal region.

Realizing she had been poisoned, she dashed towards the man at a shocking speed and used her last strength to inflict a great deal of damage at the man.

She sent out a palm strike at the man's chest. Once her powered palm strike connected to the man's chest. It caused it to cave in as the bones in that area jutted out from his back. Blood spurted from his heart and lungs.

He was sent flying by the strike for hundreds of meters. Then he collided heavily into a mountain bringing his forceful flight to an end.

Then she got more weaker. Knowing she had lost her strength as she now felt like a mortal. She quickly left the place before the man would recover.

Alex then willed the eye to show him where the man landed. Then he saw the man come out from the large crack he made in the mountain upon collision.

His face looked scary as it had twisted due to fury and pain. His heart was boiling as pain racked his entire body. Then he removed the mask he wore. The instant he did, Alex saw his face and his eyes shone.

"So he was the bastard that attacked Jennifer's mom?"

When the man pulled off the mask, he saw the face of the man that killed Nadja.

Now that he had confirmed, he decided to understand so many things. He wanted to get to the end of this.

He doesn't know when he would have the chance to do this again. And like he was once advised by Deborah, once one came across an opportunity, one mustn't let it slide or slip past one.

Now, what he needed to understand was what the man was doing at Jennifer's mom's place, how he got to know about the inheritance and if he was the principal in disguise because he was the one that suddenly caused the appearance of these past scenes in his mind.

He focused again on the eyes with hope in his heart that it should reveal to him how the man got to know about the sage-stage expert's inheritance.

Then another scene appeared in his mind. In this scene, the man was actually Jennifer's mom's male friend. And it seemed because they had gone exploring many dangerous places together before and after she got married, she couldn't hide a secret from him.

She told him about the inheritance and wished him to get his too. At that time, they were just a half-step into the great saint cultivation stage.

"So that was why he was there? The bastard was actually her friend."

Then he wanted answer to his last question. He appeared before the man in a room. He was sitting in the cross-legged position on the ground and a purple energy could be swirling around him.

Then the energy flowed towards his face like a stream and penetrated it. Once they entered it, they permeated it. Then his entire face turned purple and began to twist.

It looked very frightening as the skin of his face contorted. It was like thousands of worms were wriggling beneath it.

As the man did this, he felt great pain. Then rapidly, his face's structure began to change.

The purple energy twirling round him was morphforce energy. It was an energy that gave cultivators the ability to turn into other people or into other things. They could shift their appearance from one form to another. It was a shape-shifting energy; an energy that enabled them to physically transform into anything.

A moment later, his face transformed, becoming a new one. When Alex saw the new face, he became short of breath.

"The principal? No.. No"

He was hit by the truth.

He had just come to know the principal was actually the man that killed Nadja. He only shape-shifted his face. He could have done so for his entire body but it would cause him pain and would waste time. As he did only a small portion, he was able to quickly get it done.

Alex then surmised that he changed his face so that when he fought Jennifer's mom in that cave, in case the mask got pulled off or something happened to it, she wouldn't identify him. Or she would become alert upon recognizing him and thus ruining his other backup plans.

Alex didn't know how to leave the vision that was playing in his mind without stop. Then he attempted something.

"Cease" He said inwardly as he focused on whatever god-eyes had emerged from his eyes.

The instant he willed for the eye's revealment power to cease, the scenes playing in his mind stopped and he was brought back to reality.

Immediately Alex saw that his mind had been brought back to the present as he could see the principal standing in front of him, he quickly concealed the wrath on his face.

But it felt like he was just gone for a fraction of a second. Nothing was amiss.

With a smile plastered in his face, he looked at the principal and said "Good sir, I would like to be on my way"

"Oh. Alright. I would see you again" Gerald said with a friendly smile.

Alex nodded and then dragged Elena with him. Elena became surprised by Alex's action but she didn't remove her hand. She let him pull her to her hostel block.

The principal still stood where he was. He was looking at Alex who pulled Jennifer. He was wondering what those dim golden patterns in his eyes were. He had seen it as he was looking directly at Alex.

"Don't tell me he has another treasure that had merged with his eyes. Is it that am going insane because of treasures or what? I can't be hallucinating right? It was real. I saw it and I felt something."

When Alex's eyes changed and gazed on him, he suddenly felt he had been seen through. He felt that all the secrets buried in his mind were revealed to Alex.

"Hmm. Is it possible that boy now knows my secret? Well, doesn't mean anything. I would kill him soon. Then that stupid girl would be buried by that damned Lady Poisonheart. I just hope she does her job well this time."

Then he flew away.