33: Chapter 33 Alone

The Shi Family had been in chaos all night.

When Shi Lin was carried back to Shimen Gap, he could barely speak.

A section of his chest had collapsed, and his Qi leaked out from his throat thread by thread, like a punctured bellows.

Shi Yuanjian personally kept watch by the kang, turning over all the medicine the family had kept at the bottom of their chests.

He fed him everything that could sustain Qi or stop bleeding, but it was only enough to barely hang onto that life.

The women and children in the room were crying.

Shi Yuanjian found it annoying to hear, so he raised his hand and slammed his iron-headed staff onto the ground.

"What are you crying for! He's not dead yet!"

As this voice fell, the crying stopped instantly, but a sense of fear still lingered in the house.

The Shi Family was never well-off to begin with.

Shimen Gap guarded a green gravel pit; it sounded like a business, but in reality, it was grueling work.

In the rainy season, when there was too much water, they had to constantly turn the sand.

In the dry season, the sand was too dry and would crack.

Every year, they struggled to sift out a few boxes of green gravel, most of which had to be handed over to the Main Peak, and only the remainder could be exchanged for some spiritual resources.

Shi Yuanjian had entered the Qi Refining stage early in his life, but had been stuck at the third layer for decades; he was tough in body and hard in heart.

As long as he was alive, the Shi Family still had roots.

A few days ago, Shi Lin had succeeded in his spring training, giving the Shi Family a second wind. They had thought that after enduring for so many years, they could finally hold their heads high.

Who knew that just as they raised their heads, someone would slap them back into the mud.

Shi Lin lay on the kang, his forehead covered in cold sweat.

His mother squatted by the kang, wanting to reach out and touch him, but she didn't dare.

The woman's eyes were red and swollen, and she kept repeating:

"Go to the Chen Family to beg for medicine, go to the Chen Family to beg for medicine..."

Shi Yuanjian closed his eyes.

He had already gone to beg, but the Chen Family refused to give any.

The Shi Family had lost a woman who married into the Ji Family, and one of their new Qi cultivators had been injured, tearing their relationship with the He Family apart.

The Chen Family refused to step into these muddy waters, fearing they would get dirty.

If it were normal times, Shi Yuanjian could endure it.

But Shi Lin's breath was only half left; he could not endure it.

That night, someone went to the Chen Family to seize medicine.

The next day, news broke that the Chen Family's pharmacy had been ransacked, Chen Baisheng had been injured, and Sun Jingxiu of the Sun Family had also been beaten and injured.

When the news reached Shimen Gap, Shi Yuanjian didn't speak for a long while after hearing it; he only felt as if someone had shoved him from behind.

It was too fast.

One thing after another, so fast that it was as if someone had laid out the fuses long ago, just waiting for a single spark to fall for the entire slope to explode in succession.

But he had no time to investigate.

At dawn, news of the Wang Family's extermination arrived.

Afterwards, the Jiang Family's Gudong Field was set on fire, Jiang Yuhe was attacked, and the Chen, Sun, and Jiang families all claimed to have seen the shadows of the Shi and Ji families.

More and more people gathered in the Shi Family's courtyard.

Some children stared at him intensely.

Some women pushed their children toward the back room.

Others secretly looked at Shi Yuanjian, as if wanting to see something on his face.

Shi Yuanjian sat in front of the door with his iron-headed staff across his knees.

He hadn't slept all night; he didn't dare close his eyes at all.

By the afternoon, the child guarding the gate stumbled in, his face as white as paper.

"Old Ancestor... the Jiang Family is here."

The courtyard went quiet instantly.

Shi Yuanjian slowly stood up, his iron-headed staff tapping on the ground, emitting a heavy sound.

"How many came?"

"Four."

The child swallowed his saliva.

"Jiang Chengning, Lin Suwen, Jiang Xingchuan, Jiang Shoushan."

Four Qi cultivators.

In the Shi Family's courtyard, one couldn't even hear breathing.

Shimen Gap was southeast of Duansang Ridge; the mountain pass was narrow, with white gravel outside, and only a few houses visible inside.

When Jiang Chengning and the other three arrived, mourning cloth was already hanging in front of the Shi Family's gate.

Shi Lin was not yet dead.

Intermittent gasps came from the room, each one lighter than the last.

Shi Yuanjian kept watch in front of the room, leaning on an iron-headed staff, his face ashen, his eyes bloodshot.

He was the Shi Family's old Qi cultivator, having cultivated to the third layer early on, but he had been stuck before the Pulse-Changing barrier for decades.

He usually made a living from the green gravel pit; he was a man of few words and still had a tough constitution.

But now that Shi Lin had been beaten like this by the He Family, the dirty water splashed onto the Shi Family could not be washed clean.

Jiang Chengning did not make a move.

With four Qi cultivators pressing down on the gate, the people in the Shi Family's courtyard didn't even dare to cry loudly.

Shi Yuanjian looked at the four and said in a hoarse voice: "Jiang Chengning, you want to take advantage of this time too?"

Jiang Chengning said: "The Shi Family destroyed my Jiang Family's field, beat the Chen Family's people, injured Sun Jingxiu, and were implicated in the Wang Family's extermination. Old Shi, tell me, how should this account be settled?"

Shi Yuanjian gritted his teeth: "My Shi Family did nothing."

"If you say you didn't, can the Wang Family come back to life?"

Jiang Chengning looked at him calmly.

"Chen Baisheng was beaten, and Sun Jingxiu saw the backs of the Shi Family members with his own eyes. Your family went to the Chen Family to beg for medicine and failed, and that night someone seized the medicine. Near Gudong Field, someone also saw the shadows of the Ji and Shi families."

"Now everyone is saying that the Shi Family and the Ji Family have joined forces to swallow the He Family first, and then take their knives to the others."

Suddenly, a woman rushed toward Jiang Chengning; her hair was disheveled, her eyes were red and swollen, and she was clutching a small knife.

Just as everyone was about to react, she suddenly changed direction, lunged in front of Shi Yuanjian, and stabbed him in the abdomen with the knife.

Then, regardless of everything, she knelt on the ground and kowtowed repeatedly, saying:

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry... our Shi Family was wrong. Our Shi Family sowed discord, injured people and robbed them of their wealth, exterminated entire families—we deserve to die..."

The woman wailed, trembling as she crawled to Jiang Chengning's feet, sobbing and apologizing incessantly.

Behind her, a young boy wailed: "Shi Yuanjian! You have already lost, are we, the Shi Family, really so shameless? You have brought disaster upon your family; you deserve to die!"

"A bunch of idiots..." Shi Yuanjian clutched his abdominal wound; surprise, anger, and sorrow were all mixed on his face, his expression twisted.

"You all want to kill me, all of you! Shame... what does 'deserve to die' even mean?! If I die, you are all finished, the Shi Family will no longer exist!"

Fresh blood was constantly flowing away, his burning will gradually dimming; he was like a lone wolf separated from its pack, roaring and howling hoarsely.

The woman lay in the mud, sobbing, not daring to look up again.

The youth was also roared back a step by him, his eyes filled with both hatred and fear.

Jiang Chengning was speechless; there was no black and white in this world. The woman was not necessarily unaware of Shi Yuanjian's innocence, and the child did not necessarily think Shi Yuanjian was evil.

But they were afraid.

Shi Yuanjian roared in sorrow; he didn't even know who he was roaring at.

He looked at the clansmen around him; those faces that had once been kind, affectionate, and admiring toward him, those people connected by Bloodline now truly wanted him dead.

He seemed to be standing in endless darkness, the whole world shrouded by a thick black fog, with a pool of scarlet blood slowly flowing beneath his feet.

"Shi Lin!" Shi Yuanjian roared, "Live on, no matter what way, even if it's like a dog!"

He picked up the small knife from the ground and used all his strength to look back; the figures of his family gradually faded into emptiness.

The high spirits when he achieved Qi Refining, the lofty ambitions when he took over as Clan Chief.

The sound of Shi Lin crying when he fell in the courtyard as a child, the red cloth hanging in front of the door on the day his daughter got married.

Memories scattered bit by bit in his mind.

He suddenly felt so clearly that the home he had risked his life to build had already collapsed.

The sharp knife pierced into his throat, and bright red blood just slowly flowed out.

His blood was about to run dry.

Shi Yuanjian's body stood in front of the Shi Family's gate for one breath, then slowly fell backward.

The rain fell bit by bit.

This year's spring rain was exceptionally cold.