Chapter 9 – Going down the cliff
For the next few days, Wang Lin relied on the birds that had been sucked into the cave and scattered on the walls for food. He spent most of his time carefully observing the stone beads. Whenever dew appeared, he would smear it on his arm. He did this until his arm was fully healed. He knew this dew was very valuable, so he collected some from a bird’s skull.
On this day, he sprinkled the dew he had collected over the past few days onto a piece of cloth and carefully wrapped the beads around it. After ensuring it wouldn’t fall off, he arrived at the cave entrance when the suction stopped. He used his teeth to tear off his clothes and tied them together, then tied one end to a rock and the other around his waist and slowly descended.
Wang Lin had already fallen about five or six meters when his hand slipped. His body fell rapidly, but fortunately, his clothes were strong enough to give him time to swing toward the cliff and grab onto a branch before the fabric tore.
Cold sweat beaded on Wang Lin’s forehead. When he looked down, he estimated that he was still 20 meters high. With one hand, he held onto a branch and with the other, he held a cloth and tied it to the branch. Only then did he feel relieved.
He carefully moved back to the edge of the cliff and then began to descend again. When he was 10 meters from the ground, the cloth had stretched to its limit, and Wang Lin jumped down without a second thought.
His clothes couldn’t support the weight and began to tear, but they still helped soften his fall. Wang Lin felt the wind caress his face as he descended, and branches snapped beneath him, slowing his fall. He positioned himself just right for landing, his toes pointed downward, and rolled into a ball upon impact.
The ground felt like stone knives stabbing into his body, creating numerous deep wounds, especially the one on his leg. The wound was so deep that his bones could be seen.
Wang Lin, his vision blurry, gasped for breath. He struggled to put the cloth around his neck, containing the beads, into his mouth and sucked out the small amount of dew on it. After a while, he struggled to sit up and, with trembling hands, took the cloth and squeezed it over the wound on his leg, as a few drops of dew dripped out.
A cold feeling radiated from the wound. After doing all this, Wang Lin fell to the ground and prayed that no wild beasts would attack him before he recovered.
At that moment, he heard a scream from a distance.
“Tie Zhu, where are you?”
Wang Lin was stunned. He listened intently and realized it was his father’s voice. Without a second thought, he summoned all the remaining strength in his body to shout, “Dad! I’m here!”
A rainbow approached from a distance, circled the cliff near Wang Lin for a moment, and then descended. The sword of light descended and disappeared, revealing a Heng Yue Sect disciple with Wang Lin’s father in his arms, frowning at Wang Lin.
When Tie Zhu’s father saw his son, he burst into tears. He ran to Wang Lin and hugged him. As he cried, he said, “Tie Zhu, what are you thinking? Why must you be so stubborn? Have you ever thought about how your parents will live if you die?”
Wang Lin was stunned. After thinking about it, he realized that his father had misunderstood and thought he was trying to commit suicide. After looking at himself and seeing how battered his body was, he couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.
The Heng Yue Sect disciple, surnamed Zhang, stared at Wang Lin. He looked up at the cliff above and saw the clothes that had been torn apart earlier. With a few jumps, he climbed up until he reached the cave. He felt a force trying to suck him in and revealed a shocked expression. However, he quickly recovered and jumped down as if the force was nothing. He said in a low voice, “Your son wanted to commit suicide but was saved by the natural suction force of this cave. Now that Wang Lin has been found, let’s return to the sect and let the elders make a decision.”
The Heng Yue Sect disciple rolled up his sleeves, grabbed the father and son, and quickly left. After a while, they arrived at the foot of the Heng Yue Sect mountain, then climbed the steps and approached the summit.
Returning here like this caused Wang Lin to have mixed feelings. On the peak, there were many people with ugly expressions. Disciple Zhang quickly approached one of them and whispered something. The old man’s brows furrowed as he said in a cold voice, “Since the person has been found, send him to the guest room to reunite with his mother.”
Inside the room, when Wang Lin’s mother saw her son, she immediately burst into tears and ran to hug him. After hearing from her parents, she finally understood what was happening.
When he ran away from home, his parents returned to the Wang family to look for his fourth uncle. The three of them, worried for his safety, went to find Wang Zhuo’s father. Under pressure from his fourth uncle, Wang Zhuo’s father reluctantly asked his family members for help and asked for the Heng Yue Sect’s help.
This was the first time the Heng Yue Sect had encountered something like this, and they chose to ignore it at first. However, the reason Wang Lin ran away from home was because he wasn’t accepted into the Heng Yue Sect. Although the Heng Yue Sect didn’t care about the life and death of a mortal, if he truly died and news spread to the nearby villages, parents wouldn’t want their children to try to enter the sect. Worried about the future, they sent several 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 delivered some medicine. Tie Zhu’s mother hurriedly thanked the person who delivered it and carefully gave it to her son. This was indeed medicine produced by the immortal sect. Its effects were very good. After taking it, Wang Lin felt that he had recovered quite a bit, and his wounds began to hurt much less.
Wang Lin’s parents kept offering him words of comfort. He wanted to explain everything to them, but he wasn’t sure if they would believe him.
At that moment, in the Heng Yue Sect hall, several elders were sitting listening to Disciple Zhang explain how he found Wang Lin. At the head of the long table, a red-faced man said angrily, “What does the life and death of a mortal have to do with an immortal like me? Look at the other immortal sects; who among them would send people to find a child who tried to commit suicide because he wasn’t chosen? This is shameful!”
Beside him, a middle-aged man with a cold face said, “What Elder Ma said is true. Of all the sects in the State of Zhao, only our Heng Yue Sect is like this. But if that child really died in our mountains, the parents would be afraid that their children would all try to commit suicide if they were rejected. Then, who would dare send their children to us?”
An old man in a robe took a sip of tea and said slowly, “In reality, isn’t it because our Heng Yue Sect has declined that we have to choose suitable disciples to cultivate from among the mortals? If it were 500 years ago, who would care what mortals think?”
Finally, a wrinkled old man sighed and said, “If this young man tried to commit suicide once, he can try again. Ah, to prevent this problem from continuing, let’s make an exception and accept him as a disciple.” After he finished speaking, he glanced at the middle-aged man.