2 A Dagger in the Back Doesn't Always Mean Betrayal

Alastar woke up, or more correctly was woken up by a bucket of water.

"What the hell, what the fuck, whats happening"

The tournaments results came back to him, he had lost, he had lost! Him the great Alastar Bushybrows of the great Bushybrow family had lost and in spectacular fashion as well.

The person who had woken him up was his father. He was a burly man with the same characteristic eyebrows of the family but his brows were different. They had an element of sneakiness, whenever he spoke they would glide up his face and slither along the border between eyebrow and eye. He was in general the manager of the family businesses.

They were in his fathers floor of the house. His father sat on a chair tapping his foot and looking at the ground.

"You're a cripple."

Alastar looked at his father, such a steady figure of his life, the man with the plan, the man with a thousand thoughts and he was crying. Big tears went across his fathers serious face.

Alastar checked his dantian, it was broken, he checked his spiritual veins, they were gone, he finally checked his martial soul the most important part of a martial artists life. It was the worst of all, it was still there, but it was crying. Since the martial soul couldn't technically leave a person's body until death, the worst fate it could suffer was tears.

Most martial souls would represent the person, it would be them working, playing, fighting it could be anything. They could be happy, angry, even depressed was still better then crying. The Crying Soul was a death sentence for a martial artist, it meant the collapse of their will, their life, and their future.

Father and son did not speak a word. His father sniffled, Alastar looked blankly at the wall, it was not possible to lose genius, it can't be possible, it shouldn't be possible.

His father gestured for Alastar to leave the room. His grandfather, the patriarch of the family stood outside. He took Alastar aside and led him away.

He led Alastar to the basement, Alastar was barely conscious, the loss of his talent was to much for his brain. The patriarch looked at him silently and sighed. The basement was large and unfurnished save for a great big altar with an indent in the middle in the shape of a dagger.

Inside the indent was a dagger, it was long and curved and glittered with mysterious power. All of the Qi in the room was drawn to it, was obsessed with it. The patriarch grabbed it and his eyes went white and a terrifying aura took him.

He turned to face Alastar. Alastar looked back into the patriarchs blank eyes. In the patriarchs hand was the long curved knife before raised high in the air. Alastar took a second before trying to back away but with the full force of the patriarchs cultivation base there was no chance.

The knife came down on Alastars stomach and an immense pain came from strangely Alastar's head. He screamed out in pain for what seemed like hours but nobody came. The patriarch dropped to the floor and the knife was nowhere to be seen. Soon Alastar was unconscious from the pain and the patriarch was breathing heavily.

"The transfer is done Alastar now the only thing left is to wait."

Alastar woke up from his bed drenched in sweat. He had the strangest dream. A tiger, a dragon, a turtle and a pheonix were together at the tea table. They were speaking in what seemed to be English but their letters were wrong somehow. All of it seemed wrong.

Nobody was in Alastar's room though he felt as if he was being watched somehow. It was night and the crickets were howling against the moon. There was a dull pain that felt like it was coming from the deepest recesses of his head.

Alastar immediately got in the lotus position to cultivate but then he remembered that he couldn't. Alastar called out for his servant but heard nothing. Why would the family waste a valuable servant on someone who couldn't cultivate.

Alastar sighed and lied on his back on the bed. What the point anymore. Why try, why struggle, the family doesn't need him anymore. He was truly useless. He might as well pack his bags and go, at least he wouldn't disgrace his father and grandfather. Otherwise maybe he could find better companionship with mortals.

Alastar did not own anything that wasn't the families beside the necklace he had made when he was three and the clothes on his back. He looked back on his room and turned his back, he would never see the Bushybrows household as prince after today.

He made his way down from the first floor of the house and onto the bottom floor. There in front of him was the door. It was an old door passed down from one of the more eccentric leaders of the family who had dedicated his life to making them.

He opened the door without a sound and fled into the night.