Secret of the Tattoo!

"Son, I know you have questions, and I will answer all of them, so take a deep breath and ask them one at a time."

Zhan-yu took a deep breath to calm down so he could ask his father questions.

Zhan-yu, confused, asked his father how was he alive.

Zhan-yu's father replied with a shaky voice, "Son, I know you want me to be alive, but you also know me being alive is not possible. The reason we can talk and see each other is because I have transferred my soul onto your body in the shape of a tattoo. My original plan was to reside in your body, but I couldn't. But that discussion is for later."

Zhan-yu could now understand how that tattoo came upon his body. It was all his father's doing.

Zhan-yu and his father talked for four hours straight. Zhan-yu found out that the tattoo on his body "בַּעַל אוֹב" was the word that was written on the cloth that Zhan-yu was inside when his father found him. Zhan-yu also found out that his father had been investigating who the traitors were, and on his birthday, he finally found out their identities, but before his father could expose and punish them, he had been assassinated by them. This made Zhan-yu even madder, thinking that if it hadn't been his birthday that day, then his father would have punished them right away rather than waiting for the party to end.

But that wasn't all the information Zhan-yu found out from his father. He also found out that the place where they were was inside his tattoo. This also meant that, when he was inside of it, his body was still outside in a vulnerable state.

Zhan-yu also came to know he might not really be strong at all, as his father told him General Lei-Tai never really fought with him with his full strength, as he was ordered to go easy on Zhan-yu by the king.

The most shocking thing that Zhan-yu found out was that his father never knew anything about the tunnel, but when he had died and come to his body, he had suddenly remembered there being a tunnel under the bed and had told him.

"It could have been a side effect of father's dying and residing in a tattoo."

Zhan-yu's eyes suddenly became darker than the color of fire, as if his conviction could be seen through his eyes. "Father, promise me something. I will become strong, but once I do, you will tell me who those traitors are."

Father stared at the sky and agreed to Zhan-yu's terms.

"Zhan-yu, you should leave now. You shouldn't be here for this long yet. Practice and become stronger. Then we will meet again."

Zhan-yu, with his eyes full of tears, said his farewell to his father and hugged him. "Oh! H… I… Think something… got in… my eye!"

[Four hours later.]

Chirp, Chirp

[Zhan-yu woke up because of the birds chirping.]

"Oh! God… Why does my body hurt so much."

Zhan-yu was quite confused as to why his body was hurting, as he didn't really do anything that would cause his body to hurt so much. All he had done was go after the rabbit. He trained every day for longer than this when he was at home, so chasing after a rabbit couldn't be it.

Right then, he realized what his father had said to him.

"Zhan-yu, you should leave now. You shouldn't be here for this long yet. Practice and become stronger. Then we will meet again."

Zhan-yu thought, "Could it be that going to that place and staying there took a toll on me, and that's why Father wanted me to leave that place as fast as possible?"

"Is that the reason he didn't let me stay there with him for longer?"

Zhan-yu now knew that if he wanted to meet his father, he had to become stronger. But before that, there was an even bigger problem staring straight into his eyes.

BREAKFAST…

Before going out to hunt, Zhan-yu took off his clothes and jumped into the lake, where the water from the waterfall was gathered. He swam around for a while and cleaned himself up from all the dirt he had gotten when he had been hunting the rabbit. He quickly got out of the lake and put his clothes back on, getting ready to go to the forest.

Zhan-yu had some confidence this time though, as he had been successful in catching the rabbit the previous night. Zhan-yu picked up the spear with a smug look on his face. "I'm going to catch this stupid rabbit quickly and start training as soon as possible."

Zhan-yu went inside the forest, looking around astonished. "Wow! I have never seen trees as big as these." Zhan-yu looked toward the sky in surprise. "Where exactly do these trees end?"

Zhan-yu was fascinated with this forest and its trees, but there was no time for being fascinated. No amount of fascination could stop a person when he was hungry.

Zhan-yu — admiring his surroundings, running around, and looking left and right — saw a rabbit coming in his direction from afar. Instead of running after it, he decided to follow what he did that night.

With a devilish smile, Zhan-yu muttered to himself, "I won't make the same mistake again, you stupid rabbit. I will catch you. I know you are the same rabbit that ran away from me that night."

[This side of Zhan-yu had never been seen before. It was as if he was a different person.]

Zhan-yu patiently waited for the rabbit to get close to where he was hiding. As soon as it arrived, Zhan-yu threw a rock in the direction where the rabbit was going so that it got scared and ran toward where he was, but this time, the rabbit ran in the other direction. Zhan-yu jumped toward the rabbit and started pursuing it. After a while, Zhan-yu realized something, and it shocked him. "Wait, what happened to me? How is it that I am going this fast? I was so focused on my hunger that I didn't even realize how light my body feels. It feels like if I jump now, I might just fly. At this rate… Oh no! I was too fast. I already left the rabbit behind me."

Zhan-yu stopped abruptly and looked around. "Where am I?" From his right, he heard something. ROAR… "Is there a lion here?" But it was too loud to be a lion. He looked around, and the leaves on the trees were not there anymore. "What was that? The vibrations from that roar made the leaves from all these trees fall."

Zhan-yu saw a big fruit hanging from a tree. It looked really savory, and he was hungry too… The tree with the fruit was exactly in the direction from where the roar came from. But Zhan-yu didn't care as he was really hungry.

He ran toward the tree to get the fruit before the thing with that roar came back. BAM! He hit something, like an invisible wall.

A message suddenly showed up.

[WEAKLINGS NOT WORTHY TO ENTER!]

"Ouch! What was that? What is up with this weird place?"