Suicide Seal

Wu Bao looked in a few hospitals, and even raided the hospital where he was born, taking the seals of the nurses who were present for his birth.

Lie-detection confirmed that they planned to extort him if he ever unlocked his base seal. They had collected heaps of dirt on his mother, not to mention medical bills that had never decreased and lawyers lined up for any eventuality. What they hadn't predicted was that Wu Bao would keep his awakening secret and become so powerful.

He picked up a few seals like x-ray vision and microscopic vision, and also some healing seals.

Then Wu Bao went back home.

He had a grim look on his face as he looked up at his apartment.

He examined it again with his life detection seal, but once again, he didn't sense anyone.

He choked back a sob.

There were only two reasons why that seal would fail.

With heavy footsteps, he marched up the stairs, turned the knob and pushed the door open, standing there afterwards as he worked in vain to compose himself.

A voice in his head told him not to go inside, that he wouldn't like what he found.

It was more dreadful because he had stopped there earlier that day, before he had slapped everyone's faces at school, prior to destroying the police department, and just after returning from the library.

He didn't dare to use his new vision seals. He was too terrified.

His feet dragged toward his mother's bedroom door and planted themselves.

With a push, he finally opened it.

The room was empty.

Wu Bao backtracked to the kitchen and hovered over the sink. His stomach was churning, but he managed to keep everything down.

He went to his bedroom next.

As he stood outside, he recalled the multitude of ways a suicide seal was designed.

Electrifying the heart. Popping a vessel in the brain. Physically disconnecting something vital.

For his mother, it was simple oxygen suffocation. It would be painless, as if she was just getting sleepy. It must've been incredibly tempting all those years.

He clenched his fist.

How despicable would one have to be to place a suicide seal on a newborn child? What had they intended for her life?

Wu Bao grit his teeth and opened his bedroom door.

After looking, he collapsed to his knees and let the tears flow.

His mother wasn't there.

That raises the next question. Where was she?

***

[Tang Family residence]

A mansion lay on the side of a luscious mountain. Its red roof shingles caught the sunlight. Even among the rich households, it was a beacon of luxury.

A formidable inanimate seal projected a barrier around the place, shifting panels of transparent energy allowed the top-tier bodyguards to intelligently manage the perimeter.

Inside a jaw-droppingly beautiful pavilion, Tang Jia Lu groveled at the feet of an old man, whose appearance and aura exuded both power and ancientness.

"T-this humble one greets the patriarch of our Tang family. For an offshoot branch, it is an honor to visit the main house and be acknowledged by the esteemed elders."

One of those esteemed elders spoke. "For an offshoot and a weakling, you are too needy. What could you possibly want this time?"

"Esteemed elder, I still seek justice for the injuries dealt against me, Tang Jia Lu, of the most honorable Tang family."

"Don't be so full of yourself, flaunting our family name in our own faces! Being the main branch, we have matters to attend to which are far more important than this farce you have brought-"

"Silence."

Everyone in the room went quiet.

The patriarch frowned. "A member of my family has been humiliated in public and reduced to the state of a cripple. Does no one see the problem?"

An elder quickly responded. "Tang Jia Lu underwent his awakening and was provided one of our best lightning-type seals. Although he has fewer seals, he is no longer a cripple and should even be able to seek the justice he deserves by himself."

"Once again, you have missed the point of my question." The patriarch's voice rumbled like thunder. "How did he become a cripple in the first place?"

"W-why, sir. His seal must've been removed by someone with a seal breaker."

"Have you done any investigation into this person?"

"My apologies. I have not."

"They say he is a cripple from birth, a talentless trash with no hope for wielding spiritual energy. His name is Wu Bao. Is that right, boy?"

Tang Jia Lu nodded. "That's right sir!"

"Then explain how he used a lightning net seal that looked exactly like yours against the headmaster of your school!"

Tang Jia Lu was speechless.

The trash fought the headmaster with a lightning seal? How predictable of trash. Everyone knew the headmaster was a user of lightning and thus was immune to lightning himself.

"Perhaps he got his own seal after defeating me." He said.

"A Tang Family seal? Where would he get it from?" The patriarch pressed.

No one could answer.

A traitor was the most likely cause. They looked around suspiciously at each other.

If a traitor was giving Tang family seals to other people, selling them outside the family, that could cause an issue in terms of their relative power.

"Now you see. This was the same concern that came to my mind, but it was soon disproven."

The patriarch gestured to the door. A woman was dragged through the door and thrown down in the middle of the room.

"This woman is called Wu Jie. Unfortunately we couldn't find the one with our seal, Wu Bao, so we captured the next best person to interrogate," an elder in charge of internal affairs explained. "This is his mother."

"What good is capturing the mother?" Another elder spoke up. "Extortion? We have plenty of elites in our family. Just crush the bug and find the traitor!"

"It's not that simple, and there isn't a traitor. We questioned the headmaster, who had been defeated and was missing his seals. We dug up the boy's birth records from that shady hospital he was born in, and just now, we received a report that Wu Bao is systematically destroying parts of the city."

The elders began whispering in confused voices.

The headmaster of a school was defeated? The city is being destroyed? The cripple named Wu Bao is actually strong?

The patriarch scowled at the woman, Wu Jie. "What is the nature of Wu Bao's base seal, which you have kept hidden?"

Wu Jie mumbled hysterically. It was loud enough for the numerous experts in the room to hear.

"He is not my Wu Bao anymore. He is not. He is not. He is not. He is far too strong. That monster defeated those powerful experts right in front of me and took their seals. Society teaches the strong to always bully the weak, so that is what he is doing now. Ah!"

Wu Jie started screaming and had to be dragged away.

"What's wrong with her?" Someone asked sarcastically.

"She has a mental condition that makes her very emotional. As for the seal of Wu Bao…"

The elders proceeded to talk about the new discovery. They were in an uproar. Even the patriarch had a frown on his face, an abnormal occurrence.

"A seal that can take other seals?"

"What are its limitations? Nothing like this has been discovered yet!"

"How do we get him to join the family?"

"Join the family? Are you crazy?! With his upbringing, he has no sense of honor or nobility. The Min Family's heir was crippled in front of witnesses that say he showed no mercy. With a seal and a garbage personality like that, we must kill him before he gets too strong!"

The other elders started thinking about it, and nodded.

"I agree with you." The patriarch's voice boomed. "Wu Bao has proven himself to be a savage by attacking the Min Family, who are refined and humble. It is unwise to seek a power we cannot control… In order to eliminate this criminal threat to our society, we must dispatch all our forces."

The elders nodded and began mobilizing.

Meanwhile the patriarch scratched his chin. 'We can't control him? Hmm…'

***

Wu Bao was ambushed by another wave of elite assassins. Using the multitude of seals he had collected from people and artifacts alike, he fueled them with his energy gathering seals and fought.

His appearance was like a colorful rainbow from all the defensive seals he activated at once. A constant array of attacks flowed outward from his person.

The assassins were unsurprisingly overwhelmed.

Wu Bao literally teleported next to one of them and touched their forehead to knock them out, but the assassin's suicide seal activated.

'They've learned,' Wu Bao clenched his fist.

Even though he stopped raiding places and went back into hiding to lay low while he searched for his mother, fights started coming to him. Plus, these assassins seemed to be aware of his seal-stealing power.

This was why he wanted to keep his powers a secret!

He was regretful, but it was too late to lament now. He needed to push forward.

A few days passed like this.

At first, he was assaulted by low-level assassins that self-destructed almost immediately after engagement. They were using every method in their imagination to keep Wu Bao from collecting their seals... and it was working. He simply can't take seals from a dead person. When the enemy figured that out, the assassins sent much stronger people, and self-destructed later.

Wu Bao truly didn't want to kill any of his enemies, even if they were attacking him with killing intent, so he started using Lan Zhou's seal to knock them out before they could do anything.

It worked for a while, and Wu Bao collected many useful seals. He broke the unhealthy seals using his Iridescent seal and interrogated the crippled assassins for their origins. With that, he discovered the Tang Family were the ones responsible, and possibly had his mother too.

Shortly after, the assassins updated the trigger conditions of their suicide seals to activate upon fainting. He couldn't get any more seals… At least, not from these assassins.

The Min Family and the government both sent assassins as well, yet they were unaware of his dragon seal, so he got many useful seals from them.

The Tang Family's efforts were futile. They wanted to stop Wu Bao from collecting their seals and finding their origins. They failed at both. Their people killed themselves for no reason.

'Tang Family!' Wu Bao roared inwardly.

He disappeared in an iridescent ball of light.