Competition 2 (IV): Heart Like The Wind

[The ability to adapt to any situation is not always something you're born with. Rather it's a skill, or a sense of mind and being, a character that you nurture and develop through out the course of your life. And it should be easy, humans are the most adaptive creatures in all of existence.

Our ability to take the good with the bad, the surprises and the expectations, and turn them into something that's balanced and works for us, is unprecedented and unmatched. However, what would you do, if you find yourself in a situation that rather adapts to you, and make sure to always be something of an unbeatable challenge.

It would be a battle of attrition as both sides push and pull simultaneously. What happens when an immovable object meet an unstoppable force. Well the answer to that is quite simple...….they destroy each other.]

Alex looked at his uncle, and his uncle looked right back at him. This was an environment he had gotten used to, moments before they went out shopping for his weapons and Anya's, however now his hotel room felt stuffy, and crowded, and very uncomfortable. Ben had dragged Anya away, insisting that he had to get started on her training ahead of schedule, and that Alex would catch up later.

It was obvious he was just looking for an excuse to leave Alex with his stranger. They had a few similarities, the same sword shaped eyebrows, the silky long black hair that was so unruly it looked like it has never been combed, the same broad shoulders and the same fierce but inquisitive look on both their faces.

But there was one thing Alex had to consider, and that was the fact that his uncle was a hundred times more handsome than he was. The dude looks like he was sculpted by the Gods, if he's not a God himself.

"My name is Zhang Wuyang, elder brother to you mother, and uncle to your sister. Which makes me your long lost uncle. Won't you give me a hug?"

"No!"

"Well could I at least have a seat?"

"No!"

Alex was not really, willing to be more accommodative of his uncle, this was one of those rare moments when Alex's childishness was prevalent over his mature mind.

But Wuyang was incredibly accommodative of Alex though, this boy in front of him was his long lost nephew, and he would be lying if he said he did not like the fire he saw within his eyes. Zhang Wuyang sat down on the sofa opposite Alex anyway, making sure to keep eye contact with his nephew the whole time.

"I know you might find this hard to believe but, your mother, my father and your elder sister miss you a lot. They want you to come home." Zhang Wuyang said to Alex.

"If that woman missed me so much, then why didn't she call, or even send a letter, God forbid for her to think of actually coming back. You know it's the twenty first century, and we have this really cool devices called smart phones. You can use them to communicate, and it's everywhere, even a back water village like mine has people who use it. A simple hello would have been nice. But it took all of you fourteen years to give a damn!."

Alex replied, surprisingly keeping a cool head during his rant.

Alex understood that the person in front of him was only a messenger, there was no need to loose control in front of him, and besides doing so won't change anything. It would just make him seem all the more childish.

"Your mother is a cultivator who has lived for over a hundred and fifty years, according to cultivation standards, she's actually really young, and she would still be living for ten thousand more years, if not till eternity if she keeps on improving. Fourteen years would only seem like fourteen days to her, and I know it hurts for you to hear this.

But there are responsibilities that falls to your mother and I because of who our parents are, and because of who we're affiliated with. Such responsibilities would never have given her the time to come find you."

Was this supposed to be a way to comfort him or something. Alex was shocked, he didn't know whether to appreciate his uncle for his honesty, or curse the bastard for how blunt his words and what they insinuated meant.

And that was the fact that his mother was much to busy for the whole of fourteen years to come look for her child, she missed his entire childhood because she was Wudang royalty. The more he heard about her, the more he didn't want to have anything to do with her. But he knew that cultivators who have an incredibly long life to live, saw the world very differently than ordinary people. And until just a few weeks ago, Alex was one of those ordinary people, and right now he was scared.

Hearing about how cold his mother seemed to be, Alex was afraid that if he continued on this path that he has now chosen, he would end up like her. It was a scary thought, but Alex knew that it was quite impossible to turn back now, not after he's had a taste of this world. Zhang Wuyang continued speaking.

" Besides this outcome would not have been the case if your father had chosen to just come back to Wudang with her, but he's pride didn't let him, and he chose to not let you go. It's a tradition in this barbaric land that a child only bears his father's name, only answers to his father's house, and only lives on his father's decisions. Your father kept you from the destiny that should have been yours in the first place." Zhang Wuyang said as he slapped the top of the table in anger.

With the force behind that strike, Alex was surprised the table was still in one piece. It showed how much control Zhang Wuyang had over his strength. Alex looked up at him and asked him

"And What destiny is that?" his voice was unwavering, and if you were perceptive enough, there was and steel like edge in his voice, saturated by the anger and hurt he currently felt.

"As the young master of the Zhang family of the Wudang Sect. You would have lived a favored life, and had all of the resources you required. Your cultivation realm and overall strength, should have been many times higher than this. And that's because even though your father was asked many times by my sister, he refused to stay, and he kept you with him.

He was not strong enough to be worthy of even being my sister's servant, yet we accepted him, because your mother had affections for him. You were born from those affections, and that was enough for him to live his life in luxury and comfort for the rest of his life. But he left for a very stupid reason as heartbreak and pride. In this world, there's no use for love when you don't have the strength to claim and keep it for yourself.

Someone stronger than your father came, and laid claim to your mother.

They were a pair made in heaven, and they had been engaged to each other from the moment they were born. But your mother's rather frivolous ways saw the birth of you and your elder sister, for entirely different men than her brethrothed. Either way, you dad should have stayed, him leaving and him staying wouldn't have made any difference as he would not have had the strength to take the woman he loves back. The only person that suffered for it, was you."

So that was why. The whole world seemed a lot clearer now to Alex, he lived in an age where things like civic rights, and good and evil were talked about a lot. Of course cultivators were exempted from a lot of those rules, as far as they and this world was concerned...…..might made right.

Only your strength will get you what you want in this world. Alex knew his father would never have stayed, only a shameless and pride less man would have stayed to experience such emotional torture. Alex could not begin to imagine how it would feel if someone else came to claim the woman you loved, and just after your son was born too.

At that time his father was not strong enough to fight back, and the woman he loved who had that strength, did not fight back at all. She left with the guy who had the bigger fist, talent and pedigree. It might seem Shallow when you looked at it from a different angle, but this was how this world works. Alex finally understood it.

He now understood why his father had prevented him from cultivating for the whole of his life until recently, he wanted Alex to feel and understand what it meant to be weak, to have no power or strength to fight back when you wanted to. And unlike most people, Alex was born and destined to be one of the strong, it could be said that it was fated that he would one day stand at the pinnacle of this world and look down on everybody else due to his immense strength.

And it was because of this very reason his upbringing was different, and rather normal. Before Alex would have been swallowed by the vainness of the cultivation world, he had been taught of the goodness and humility of the real world, it was not the world that mattered on Qi Earth, but it was the world that was as close to paradise and heaven as anything else.

And it was also because of what he had experienced, that Ben loved and treated Anya like she was his own child. Anya was different, and even though she was still young and considered naïve, she was someone who was also destined to be strong, she was straightforward and devoted. She chose to stick with her friend through all of their trials in the village, not even when she would have received great benefits for turning her back on Alex. She was the complete opposite of his mother.

But with everything he had learnt today, Alex knew that Anya might not have the chance to be true to herself when the philosophy of the cultivation world came calling.

Unless she was truly strong, she would not be able to stop herself from changing, and the same thing could be said about Alex, if they were not strong enough to safeguard their own beliefs, they would be forced to follow others. So in other to truly have anything, or keep anything in this world, Alex had to be strong, stronger than everyone else.

It was the only way he could keep Anya safe, and the only way to get payback for his father's broken heart. It might sound stupid, but Alex was going to make sure any body who was stupid enough to lay a finger on the people he loved, would live a life of agony and despair until they beg for death itself.

His heart was like the wind, passive, gentle, and soothing, but just like the wind, he was also raging, destructive, and angry. He was going to send a storm, a typhoon and a hurricane crashing through the cultivation world, and no one was going to stand in his way.