The Rejected Disciple, Successor to The Demonic Path

The Inheritance That Chose Its Owner

Now, in a situation far more terrifying than any imperial examination, those boiled sweet potatoes saved Rong Tian again. After resting for a while, he ate them and felt a little warmth spread through his exhausted body, like a small hand pushing him forward from within.

Once his stomach was full, the pain gnawing at his body gradually eased. It did not disappear, but it retreated enough to give his mind room to work.

“I can still endure. I can dig through this sand. I hope my guess is not wrong,” Rong Tian thought. If the necklace was hidden here, then perhaps it was not the only thing left behind.

As a scholar who had studied literature, culture, and the arts, Rong Tian knew a little about the world of cultivation. His knowledge of the energy within the body was limited, but he understood one thing clearly: cultivation required a spirit pearl capable of gathering energy within the dantian.

His spirit pearl had been destroyed, and that should have meant he could no longer continue down the path of cultivation. A road he had barely begun to approach had been sealed by someone else’s hand.

Yet even beneath pain and doubt, that thought could not extinguish his will. Rong Tian remembered hearing stories about high-level cultivators who possessed secret methods capable of restoring a damaged spirit pearl.

“If they can do it, perhaps I can as well,” he thought. It was not complete confidence, but it was enough to make him thrust his hands into the sand again.

“I will not give up so easily.”

He continued digging with his bare hands. Every scoop of sand became a small answer to everything those men had done to him.

The sun rose in the eastern sky, casting reddish light over the desert and reaching the bottom of the abyss from above. Rong Tian had dug through the sand all night, his hands numb and his fingers covered in blood that dried, split open, and bled again.

Still, he did not stop. Every handful of sand was his final chance to return to the world above and take revenge on those who had ruined him.

At last, after digging for a long time, his fingers touched something hard two meters below the surface. The sound it made was different from shifting sand. It was denser. Older.

“A wooden chest? Fragrant wood?” Rong Tian thought, exhausted and confused. “Could I truly be this fortunate? Did I find the inheritance of the owner of that black jade pendant engraved with five bats?”

Despite the pain tearing through his body, he pulled the wooden chest to the surface with hands that barely wanted to move anymore. Beneath the growing morning light, Rong Tian stared at it.

It was about a meter long and carried a faint fragrance despite being covered in sand and thick dust. A mysterious and frightening aura seeped from its surface, making Rong Tian fall silent like someone standing before a door without knowing what lay behind it.

His trembling, bloodied fingers brushed over the chest, feeling the strange power hidden beneath its surface. Carefully, he prepared to open it, silently hoping that his expectations would not be wasted.

++++

As it turned out, Rong Tian did not need great strength or special skill to open the chest. A small panel on its right side felt different from the surrounding wood.

“I hope this works,” he murmured.

He carefully pressed the button on the panel. A click sounded, followed by the movement of a mechanism inside, signaling that the chest was ready to open.

When the lid lifted, a dense ancient aura rushed out along with the scent of something very old and damp. It was not the smell of decay. It was the scent of something that had kept itself hidden for a long time and had only now been permitted to emerge.

Rong Tian drew a deep breath, sensing how ancient the object was. He lifted the lid with careful movements, as though one wrong action might damage the precious items inside.

Dim light revealed a garment resting at the very top of the chest. The fabric was old, yet completely undamaged. It was unstained and unwrinkled, as though it had only recently been folded by patient hands.

Rong Tian lifted it carefully.

It was a black robe adorned with intricate golden patterns along each side. Every detail appeared carved rather than printed, too delicate to have been made by anything other than extremely patient hands.

The long, soft robe felt flexible in his grasp, as though inviting him to wear it immediately. Its weight was perfect, neither so light that it felt like ordinary cloth nor so heavy that it became a burden.

“This garment feels mysterious, but it is also magnificent,” Rong Tian thought, captivated by its beauty and elegance.

For a young man who had spent his entire life wearing cheap cotton clothes, touching fabric like this felt like touching a different world.

Without hesitation, he put it on, even though pain still lingered in his body from the injuries left after he had been cast into that cursed place. The robe settled perfectly over him, as though it had known his size for a long time.

After putting on the black garment, Rong Tian draped its long outer robe over his shoulders. A sharp, cold wind suddenly blew across the abyss.

The robe fluttered behind him differently from ordinary cloth. Its movements were more controlled, as though it responded to the will of its wearer.

Beneath the morning sunlight, the black robe moved with quiet elegance. Rong Tian felt something unfamiliar crawl through his mind, something that did not belong to him, yet did not feel like it belonged to another person either.

“Did everything in this chest come from the same owner? Whoever left it here could not have been ordinary,” Rong Tian thought, confused but deeply curious.

The question had no answer his logic could form, yet his body seemed to have an answer of its own.

At the same time, he noticed something astonishing.

When he looked at his abdominal wound, the injury was still visible, but the torn flesh left by Scarface’s palm strike had closed. What had been a gaping wound now looked almost completely healed, leaving only an irregular red mark.

“Incredible.”

Rong Tian fell silent and touched the wound slowly. He felt skin that had already sealed over a place that had been open only moments ago.

This was not ordinary healing that required days or weeks. It had happened in less time than could reasonably be called fast.

“Could these clothes and this robe be ancient artifacts? Perhaps the legacy of a martial grandmaster?” Rong Tian thought, awe and curiosity beginning to overpower his pain.

An artifact capable of healing its wearer’s wounds was something he had only encountered in the stories he once read in the vice minister’s library.

To be continued.