Family Cultivation: I Become a Mirror-Chapter 163 - 154: The Little Goose

Li Yuanyu huddled at the foot of the bed, sleeping in a daze, when he heard loud shouts near his ears. Some were weeping, others yelling, which startled him awake. All he could see were mists under the bed and in front of it, shrouding everything in a blurry fog.

"Mother!"

Li Yuanyu turned and looked beside him, but the Fisher Girl Jiang had disappeared without a trace. He looked around and found the sky ominously dark. With no choice, he crawled to the window, where an unusually bright moon emerged before him.

"How strange." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

He took a few steps forward and stepped out of the room, only to find nothing under his feet. He fell through the empty air.

"Ah!"

Just as his collar tightened, Li Yuanyu flailed as he was hoisted up. Looking up, he found himself against a rising city wall, squarely in a basket and already outside the county, smiling at the middle-aged man he had seen earlier.

The middle-aged man had a deathly pale complexion, with lips red as blood and eyes so black they were frightening, staring intently at him.

"It seems my skills haven't declined too much," he said. "Stealing might not be my thing, but snatching a child is still within my capabilities!"

"You!"

The man pulled a copper coin from Li Yuanyu's embrace and carefully tucked it into his own, saying in a serious tone:

"Having taken my life-saving coin, you must come with me."

Li Yuanyu, shocked, said through gritted teeth in his childish voice:

"What do you want from me... Are you an Immortal?!"

"No."

Upon hearing this, the man's face contorted with displeasure and resentment:

"The so-called Immortals killed your mother! And still you speak of Immortals!"

Li Yuanyu was struck as if by thunder, staring wide-eyed:

"What... what are you talking about!"

The man chuckled lowly, took a step forward, and with a sweep over the gate, patterns spread out like water, revealing the courtyard scene. Li Yuanyu only glanced once at the gruesomely dismembered and bloody sight before almost fainting, gasping:

"Ah!"

Li Yuanyu's face turned deathly pale, crying out, but the man paid him no mind, chuckling as he said:

"My name is Jiang Boqing, and from now on, you shall train in sorcery with me! What is your name?"

Li Yuanyu obviously didn't believe him, and was unwilling to go with him, bursting into tears. Jiang Boqing, seeing Li Yuanyu's unceasing cries and looking pleased with himself, picked him up and said with a smile:

"Then you shall take my surname and be called Jiang Yan!"

————

Li Xuanfeng rode the wind along the ancient Lidao, only to see a five-colored brilliance moving atop Guanyun Peak, as if a formation was activated. His heart skipped a beat as he thought to himself:

"Could it be someone dares to disturb the Xiao Family? What's going on?"

With doubts crowding his mind, Li Xuanfeng did not stop. Below him, the streets by the city gates were empty, with carts toppled over, clothes scattered about, and various foods strewn about, with horses and cattle left to graze without restraint.

The scene threw him off his stride. With a stern face, he flew over Lixia County's wall, catching sight of hundreds of bloody handprints smudged all over it. It looked as though someone had tried to climb over the wall with bloodied feet, only to fall repeatedly, breaking open their belly, splattering the ground below with excrement mixed with blood.

The small courtyard, tucked away in an alley, wasn't hard to find. The vast city was devoid of any living soul. Landing in front of the yard, Li Xuanfeng saw a poorly embroidered shaky little goose hanging at the door, stained with a bit of blood and swaying in the wind as if it was trying to take flight.

"Squeak..."

The gate was ajar; with a gentle push from Li Xuanfeng, it swung open. He saw on the steps a fair and delicate little foot cut cleanly off a punch's distance from the ankle as if made of jade, so smoothly severed.

But he recognized it at a glance—those were the little feet he had caught and caressed countless times under the covers.

The very feet that made Fisher Girl Jiang blush and glare at him when he tickled them, back when he was a young man experiencing the pleasures of love for the first time, holding her feet, he had asked her:

"How can there be something so beautiful."

Jiang Yuanyu's lovely, round cheeks were adorned with her almond eyes that stared at him, then shyly looked away.

Li Xuanfeng felt as if he had been slapped across the face. His eyes darted away, jumping back as if burnt by the small foot he had seen, only to spot two blood-drenched intestines hanging from the wall. He finally collapsed to the ground with a thud, sorrowfully whining for a while, like a down-and-out hound, as he picked up the foot and cried out,

"You!"

Tears streamed down uncontrollably as Li Xuanfeng stepped forward to pick up the delicate jade arms again, but the small foot dropped to the ground once more. He hastily picked it up and continued walking.

He saw her round, smooth jade buttocks, her pitch-black long hair, her detached breasts rolling on the ground, and eventually half of her face, adorned with Jiang Yuanyu's adorable almond eyes—eyes that had once been filled with hope and had gazed straight at him countless times but were now extinguished and lifeless, like those of a dead fish.

All the limbs he was holding fell to the ground as Li Xuanfeng knelt, feeling the world around him sway faintly. Visions of his father, Li Xiangping, the old man Xu San, and countless other figures danced before him, near and far.

Li Xuanfeng found the other half of her face in the corner, shaking as he pieced her back together, pouring her shattered teeth back into her mouth. Closing her eyes with an ashen face, he said softly,

"Little woman... wait for me."

Blood seeped from his lips. Li Xuanfeng, who had never spoken with such tenderness, kissed her gently and murmured,

"This is my fault, little woman... I am a fool, but I still have my life, and I will make sure to send that person to join you... Wait for it, little woman..."

"No matter who it is, be it the Immortal Sect's noble son or the Demonic Path's villain... I will make them die for you to witness, just wait! You just wait!"

He wobbled to his feet, his eyes ablaze with a fearsome fire that pained the heart, as if having drunk two urns of burning liquor from head to toe, he spoke gently to the two halves of the woman's head on the ground,

"I'm not burying you because I'm afraid... afraid that he'll escape. I'll go and ask a few questions, then come back for you."

With that, he turned, plucked the askew little wild goose from the wall, and cradled it with utmost care in his palm, soared on the wind, flying over the mountains of corpses and seas of blood below, heading toward Guanyun Peak.

————

Xiao Ruyu stood numbly on the mountain peak, his heart hollow and anguished when he heard a chilling voice.

"Li Xuanfeng has come to visit... I kindly request the senior to open the Mountain Gate."

Before Xiao Yongling could speak, Xiao Ruyu jumped in shock, blurting out,

"Damn! There are still members of the Li family in the county..."

Seeing Xiao Yongling's stern face and silence, Xiao Ruyu's mind raced, thinking to himself,

"Li Xuanfeng must be burning with rage. We cannot let him meet my clan uncle. If he speaks nonsense and offends, it could cause a rift between the two families."

So, he took it upon himself to say gravely,

"Clan uncle! Leave it to me..."

Xiao Yongling stroked his chin and nodded slightly, clearly deep in thought. Xiao Ruyu then rose on the wind to greet him, looking mournful as he sadly said,

"Brother Xuanfeng!"

Li Xuanfeng, however, appeared calm, his face expressionless as he replied softly,

"What's happening down there?"

"Tang Jin Sect has invaded... they have slaughtered our Li Xia County. My family did not dare resist."

"I see."

Li Xuanfeng raised an eyebrow, startling Xiao Ruyu, who lost himself for a moment. The eyes that met his no longer had their former debauchery, but were filled with a strange, chilling ferocity.

If Chen Donghe were here, he would be stunned. That look had appeared thousands of times on Li Xiangping's face and was now on Li Xuanfeng's—a pair of sinister gray-black eyes that seemed forcibly transposed onto his face, terrifying enough to make one panic.

"Which way did they go?"

"East..."

Xiao Ruyu exclaimed, watching as Li Xuanfeng took off with the wind toward the east, and called out in a hurry,

"Brother Xuanfeng! Don't be reckless!"

Clenching his teeth, Xiao Ruyu stood still for a moment before taking off, chasing after Li Xuanfeng toward the east.