I am the Main Character? No thanks!

‘FUUUUUKKKKK!’

‘I told you it was going to hurt.’

‘YOU NEVER SAID IT WOULD HURT SO MUCH!!’

‘What did you expect was going to happen when you mess with your spirit roots? It was the same for me when I started cultivating the Absolute Void Technique. Forcefully changing the nature of your spirit roots is an extremely unnatural process that hurts more than having your body destroyed. I should know since I experienced both of those incidents.’

‘NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF! OUCH!!’

I clenched my teeth, resisted the urge to stop circulating my Qi, and held on, all hoping for survival.

It was just two days ago that we received the news about the destruction of the Heavenly Sword Sect at the hands of an unknown party under the suspicion of cultivating demonic techniques. An event that was not supposed to happen since the only demonic cultivator in the sect, the old demon in my bead, was never there to begin with.

I always knew that my actions would have consequences on the timeline. My adoption of Yan Ling as my Disciple/Daughter had already seen to that. However, I never realized that there would be such severe consequences.

In the original timeline, the Heavenly Sword Sect never had any demonic cultivators aside from my original self. During this time, the sect was still in the phase of testing out the secret Master-grade pills provided to them by the Alchemy guild through sect-wide competitions, providing the winner and a select few elders with the pills which would exponentially increase their cultivation speed.

While these pills did have drawbacks, there was nothing in the old demon’s memories to mark them as anything demonic in nature.

For the next two years, this process would continue, giving rise to numerous Nascent Soul realm experts in the sect and making it the strongest sect in the region.

Then, calamity would strike in the form of a Demonic Sect invasion that would lead to the death of many elders and the Patriarch. While there would be very few casualties in the ranks of the disciples, the entire batch of core disciples would be wiped out. It was the reason why I had Lin Mei bring her companions back to the village. I did not want to risk their lives over such an uncertain incident.

Besides, they had already accomplished what they had set out to do by joining the sect. To broaden their horizons and learn what life was like outside the village, so there was no major loss in having them get out of that sect.

The attack of the Demonic Sect would leave the Heavenly Sword Sect in shambles, leading to their territory, resources, and disciples being taken away by the Royal family’s faction.

What no one but we knew was that the trigger for the Demonic Sect invasion was none other than my original self. He did it as revenge after they publicly humiliated him by disqualifying him in the final round of the tournament despite his clear and fair win, all in the name of protecting the reputation of Xiao Kai and denying the old demon from getting access to the Master-grade pill.

It was this incident that clearly marked the beginning of the old demon’s journey into the darkness and his ascent as the Heavenly Demon, the absolute ruler of the continent that brought terror and despair to everyone for over a millennia.

However, the sudden and inexplicable destruction of the Heavenly Sword Sect, down to the last disciple, has clearly thrown all that out of the window, leaving me with no idea or direction to anticipate anything else about the coming future.

It was this uncertainty that was starting to pose a threat to my peaceful life that spurred me to start taking my cultivation seriously.

But, it is an undeniable fact that I cannot advance past the Core Formation realm with crippled spirit roots.

That was why, I finally decided to see if I could use my usual method of cultivation to try and repair my spirit roots.

The results were completely disastrous much to my dismay.

Turns out, the bead is incapable of regenerating and repairing any injury or disease I had from before it awakened. This meant that it was incapable of repairing my spirit roots.

In the end, all I achieved was breaking my spirit roots even further than they already were.

That was when I decided to take an alternate approach and use my prowess in the arts of inscription combined with my pure Qi to grow a new set of spirit roots from the ground up. A fairly easy process thanks to the unrivaled knowledge of spirit roots I got from the old demon’s memories.

What is not easy, is getting rid of the existing spirit roots within me.

This was the reason for my current agony.

Truly, it is an agony that I have no words to describe, way beyond anything I ever experienced in both my lives, even more painful than when Xiao Kai destroyed my spirit roots all those years ago.

The only way I kept enduring this pain was by imagining what would happen to everything and everyone I held dear should I not be strong enough to protect them. What would happen should those bastards in the west find Yan Ling in this timeline just like they did in the original one, even though the chances of that happening are next to impossible now that I took her away from the city before their forces kidnapped the children of the slums, including Yan Ling, for their project.

I imagined what would happen to all of my friends, Old Feng, Old Li, Chief Chen, Little Hui and her grandparents, the Han family, and everyone else in the village should the Demonic Sects decide to use them as suitable resources for their cultivation.

I imagined the hellscape that this place would become should any of the thousands of worst-case scenarios come to pass in case I did not have enough strength to protect them.

It was these images alone that kept me going.

Closing my eyes, I concentrated on my spirit roots that were systematically being burned away by my Pure Qi, like a laser burning away the rust from an old coin.

For my loved ones, for the home I made for myself in this place, I will do anything.

And that is a promise I will never break.

Yan Ling watched with anguish as her master suffered in silence through his cultivation.

While his expressions clearly showed that he was in pain, Yan Ling knew better than anyone what it meant for her master to show such an expression compared to what he usually does.

She always thought that her master was silly for keeping his true feelings hidden when he was feeling depressed or angry or when he was in pain. Especially since she never hid her own emotions and always expressed them openly to her master. Of course, when it came to strangers, it was a completely different story.

She always knew that she was different.

Ever since she first gained consciousness, she was capable of discerning the good and evil within the people around her. She was always capable of feeling the emotions of those around her.

It was both a blessing and a curse since this ability forced her to mature much quicker than her peers while it was also this ability that allowed her to stay alive and safe during the unfortunate period of her life.

That was why, from the very moment she met her master, she knew that he was a strong person.

He had such darkness within him that there were no words that she knew that could describe it. And yet, it was not this darkness that controlled him like the countless people that she had seen in those slums, but a blinding light or positivity that pushed this darkness to the pits of his very being.

At first, she thought that it was his power that allowed him to have such positivity. After all, why would anyone that was strong allow dark emotions to control their thoughts?

However, it was only after she spent a long time with him that she realized that it was not his cultivation that gave him his strength, but his very nature. It was this nature that made her choose to go with him when he gave her that offer.

In her mind, for such a person to show a pained expression, the pain he was going through must have been beyond anything that she could imagine.

She wanted to cry, to scream at her master to stop and not bear that pain anymore. She hated seeing the man who saved her from darkness suffer like this.

Most importantly, she did not want her master to leave her like her parents. A fear that was becoming increasingly dominant in her mind as time passed due to some inexplicable reason.

She did not want to lose the one person who extended his hand to her when she had nowhere to go, no place to call home, no one to call her family, no one to call her friend.

No one to call a father.

And then, in that dept of despair and darkness, in that place filled with scum of the empire and those that were always looking for unfortunate people like her to take advantage of, he appeared and gave her a home again. A home that she thought was lost due to the arrogance of a single person all those months ago.

He became her master in the path of cultivation, providing her with guidance to become stronger and hopefully, one day, exact vengeance on that man from her past.

He became her guardian, the tree that protected her from the rain, the rock that supported her in the turbulent river that was her life.

He became her cook, providing her with food that she had not tasted in months and dishes she had never even heard of.

He became her trainer in the ways of hunting, teaching her to sustain herself in the wilds. Teaching her to respect nature, and give back to the world when she could as thanks for providing her with sustenance.

He taught her morality, to distinguish between good and evil as well as the pitfalls that one usually falls in with a rigid moral compass. To know the difference between subjective and objective perspectives.

He taught her to never let the darkness of the world take away her inner light, her positivity.

He became her Father, even if she had not gathered enough courage to call him that yet.

To watch such an important person in her life suffer like this was something that the little girl was simply incapable of handling.

Intellectually, she knew that cultivation was sometimes painful for the practitioner. Emotionally, however, she could not bear to see him in pain like this.

She did not know what motivated her master to do something like this. All she knew was that she was weak. So weak that her master would not tell her anything and share his burdens with her.

If that was the case, then the path forward was clear. She needed to become stronger.

With determination in her eyes, she headed back into the cabin that they called home and sat down cross-legged, just like her master taught her.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on circulating her Qi according to the method her master taught her while visualizing her understanding of the sun, another concept her master taught her.

First, she started asking the questions to herself and used the answers and understanding that she gained after listening to her master.

What is the Sun?

The Sun is the source of all life in this world. It is light, heat, energy, and gravity.

How does the Sun work?

The Sun works by using its immense size to produce a strong gravitational field. A gravitational field so strong that compresses the very building blocks of matter, causing them to fuse together forcefully. It is this process that produces the light and heat within the sun.

How do you hope to tame such a force of nature?

She opened her eyes as her ruby red eyes flashed gold.

If it meant sharing whatever burden her master had and making sure he could continue living this carefree life, she would bend reality itself to her will, much less something like the Sun, but one among the countless others across the universe according to her master.

Her Qi continued circulating faster and faster until all of it suddenly condensed behind her back, giving birth to a powerful burst of light and heat.

Once the light show subsided, a massive golden wheel manifested, floating behind her back. At one of the nine gaps between the wheel, an orb of pure heat, light, and gravity manifested, symbolizing that she had taken the initial steps in advancing the Great Sun Wheel technique.

What she failed to notice was Little Xing silently watching her actions while her body was covered in an eerie black fog, the same fog that was protectively curled around Yan Ling until just a few seconds ago and quickly retreated into her body when she noticed Yan Ling awakening from her cultivation.

Unlike what she believed, Yan Ling was not alone in her worry for her master, neither was she the only one keeping secrets from the only man in the household.

After all, where there is light, there must also exist darkness.