The Hedonist Sword God

Chapter 11: Jian Shen's past

Jian Shen wasn't always Jian Shen, because the name he was first given on his birth was Deng Shen, unfortunately, a lot happened between the time he was born and grew up.

At first, Deng Shen was considered as the King's apple of the eye.

This was because his aunt was an internal disciple who was on her way to becoming a core disciple at one of the greatest sects in their vicinity.

In fact, it was only due to this that the king even married Deng Shen's mother.

But with time many things changed, and Deng Shen's mother succumbed to an illness and passed away. And this was the start of the greatest change in Deng Shen's life.

Once his mother passed away, Deng Shen's aunt came back from her sect to meet and console him. Following which she went back to her sect and didn't take him with her, since she was afraid that he wouldn't be ready for the cold hard life inside a sect. And instead, he'd be safer inside the palace.

As the king found out that Deng Shen wasn't taken by his aunt, and it didn't seem like she loved him too much, he stopped caring about him too much as well.

Later on, when Deng Shen went through his talent testing, which was rigged by the first queen, and his talent was revealed as trash, the king completely gave up on him.

This was also when he took the royal surname away from him, forcing Deng Shen to use his mother's family name. Due to which his name had been changed to Jian Shen.

When Jian Shen's aunt heard about his talent, she felt very disappointed as well as think her decision to not take him with her was right.

Soon fewer people started caring about Jian Shen, and more people started bullying him to take everything away from him.

All those who behaved as his friends turned into enemies in the blink of an eye, and his own family looked at him like someone they wanted to kill.

Facing such conditions Jian Shen could only go through life while changing who he was and understanding how cruel life was.

And all of this was because his cultivation talent was shown as worse than a commoner.

This was when Jian Shen understood the importance of strength, and felt a craving to grow stronger regardless of what he had to do.

However, due to how bad his talent was he hadn't been given a quality cultivation technique like the other princes, and was given almost no resources to cultivate at all.

If not for his great talent, with how he was treated, it would've been a miracle if Jian Shen had ever entered the Body Tempering Realm, much less go as far as he did.

Since he couldn't do anything and had no one to support him, Jian Shen made a decision to just lay low. However, this didn't mean that the others would forget about him.

Because the previous crown prince was jealous of Jian Shen's handsomeness, and gave an order to kill him.

No one knows how Jian Shen had managed to survive the killers the crown prince sent, but the in less than a week his aunt came back and saw the completely bandaged Jian Shen. What followed next was the most humiliating experience of the Deng Kingdom's King.

After all, the king was forced to kill his most loved son who had great talent with his own hands in order to stop Jian Shen's aunt who was on a rampage killing everyone related to the royal family.

This even included all the major generals in the army!

Unable to just watch as the strongest pillars of his kingdom were being killed one by one, and a few of his beloved concubines were murdered as well, the king had no choice but to step up and apologize for what happened.

However Jian Shen's aunt didn't want an apology, and she wanted him to kill the crown prince.

With no other choice as well since he couldn't afford Jian Shen's aunt continuing what she was doing, nor go to a losing war with her sect, he could only grit his teeth till blood fell out of them as he killed his only son.

Since that day all of the remaining princes turned scared and no one dared to go too far with Jian Shen, but it didn't change the treatment he received from the king.

Clenching his fingers hard as he once again remembered his past, Jian Shen vowed one more time to never be in the same situation ever again. And he'd do whatever it takes to grow strong enough to live as he wanted.

Checking his cultivation to make sure he was still in the Early Stage of Qi Whirlpool Realm, Jian Shen started calculating how strong he needed to be if he wanted to leave the kingdom and live on his own.

Cultivation was what differentiated ordinary individuals from gods who could destroy mountains by snapping their fingers.

It is also cultivation which allows mortals like humans that have only a hundred years of lifespan to live many times longer.

Those in the Mortal Realm were all capable of cultivating their Lower Dantian with Qi.

But how far they could cultivate depended completely on their talent, and the resources they had.

Before one officially started cultivating, there were two stages that all of them needed to go through. They were the Profound Breathing Realm, and Pathway Opening Realm.

The Profound Breathing Realm was when the cultivator sensed the Qi around them, and pulled it inside them to open the acupoints on their body.

Each living creature had exactly 54 acupoints, and depending on how many acupoints one opened, the faster they were able to cultivate.

Originally Jian Shen was only able to open 22 acupoints, but after what happened, all of his 54 acupoints had been completely opened!

The next realm, Pathway Opening Realm was using Qi to open as many of the Minor Meridians inside them as possible, which were connected to the Dantian.

Over the years those in the Mortal Realm found out that they each had 12 Minor Meridians inside them, and they were connected to twelve of their fifty-four acupoints.

If opening the acupoints allowed one to cultivate faster by increasing the amount of Qi they could absorb, then opening the pathways inside would allow one to make Qi travel faster throughout their body.

For example, consider a small empty sphere which had a very thick layer surrounded by a big sphere around it. Now imagine both of them being submerged inside water.

What would happen if you created a hole in the bigger sphere? Water would start flowing inside, right?

So what would happen after a total of fifty-four holes were made on it? More water would flow inside the bigger sphere filling it very fastly.

But once you bring the whole thing out of the water, everything inside the bigger sphere would slowly but surely leak out of it.

Now think that connecting the bigger and smaller sphere are multiple small tunnel like structures through the thick layer. And unlike the holes, the tunnels can control when the water flows inside them, and when it flows out.

So if there are many of these tunnels, the smaller sphere would be obviously filled faster. And the same logic applied to a human.

Having more acupoints, and Meridians opened would allow one to cultivate faster.

Once a person finished opening their acupoints, and minor Meridians, it was time to officially start cultivating.