"This is a long story, so I'll keep it short. Back then, my father was far weaker than he is now, but he and my mother had me."
"When I was only one year old, an enemy of my father came looking for him. My father stayed behind to fight the enemy alone and told our clansmen to take my mother and me and flee first."
"But that enemy had helpers of his own, and they cut off my mother and the clansmen's escape."
"In that desperate moment, my mother paid with her life so the clansmen could break through the encirclement with me."
"My mother died. And somehow, I ended up in the Eastern Sea — landing on the Nine Provinces Continent as an orphan."
"As for my father, though he survived, when he saw my mother's corpse and the bodies of our clansmen, he was utterly devastated. Not only had my mother and our clansmen perished, but he couldn't find me either — so he concluded that we had all died," Zhang Tianyi said.
"The pain of losing an entire clan is naturally crushing. But you didn't die — you were merely lost. Being unable to find you doesn't mean you were dead. How could your father have been so certain you were dead? Why didn't he keep searching for you?" Chu Feng asked.
"You can't blame my father for that. He had placed a mark on me when I was young. As long as I was alive, he could find me no matter where I was. But at that time, he couldn't sense the mark anymore — and there was only one possible explanation: that I had died," Zhang Tianyi said.
"But you didn't die. You went to the Eastern Sea," Chu Feng said.
"That's right. In truth, I was still alive — I had simply ended up in the Eastern Sea. But because the distance was so vast, or perhaps because some kind of power was blocking the connection, my father couldn't sense the mark even though it was still on me. However, the moment I returned to the Sacred Land of Martial Arts, he would be able to feel it again."
"So when my Master and I arrived at the Sacred Land of Martial Arts, my father was shocked to discover that I was still alive. He found me immediately."
"He had been secretly protecting me all along, until the day that Wushang and I nearly died at the hands of that witch Leng Yue — that was when he finally intervened to save me and told me everything that had happened," Zhang Tianyi recounted.
"I never imagined Senior Brother Zhang had such a tragic past." Hearing this, Chu Feng's heart tightened. Though the circumstances were different, Zhang Tianyi's experience bore a certain resemblance to his own.
But while Zhang Tianyi had been reunited with his father, Chu Feng had yet to see his own birth father even once.
"The enemies who annihilated your clan — are they still alive?" Chu Feng suddenly asked. The murder of a mother, the extermination of a clan, and years of separation from one's father — all caused by those very enemies. Such a debt of vengeance could not go unpaid. If those enemies still lived, Zhang Tianyi wouldn't even need to ask — Chu Feng would help him settle the score.
"They're dead. My father killed them all — except for one person," Zhang Tianyi said.
"There's one more? Who?" Chu Feng asked.
"My father doesn't even know who that person truly is, but he was the mastermind behind the destruction of the Zhang family."
"Our clan had lived in seclusion for years. Ordinary people could never have found where we were. It was that person who guided my father's enemies to our location."
"But after that day, he vanished as if he had never existed. No matter how hard we searched, we couldn't find a trace of him."
"My father said that a man like that couldn't simply die — he must still be alive somewhere in the Sacred Land of Martial Arts."
"The only clue we have is that there was a symbol on his forehead that looked something like a serpent. Beyond that, we know nothing about him," Zhang Tianyi said.
"How despicable. If that man is still alive, he must not be spared," Chu Feng said.
"If I ever find him, I will show him no mercy." At the mention of this person, Zhang Tianyi's hatred surged like a tidal wave.
"Senior Brother Zhang, you mentioned that Wushang was also saved by your father. Is he here now?" Chu Feng asked.