Legacy of Hatred-Chapter 153: Messes

The deal with the Ancestral Snake kept resounding in Liam’s mind. He recalled what he had promised to make the auditory hallucination inside the dream-like experience stop, and his hatred compelled him to abide by it.

Killing a mortal wasn’t enough. That butcher didn’t even recall Krosstoen village, let alone what he had done there. Ten years was a long time after all, and what happened to Liam probably wasn’t an irregularity.

But the butcher had a family. Liam had even heard a child cry, and his hatred boiled at that awareness. He was alone, cursed to seek revenge, while that man’s offspring was still alive.

It was simply unfair. A single life couldn’t compensate for ten years of suffering. The Bloodline Screening had taken three family members from Liam, so adding the butcher’s probable wife and child to the equation would be just about getting even.

However, Liam didn’t move. He kept staring at the distant houses on the horizon, but his feet remained planted on the grass.

Before inheriting the Alchemy Elder’s spark of desire, Liam might have fallen prey to that boiling hatred. Yet, he wasn’t a lost kid anymore. He knew how he wanted to live his life, and that foul urge wasn’t it.

So, Liam’s hatred flooded him, but switched targets, reclaiming uncompromising control, bringing his attention to the insidious, powerful creature inside his very bloodline.

’Snake, I thank you for this,’ Liam thought, his gratitude genuine.

It wasn’t just about the ability to be a cultivator. Liam’s ears alone might have missed that voice. His hatred had been the one to connect it with what he burned into his memory, alerting him to the opportunity to start his revenge.

’But,’ Liam continued, ’This is my revenge. It might go as far as you desire, but it’s mine nonetheless.’

The nightmarish discoveries about the Church only made the Dragon King more guilty in Liam’s mind. He was almost ready to declare him his sworn enemy. He was simply holding back until he obtained definitive proof about the Screening’s source.

’I’ll accomplish it my way,’ Liam said in his mind. ’If you try to force my hand, I might start to hate you, too.’

The threat couldn’t have been clearer. Liam might have inherited a boundless hatred that no human mind could create, but that feeling had started with him. The Ancestral Snake had expanded it, but it belonged to Liam nonetheless.

That ownership was what created Liam’s revenge list. The Ancestral Snake wasn’t on it, but it would end there if it forced Liam to do something he would forever regret.

Liam already had plenty of those regrets, and he didn’t want to increase their number, even if it meant doubling the Ancestral Beasts he had to hunt.

’You’ll see, my son,’ A human, derisive hiss resounded in Liam’s ears, ’The limits of your hatred.’

The auditory hallucination spiked, only to wane right afterward, restoring silence. Liam’s forearm itched to no end, and he scratched it as he looked down at his prey.

After a little less than a year inside the cultivation world, Liam had finally crossed off one of the names on his revenge list, and it had been depressingly easy.

Becoming a cultivator had been the right choice, but Liam now had to face an uncomfortable truth. The most terrible event of his life had come at the hands of someone so puny his name wasn’t even worth remembering.

Power truly put much into perspective, and Liam’s growth created a strange conflict he didn’t know how to tackle. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Liam belonged to a different world now. That much was undeniable. Yet, his hatred kept him tied to his old life, which he could feel nostalgic about, but struggled to find value in anymore.

In a different situation, Liam would have just forgotten about mortals entirely, looking only at the far greater peaks the cultivation journey offered. However, he couldn’t, not yet at least.

And another issue arose, something more moral than factual. Liam had long since accepted that murder wouldn’t bring any satisfaction, but the emptiness of that latest kill felt emblematic of that point.

Liam had finally made progress in the greatest goal of his life, in his ten-year-old vow, but he didn’t feel good at all. He even failed to experience any ambitious drive.

That fat man was no Randall, Cecilia, or enemy cultivator. He was no real hindrance in Liam’s life. He was just a brittle mortal who had hurt Liam in the past. Killing him was only about getting even, not striving to live life according to Liam’s desires.

As such, the event led to no cathartic experience, which hadn’t been the case with Melissa.

’Protecting feels better,’ Liam accepted.

The predictable emptiness didn’t change Liam’s goal. He had always known his revenge wouldn’t have brought him any satisfaction. All that was the selfish desire of someone who finally had the strength to make things right for himself.

As for what Liam would do once he succeeded, he wasn’t sure, but learning more about life had started to give him ideas. He wanted to do things now, which was incredible progress from when he said his goodbyes to Cyrus.

As annoying as it had sounded, the fact that the butcher didn’t even remember Krosstoen village was good news. The Bloodline Screening had been messier than Liam had predicted, so reliable records might not exist at all.

Connecting that murder to the Screening, the village, or Liam was probably unlikely. Liam couldn’t be completely certain, but it seemed the Dragon King had truly enlisted random butchers to enable that kingdom-wide process.

Liam obviously couldn’t feel good about being a casualty not worth remembering, but he had the chance to fix that. If the Dragon King had truly been behind that process, Liam would make sure he learned the full extent of his sin.

Still, Liam also realized that such a reckless approach wouldn’t do. Apparently, two of his targets were dead, one was missing, but the remaining two might feature at least a cultivator, and their deaths wouldn’t go unnoticed.

’Would I even be able to stop myself next time?’ Liam wondered, a problematic realization dawning upon him.

The simultaneous complete control and absence of it had been eerie, to say the least. It had been a compulsion stemming from the promise Liam had made to the Ancestral Snake, which had sent him on autopilot.

Even if Liam had held back from going too far, he had been too reckless. He couldn’t risk exposing himself like that. He had even known that truth throughout his actions, but his body still hadn’t stopped.

’To seek revenge is to seek power,’ Liam thought, recalling Crazy Uncle’s words. ’The strength to be more than a pawn.’

Whatever unstoppable compulsion Liam had accepted inside him, he only knew one way of overcoming it. He had to become stronger, both to oppose the Ancestral Snake’s one-sided, suicidal desires and to deal with the messes those urges would get him into.

One of those messes showed itself when Liam forced himself to stop inspecting the butcher’s corpse, heading in the direction of the carriage, only to find Maxwell waiting for him on the grassland, relatively distant, but close enough to have witnessed the murder.