NOVPUB1154: Who has the deeper bond?
1154: Who has the deeper bond? 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓅𝓊𝓫.𝒸ℴ𝓶
Unable to discern the reasoning behind Xia Fang’s gaze, Yang Qing quickly pushed the matter to the back of his mind.
There were more pressing concerns, and though not much time had passed since Xia Fang began her story, with a missing persons case on the line, he felt as if time was the one thing he was running short on.
Sensing his shift in mood, Xia Fang’s smile faded, replaced by a more somber expression.
Without waiting for Yang Qing to prompt her, she continued where she had left off.
“After finding a place to settle down, our founder visited the next towns over to familiarize himself with the power dynamics surrounding the area he had chosen to settle in while at the same time looking for a dao partner,” Xia Fang began as the depths of her eyes swirled with complex emotions.
“It was during that time that he came across five orphans who caught his eye,” Xia Fang continued slowly.
“Three of those five children would go on to become the founders of the Fan, Chi, and Ning families.”
Overwhelmed by the emotions surrounding the statement, she paused briefly as she took a few small sips of tea to steady herself.
“He took them in and trained them up as his five personal disciples,” she said, her voice sounding calmer now, nad her hands rested though a faint tension still lingered within her body that looked slightly taut.
“Their talents must have been exceptional for him to accept them as personal disciples, considering they were the only ones he ever took in his lifetime.
They were the true inheritors of his Dao, while we…” Xia Fang paused, a complicated look crossing her face.
“We were merely carriers of his bloodline and whatever regrets and hopes he had left in life,” she added with a wistful sigh.
Cultivators were always careful about whom they accepted as disciples—and, conversely, whom they accepted as masters.
In the mortal world, the bonds between parent and child ran deep and meant something but in the cultivation world, things were slightly different.
There was a common saying in the cultivation world that a master for a day was a father for a lifetime, which served to imply how deep and sacred that bond was considered in the cultivation world, and while that saying captured the importance of the relationship, it didn’t fully convey just how deep the bond truly ran.
Many cultivators argued that the bond between master and disciple often ran deeper than that of parent and child.
This was due to several factors such as the duration of the bond, the immense investment of resources and time, and the shared trials and tribulations along the path of cultivation.
It wasn’t uncommon for children to outlive their parents, especially if their cultivation talent surpassed them.
While it also wasn’t unheard of for disciples to outlive their masters, more often than not, in cases that such a scenario does indeed happen, the time spent together between master and disciple was often far longer than that of parent and child.
The rogue cultivator’s son was a perfect example of this.
He lost his parents in his early twenties, and then later met his master.
Even if one only considered the period he trained under his master before attacking the Xia Clan, that time had already eclipsed the years he spent with his parents by 500 times.
And when factoring in the 11,000 years that had passed since his attack on the Xia Clan, the gap became even more staggering and that number would only continue to grow if one considered the lifespan that he and his master had as domain-level experts.
Cultivators possessed godly memories.
No matter how much time passed, their recollections remained untouched, forever preserved with perfect clarity and vividness within their minds.
However, the weight of those memories would inevitably fade as new ones took their place.
The rogue cultivator’s son would never forget what happened to his parents.
As long as he wished, he could recall every conversation he ever had with them, every meal they shared, and every moment he had with them both significant and mundane—with absolute clarity.
He could relive their final days in excruciating detail: the wrinkles on his father’s face, the emotions he felt at the time, whether his father sobbed or not.
He could remember his mother slowly wasting away—the expression she made as she did, what her body looked like before and after the devouring lily phantom cauldron spider parasitized her.
Everything down to the smallest details of that day would be imprinted in his mind.
If he so wished, he could recall the weather, how many times his parents blinked, the scent of their bodies, the flow of their qi, and every minute aspect of the room they were in.
Every single detail, no matter how insignificant, remained as vivid as if it had happened only moments ago.
Even after hundreds of thousands of years, he would still be able to remember it all with the same sensory precision—as though he were standing in that moment once more.
And now, as a domain expert, his memories had only grown more lifelike with the advancement of his cultivation.
But being able to recall something with perfect vividness didn’t mean one could fully replicate the emotions behind those memories.
It was like growing older and reminiscing about the fondest moments of childhood—you could remember them with warmth, but the raw emotions you felt at the time would never be the same.
As the years passed, that sensation would grow vague, distant, like a story from another life.
This effect was even more pronounced in cultivators, who lived for millennia, their perceptions shifting as they ascended higher realms.
The rogue cultivator’s son might still care deeply about his deceased parents, but after so much time, who held greater weight in his heart now?
Was it the parents he had known for just over twenty years?
Or was it the master he had followed for twelve thousand years—the one who had helped him attain vengeance, given him a second chance at a life he would have never imagined possible as he guided him to the domain realm?
And Barring unforeseen circumstances, his master would likely remain by his side for hundreds of thousands of years more.
This was what made Master and disciple relationship get treated with solemn weight in the cultivators’ world, and why Xia Fang had such an embittered expression on her face because even in cultivating clans where familial bonds were paramount, the master-disciple bond couldn’t be dismissed there either, otherwise things in her clan would not have gone down as they did, or as easily as they did with three retainer clans.
