Renegade Immortal Chapters 7-9: Wang Lin's Defiance, Descent, and the Mysterious Stone Bead

The air in the Wang family courtyard was thick with a tension that had curdled from awkward sympathy into open mockery. Wang Lin—Tie Zhu to his family—stood beside his parents, the weight of his failure at the Heng Yue Sect’s selection a physical anchor dragging his gaze to the dusty ground. But the words of his relatives, sharp and dripping with schadenfreude, forced his head up.

“That’s right! Fourth brother, we speak for you because you gave your spot to second brother,” one uncle chimed in, echoing the smug pronouncements of Wang Zhuo, the cousin who had been chosen. Wang Zhuo himself wore a proud, gloating smile that seemed to split his face. “Their family brought all this upon themselves. My father and I warned them beforehand. This useless family is about as stubborn as a donkey. Now they hit a wall.”

Wang Lin’s father, Wang Hao, pale and defeated, tried to muster a defense. “Tie Zhu, he…” A single fierce look from his own father, Wang Zhuo’s grandfather, silenced him completely. The message was clear: the successful branch of the family now held the power.

It was Tie Zhu’s fourth uncle, a man with a stout heart and a temper to match, who finally broke the cruel chorus with a deep sigh. “Whoever brings this up again means he has something against me. Let this be done. Tie Zhu not being selected can only be said that he wasn’t fortunate enough. Tie Zhu, don’t take it to heart. You can come to your fourth uncle for anything. I have no say in immortal sects, but for a normal martial sect, your uncle still has some pull. You can go with my son, Hu Zi. I’ve always planned to send him off to train.”

The offer was a lifeline of kindness in a sea of malice, but Wang Zhuo immediately poisoned it with his scorn. “Tie Zhu, I say go with fourth uncle. When you get there, you can tell them you were the trash that was rejected by the immortals. They might really take you.”

Something cold and hard crystallized within Wang Lin’s chest. He slowly raised his head, his eyes moving from one mocking face to another, finally locking onto Wang Zhuo’s. The humiliation, the helplessness, the sheer injustice of it all fused into a single, unshakeable resolve. His voice, when it came, was low but clear, cutting through the chatter. “Wang Zhuo, mark my words. I, Wang Lin, will definitely enter an immortal school. I’ll also never forget how you and your father insulted my family.”

Wang Zhuo burst into derisive laughter, but before he could retort, Fourth Uncle erupted. “You wordy little brat! I’m going to waste you right now! Let’s see if the immortals still want you then!” He took a threatening step forward, his eyes steely. Panic flashed across Wang Zhuo’s father’s face as he jumped in front of his son. The other relatives merely watched, cold smiles playing on their lips, enjoying the spectacle of discord.

It was Wang Lin’s own father who intervened, pulling his furious brother back. “Fourth brother, listen to me. You have a wife and kids. Acting like this isn’t worth it. I will forever remember what you have done.” The fight drained from Fourth Uncle’s shoulders, replaced by a weary disgust. With a final glare, he ushered Wang Lin and his parents out of the courtyard, the sounds of their relatives’ mocking laughter following them like a curse.

The ride home in Fourth Uncle’s carriage was shrouded in a heavy silence. Wang Lin’s father sighed, the sound full of a lifetime of disappointments. “Tie Zhu, this is nothing, alright? Listen to your father. Go home and study. Strive for the district exam. If you don’t feel like reading, go with your fourth uncle.” His mother embraced him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You’re my only son. If anything happens to you, I wouldn’t want to live anymore. You have to be strong.”

In the warmth of her arms, Wang Lin felt the raw edges of his wounded heart soften, but the core of his resolve remained untouched. “Father, Mother, rest assured. I will not do anything silly. Don’t worry, I have a plan,” he said, the words feeling both like a comfort and a secret vow. Exhausted, he drifted into a fitful sleep as the carriage bounced along, dreaming of soaring through clouds with his parents by his side.

He awoke in the deep of night in his own bed, the dream’s freedom a stark contrast to the confines of his small room. The plan he had hinted at now demanded action. Quietly, he rose. He took a long, last look at his sleeping parents, their faces lined with worry even in repose. With a trembling hand, he wrote a brief letter of explanation and apology, packed a bag with dry food, and slipped out into the moonlight.

“I will not give up,” he whispered to the sleeping village. The path to immortality was the only one that made sense, the only one that could erase the shame and alter the destiny his family name seemed to dictate. He would return to the Heng Yue Sect. He would beg, plead, or find a way to prove himself. If they rejected him again, he would at least learn the locations of other sects. With the cold stars as his witness and his long shadow his only companion, Wang Lin left home.

For days he trekked east, following the hazy memory of the direction from which the immortal had brought him. He pushed through thick underbrush that tore at his legs, fueled by stubborn determination and dwindling rations. After a week, deep within the mountain wilderness, he finally saw them: the familiar, mist-shrouded peaks of the Heng Yue Sect rising in the distance. Exhaustion washed over him. He sat on a rocky outcrop, chewing on hardened dry food, staring at the entrance that had been his gateway to humiliation.

A low, guttural growl shattered the mountain silence. The hair on Wang Lin’s neck stood on end. He turned slowly, and all the color drained from his face. A massive white tiger, its eyes pools of blood-red hunger, stood not twenty paces away. Saliva dripped from its jaws, hitting the ground with soft, terrifying plops. The beast coiled, the air growing dense with its predatory intent.

There was no time to think. As the tiger launched itself in a powerful, deadly pounce, Wang Lin did the only thing he could—he threw himself sideways off the cliff. The world became a rushing blur of wind and rock. In that terrifying moment of freefall, his life did not flash before his eyes. Instead, he saw the loving, worried eyes of his mother, the resigned disappointment in his father’s, and the sneering face of Wang Zhuo. “Father, Mother, your son didn’t listen to you. This is goodbye,” he thought, a strange calm settling over him as the ground rushed up to meet him.

But death did not come. His plummeting body was suddenly caught by an immense, invisible force that wrenched him sideways. Branches and jagged rock scraped and battered him as he was violently pulled through the air. With a final, jarring impact, he was slammed against a stone wall and then dropped onto a hard surface. Darkness, pain, and confusion swallowed him.

When consciousness reluctantly returned, it brought with it a symphony of agony. Wang Lin groaned, struggling to sit up. He was in a small, natural cave, sunlight filtering through its entrance to illuminate a grim floor littered with the bones of birds and small animals. His clothes were in tatters, his body a canvas of cuts and bruises. His right arm screamed with pain, swollen and likely broken from the impact.

His eyes were drawn to the cave wall behind him. There, a black hole, no larger than a fist, seemed to pulse with a faint, unnatural darkness. The mystery of his salvation became clear. This hole had generated the sucking force that had plucked him from his fatal fall. The scattered bones were testament to other creatures that had suffered the same fate, only to be trapped and perish here.

As he gathered his wits, the bones on the floor suddenly began to rattle and slide toward the hole. Wang Lin threw himself into a corner just as a powerful suction filled the cave. The bones clattered against the wall, some larger ones getting stuck around the hole’s edges. A moment later, a bird flying past the entrance was yanked out of the sky and dashed against the cave wall with a sickening crunch.

Wang Lin watched in horror, his mind racing. He observed the pattern over the next few hours. The suction activated like clockwork: sixty minutes of terrifying pull, followed by a thirty-minute respite. He was trapped, saved from the cliff only to face a slower, more desperate end. His food was gone, left at the cliff top. His broken arm throbbed. “Being stuck here means a slow death, but jumping down would be instant death,” he muttered, a bitter smile touching his lips.

Hunger soon became a sharper pain than his injuries. His eyes fell on the bloody, recently-sucked bird corpse. Revoltion warred with survival. Gritting his teeth, he crawled over, picked it up, and took a bite. The taste of raw flesh and blood was appalling, a metallic, gamy flood that made his stomach heave. He swallowed without chewing, forcing down bite after bite until a faint warmth spread in his belly. He tossed the mangled remains aside, fighting the urge to vomit.

Days blurred together in a cycle of agonizing hunger, sporadic bird-meal feasts, and the relentless, predictable suction of the mysterious hole. He thought endlessly of his parents, of Fourth Uncle’s kindness, of the mocking relatives, and of the cold-eyed immortal who had dismissed him. In a daze one day, he picked at the remains of a bird and noticed a strange, solid lump within its carcass. His heart leapt. With trembling fingers, he pulled out a round object—a bead, about the size of a baby’s fist.

A memory surfaced: a book his village teacher once showed him, speaking of ancient beasts that formed a ‘dantian’ within their bodies. A core of power that could heal wounds, grant strength, even regenerate limbs. Was this it? His heart hammered against his ribs. He cleaned the bead with a ragged piece of his cloth, revealing its true appearance: a simple, gray stone bead, etched with five faint, cloud-like patterns. It looked ancient, but utterly mundane. Hope curdled into disappointment. He bit it tentatively; it was unyieldingly hard. “Tie Zhu, you are too delusional,” he scoffed at himself, the weight of his isolation pressing down.

That night, the mountain cold seeped into his bones. He curled into a ball, the stone bead forgotten beside him, and fell into a shivering, uneasy sleep. As dawn broke, sunlight touched the bead. Wang Lin awoke, colder and stiffer, his arm worse than before. Despair threatened to drown him. “Am I going to be stuck here my whole life?”

Then he noticed it. On some of the bones near the stone bead, tiny droplets of sparkling dew had formed. Parched, he carefully picked up a bone and licked the moisture off. It was sweet, incredibly so. More than that, a wave of comforting warmth spread through his body immediately. The pain in his swollen arm lessened, replaced by a soothing, itchy sensation. He rubbed his eyes and looked closely. The swelling had visibly gone down.

His gaze snapped to the stone bead. Fresh dew was beading on its surface. With a pounding heart, he picked up the bead and gently rolled it over his injured arm, spreading the moisture. A cool, refreshing sensation penetrated deep into the bruised flesh. He watched, mesmerized, as the inflammation continued to subside. He tentatively moved his arm. Painful, but mobile. “This stone bead must be a treasure!” The words were a gasp of pure, unadulterated hope.

A new routine was born. Wang Lin became a careful student of the cave and its treasure. He used the suction cycles to gather bird carcasses for food. He meticulously collected the precious dew that formed on the bead each morning, storing it in a cleaned bird skull. Each day, he applied the dew to his arm. The healing was miraculous. Within days, the bone knit, the swelling vanished, and his arm was as good as new. The dew was more than water; it was a potent, mystical medicine.

The time for escape had come. On a morning when his strength had returned, Wang Lin carefully wrapped the stone bead in a strip of cloth soaked with the dew he had saved, tying it securely to his body. During a respite in the suction, he rushed to the cave entrance. Using his teeth and his now-healed hands, he tore his remaining clothes into strips, braiding them into a crude, fragile rope. He tied one end to a sturdy rock jutting from the cave floor and the other around his waist.

Taking a deep breath, he began his descent. The cliff face was sheer and unforgiving. He had climbed down only about five or six meters when his grip on a slick patch of rock failed. He slipped, his body plummeting downward. The cloth rope went taut with a sickening strain, swinging him violently toward the cliff. He slammed into the rock face, the breath knocked out of him, but managed to grab onto a protruding branch just as the cloth above began to tear. He hung there, heart pounding, cold sweat drenching his body. Looking down, he saw he was still a deadly twenty meters from the ground.

With painstaking care, he secured the rope to the branch, creating a new anchor point, and continued his agonizing climb. When the cloth rope stretched to its absolute limit, leaving him still ten meters above the jagged rocks below, he made a choice. He untied the rope from his waist, took a final look at the ground, and jumped.

The world rushed up. The remaining length of cloth snagged on branches, slowing his fall slightly before ripping away. He crashed through a lower canopy, branches breaking under him, and hit the ground in a rolling, bone-jarring impact. White-hot pain exploded in his leg. When his vision cleared, he saw a deep, horrific gash on his thigh, so deep he could glimpse the bone beneath. Other cuts covered his body. He was alive, but barely.

Gasping through the pain, his vision blurring, he remembered his treasure. With fumbling, blood-slicked hands, he pulled the cloth-wrapped bead from his tunic and brought it to his mouth, sucking desperately at the dew-soaked fabric. A few precious drops hit his tongue. Then, trembling uncontrollably, he squeezed the cloth over the terrible wound on his leg, letting the remaining dew drip into it. An immediate, profound coolness emanated from the injury, dulling the sharpest edges of the agony. He collapsed onto his back, utterly spent, praying no mountain beast would find him in this vulnerable state.

“Tie Zhu! Where are you?”

The voice, faint with distance, seemed like a hallucination born of blood loss and hope. But it came again. It was his father’s voice. Summoning every last shred of his strength, Wang Lin cried out, “Dad! I’m here!”

A moment later, a streak of rainbow light cut through the sky above the jungle, circling the cliff face before descending near him. The light dissipated, revealing a stern-faced disciple from the Heng Yue Sect, his robes immaculate, with Wang Lin’s father held awkwardly under one arm. The disciple’s eyes swept over Wang Lin’s battered, bloodied form and then up to the tattered remains of his cloth rope hanging from the cave high above.

Wang Hao, seeing his son, broke free and stumbled forward, tears streaming down his face. He gathered Wang Lin into a careful, desperate embrace. “Tie Zhu, what were you thinking? Why did you have to be so stubborn? Have you ever thought about how your parents would live if you died?”

Wang Lin, stunned, realized the misconception. They thought he had tried to kill himself. Given the evidence—his disappearance, the cliff, his horrific injuries—it was the logical conclusion. He could only offer a weak, bitter smile.

The Heng Yue Sect disciple, surnamed Zhang, investigated swiftly. He scaled the cliff to the cave with preternatural ease, felt the strange suction force, and dismissed it with a slight frown. He returned, dusting off his robes. “Your kid wanted to suicide but was saved by this natural suction force from the cave. Now that he has been found, let’s go back to the sect and have the elder make a decision.” Without ceremony, he gathered both Wang Lin and his weeping father and whisked them away from the jungle, moving with impossible speed back toward the misty peaks of Heng Yue Sect.

Returning to the sect in such a manner, broken and carried, filled Wang Lin with a tumult of shame and stubborn defiance. At the main peak, several sect members awaited them with expressions ranging from annoyance to indifference. Disciple Zhang reported in a low voice to an elder with a cold demeanor. The elder’s brow wrinkled in distaste. “Since the person was found, send him to the guest room to reunite him with his mother,” he said dismissively.

In a simple guest chamber, Wang Lin’s mother rushed to him, her tears a fresh flood as she hugged him, careful of his wounds. From his parents’ frantic, overlapping explanations, he pieced together the story. After finding his farewell letter, they had returned to the Wang family in a panic. Fourth Uncle had forced the issue, compelling a reluctant Wang Zhuo’s father to use his new influence to petition the Heng Yue Sect for help in the search. The sect, initially indifferent, had eventually acted not out of compassion, but from pragmatic concern: if a child died by suicide after their rejection, it could frighten away future candidates from all the mortal villages. Wang Lin’s father had insisted on accompanying the search party, leading to the rescue.

Soon after, a disciple delivered a medicinal concoction. Wang Lin’s mother fed it to him gratefully. The immortal sect’s medicine was potent; warmth spread through his body, and the pain from his wounds, particularly the deep leg gash, began to recede noticeably. His parents hovered, offering endless comfort, urging him to abandon his foolish dreams and come home. Wang Lin listened, his mind churning. He wanted to explain about the stone bead, about his true intent, but the words stuck in his throat. Who would believe a tale of magical dew and miraculous healing?

While Wang Lin rested, a discussion of far greater consequence was taking place in a hall within the sect. Several elders, including the cold-faced man who had overseen the initial selection, were gathered. Disciple Zhang relayed his findings. A red-faced elder, Ma, spoke first, his voice thick with disdain. “What does the life and death of a mortal have to do with us? Look at the other immortal schools—which of them sends people to find a kid who tried to kill himself? This is shameful!”

The cold-faced middle-aged man nodded. “What Elder Ma said is correct. In all the sects within the state of Zhao, only our Heng Yue Sect is like this. But if that kid really died in our mountain range, parents will fear their children would all try to suicide if rejected. Then, who would dare to send us their children?”

An older elder sipped tea, his voice slow and weary. “In reality, isn’t it because our Heng Yue Sect has declined that we must select disciples from mortals? If it was 500 years ago, who would care what mortals think?”

Finally, a deeply wrinkled elder, who seemed to carry the weight of the sect’s stagnation on his bowed shoulders, sighed a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the mountain itself. He glanced meaningfully at the cold-faced middle-aged man who had rejected Wang Lin days before. “If this youth tried to suicide once, he could try again. Bah. To prevent this issue from continuing, let us just make an exception and accept him as a disciple. A trifling matter; let it be done.”

The decision, born not from merit or potential but from bureaucratic inconvenience and a faded reputation, was made. Wang Lin’s fate, which he had tried to seize through desperate action and had been miraculously preserved by a mysterious stone bead, was now to be altered by a dismissive wave of an elder’s hand. He lay in the guest room, unaware that the door to the immortal path, once slammed shut in his face, was now being grudgingly cracked open for him to enter. The stone bead, hidden against his skin, felt warm, a secret promise of a different kind of power altogether. His journey was far from over; it was just beginning on terms he could never have imagined.