Shepherd Tantra

Chapter 1240 Ibn's Childhood

Iben slowly stood up and walked slowly into the house under the gaze of the people.

His movements were not fast, and could even be considered slow; his mood at the moment was not good, and was even a little sad.

I don’t know whether I should thank the engineering team that came to renovate the place, or laugh at Aziz’s short-sightedness and stupidity...the decoration here has hardly changed at all.

The missing corner of the table leg in the living room was accidentally cut off when he was a child wielding his father's sword and playing a hero. At that time, he was scolded by his mother, but his father laughed and said that he would become a hero in the future;
The symbols carved on the corridor wall were drawn on the wall by my sister when she imagined herself joining the Sandthroat Sect and practicing the code words for the rebels to communicate with each other. Of course, these code words and symbols were made up by her, not real code words. She was holding Ibn when he was a child, and explained to him one by one what she had prepared for them.
There used to be a lion's head hanging on the broken hole above the living room... That was my father's greatest achievement, but after my father died, the lion's head and the golden scimitar that killed the lion were sold by my mother. It wasn't for money - their family was not short of money, otherwise they wouldn't have lived in the third ring.

That's just because I don't want to attract too much attention and get into trouble.

Everything in front of me is so strange and familiar.

Iben walked slowly towards the basement, and a hallucination seemed to appear before his eyes——

He seemed to see himself as a child, running around the living room playing with his sister;
He saw his sister holding him and teaching him to recognize words by pointing out the words in the book of rest;

He saw his father leaning on a camel-skin sofa, drinking from a flat kettle and bragging to them about his recent achievements;

He seemed to hear his mother's gentle call and see her attachment and admiration for his father.

——That was a long time ago.

"I am not from a family of ritualists."

Suddenly, Old Iben spoke in a low voice: "Ironically... my father was the leader of the guards protecting the old good master, and an excellent 'demon hunter'. That is the promotion profession for hunters who adapt to the Tao."

"He once had a golden scimitar inlaid with a huge ruby ​​that could evoke a fire enchantment. He killed an assassin in front of the good master, and was rewarded by the good master in public as a 'proof of bravery'. He once used this scimitar to fight a three-meter-tall giant lion alone, and presented the lion's whip to the old good master as a gift, and was later rewarded with a set of armor."

...This is indeed surprising.

Even Aiwass looked at old Eben with some surprise.

This is the story he has never told anyone - the story before he joined the resistance, the Cult of the Sandthroat.

"It's ironic that my father was cursed to death."

Old Iben spoke slowly, walked to one side of the corridor, and looked at the simple but fully functional toilet: "When we found him in the early morning when the sun rose... he was sitting on the toilet, spitting blood from his mouth, and his eyes were open."

In the Parthian Empire, those who had their own toilets and showers were considered respectable people even among the free people. This meant that they had "free access to water". However, if some slaves wanted to clean themselves, they could only bathe in hot sand.

But for old Iben, this was the beginning of countless nightmares.

"Heartbreaking curse?"

Aiwass recognized the curse.

Old Ibn nodded. He smiled sarcastically, "For a long time after that, I thought my father was cursed to death by those... 'untouchables'. Because I thought my father was the invincible guardian of the Good Lord, and if they couldn't kill him, they couldn't assassinate the Good Lord. So I didn't understand why my sister wanted to join the Sandthroat Sect, and I often quarreled with her.

"Later, my sister angrily showed me the evidence - it was the letters my father exchanged with the Sandthroat Sect. It turned out that my father had always been a secret subordinate of the Sandthroat Sect... I am the son of a rebel.

"At that time... I couldn't accept it for a while. Because I always thought that I was the son of a hero, and my origin was completely different from those slaves. I once wanted to run away from home, leave this oasis city-state, and go deep into the desert to adventure like the 'heroes' in those stories.

"Until my mother handed me my father's suicide note while crying."

"Suicide note?"

Even Haina realized something was wrong: "Can a person who was cursed leave a suicide note?"

"Because the Heartbreak Curse is not a strong curse."

Zhu Tang, who was also a Transcendent, explained, "It's closer to punishment than assassination. It will turn a person's intestines into poisonous snakes, causing spasms and rolling. This will cause severe diarrhea and abdominal pain... The pain will make people roll on the ground, or even bite off their tongues. This curse will affect the heart after about four hours, and eventually cause death from cardiac arrest."

In other words, after realizing he was cursed in the middle of the night, Ibn's father wrote a suicide note in great pain and then died without saying a word. He even bit off his tongue without alerting his family.

What this means is self-evident.

However, for Iben, who was still a child...or rather, for Iben and his family, who had no knowledge of curses, the cause of his father's death was a mystery.

"My father wanted me to be a hero, just like the Lord Helechin in my name."

Old Ibn said softly: "The good master heard that my father was cursed and killed, so he sent a lot of gold and well-trained slaves as condolences. It is also because of this gold that we can continue to live in the third circle after losing our only source of income.

"And I wanted to find out the cause of my father's death... so I joined the society through the relationship of my father's old friend. I wanted to learn how to become a ritualist... or a curser.

"This goal is really... too easy to achieve."

Old Iben smiled sarcastically.

As he spoke, he led a few people to the basement.

He looked at the floor-length mirror, and at the old man in the mirror, who was very old, with gray and curly hair and a hunched back, he suddenly felt dazed.

He seemed to see himself through the mirror when he first opened the secret door, a handsome boy with black curly hair, oily green pupils, deep and bright eyebrows, and a thin beard.

The old man was silent for a long time, and then he recited aloud: "I swear to always look up at the sun, even if it shines on me the same as others--"

As old Iben swore an oath, he reached out and drew a symbol on the dusty mirror, then opened the secret door.

The floor-to-ceiling mirror fixed on the wall suddenly glowed, and then the mirror disappeared, turning into a deep, dark passage.

(End of this chapter)