Tian Wei didn't bother with the rest of the proceedings when it came to the awakening ceremonies. He was much more fascinated with his new martial soul. He was of course happy that he would be able to become a Spirit Master in the future and couldn't wait to find out more, but all that stuff would have to wait till he had time in the future. Right now he just wanted to run home and show off for his mom and dad. 

As soon as he was finished with all the children, the Spirit Master packed up his bags and headed for the door while Old jack rounded up the children once more. Once he had congratulated them and ensured that they were alright he turned his attention to the two children who had the potential for greatness. 

"Everyone is free to go home, but Tian Wei and Tang San, make sure to tell your parents that I'll be paying a visit to you all latter to arrange for you to attend the spirit masters college shortly. I'm sure the other villagers will be thrilled at the news that we have not one, but two potential spirit masters this year!  I hope that both of you will give your all to become stronger."

With a smile on his face Old jack sent them all home while he went back to do what ever it was he did as the village head on days such as this. 

Tian Wei now free to do as he pleased was immediately surrounded by the other children of the village. Most of them were fawning over him and asking for him him to show them his martial spirit. It was overwhelming for him to find himself suddenly becoming the centre of attention, especially since none of the kids had ever truly been close to him before.

He glanced around for Tang San but after not being able to find him in the crows he assumed that he had already left. With that in mind, he decided to head on home himself. He had to give his mom and dad the good news anyways and it wasn't like he cared all to much about the opinions of the other children anyway. So he quickly pushed his way free and ran all the way home. 

 

As soon as he burst through the door he found both his mom and dad waiting patiently for him. Both of them were uncharacteristically quiet and there was an air of tension that Tian Wei had never experience when facing his parents before. Never the less he pushed aside the uncomfortable feeling and told them all about the ceremony. Both of them tensed when he told them he had full innate soul power. Before either of them could comment of such an amazing feat, he pulled out his Martial Soul and showed them.

"Look at it! I got a shield spirit, doesn't it look cool! Everyone kept saying that it was a good Martial spirit and even the Sirit Master said I could become a defense specialist in the future!"

Tian Wei puffed out his chest and put on a serious face as he addressed his parents.

"Now that I have a Martial Spirit, I can be a  protector like dad always said I should be. I'll be a real man and you won't have to worry about anything." Tian Wei's attempt at being serious were foiled by his childish voice and still small figure. Both his mother and father couldn't help but chuckle at their little protector.

Tian Wei waited eagerly for his parents to say something about his martial soul, and after a moment both his parents seemed to relax as the gentle smiles that Tian Wei was accustomed to seeing blossomed on their faces.

"Its an amazing spirit dear, A beautifully martial soul for my wonderful baby boy." His mother praised him while looking at the shield in wonder. 

Tian Wei blushed a bit at his mothers teasing but didn't bother to let it bother him for long. He was much to excited and kept telling them all about his experiences while going through the awakening. They were an ideal audience and listened to him attentively as he gave them the details. He finished his story right at the point were his martial spirit appeared in hand, but once he was finished with his story he looked up expectantly, only to see that both of them looked confused.

"What exactly do you mean when you say that you felt two different streams in you body?" His father asked while tightening the grip he had on Tian Wei. 

For a moment Tian Wei was just as lost as his father, but then he remembered the feeling of suppression that had come from his other hand. In all of his excitement he had completely forgotten about it.

 He closed his eyes in concentration and immediately noticed another connection similar to the one he had with his Shield Martial soul, only this one felt weak and fragile, more distant and blurred. It was only now that he was actively searching for it, that he noticed this new connection. Interestingly, that there was a constant stream of soul energy going to this second connection.

Now that he was aware of this new connection, Tian Wei knew what he needed to do. He fed more energy into this new connection and to his surprise the pain that had engulfed him during the awakening ceremony once more returned.

He wasn’t deterred though and pushed past the pain as he kept pushing more and more of his soul power through the connection. Finally, in a last burst of overwhelming pain the connection stabilized and a new Martial Soul made its appearance.

As Tian Wei looked at his second martial soul, The initial excitement that had begun to bubble up at the thought of having not one but two Marshall souls, something that he didn’t even know was possible, was immediately dashed.

Unlike his shield soul  that glowed brightly for all to see, this new one give off an air of death and decay and almost seemed to drain the light from its surroundings. The first thought that came to mind was a dragon, but with the sorry state it was in, it almost felt like blasphemy to relate the lofty figure of a dragon with the haggard Martial Soul before him .

It look like its was slowly decomposing aa parts of its flesh seemed to be falling away exposing the bones and organ underneath. Its once beautiful scales where now dull and cracked while certain parts of its body were devoid of scales all together.

What should have been a majestic creature lay broken and battered and yet that wasn’t the worse part of the whole ordeal. It was clearly obvious that the beast was still alive as it's roars of pain and suffering resounded throughout the room. As if that wasn't enough several chains made of a black tar like substance were wrapped around the beast and any time that it moved, the chains seemed to eat away at its flesh.

The longer he looked at it the more uncomfortable he felt. For some reason he couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t what his Martial Soul was supposed to look like.

Once more looking to his parents for guidance he was appealed to see that both his mother and father were shedding tears. But while his mothers tears where ones of sorrow, his fathers were the color of blood and his eyes were still glued to the disturbing projection of a Marital Soul.

“…Dad?” Tiam Wei tentatively called out to his father and as if some trance had been broken his father seemed o come out of what ever trance like state he had been in.

He quickly wiped away his bloody tears and took several deep breaths to settle himself. His mother had fallen to her knees and was being wracked by sobs, Tian Wei wasn’t sure what was happening but he knew one think for sure.

He hated seeing his mother cry.

He attempted to dismiss the Martial Soul and once more he was ingulfed in pain while the martial soul was being absorbed once more.

Once he was certain that nothing was wrong with himself he turned to his parents who were whispering softly to themselves. After a moment of deliberation Tian Jin scoped up his wife and placed her onto the couch and turned towards Tian Wei and told him to sit as there was a lot of things they needed to discuss.

Once everyone was settled Tian Wei waited patiently for his father to start talking, but it was his mother who spoke first.

“I’m so sorry, that you have to suffer like this. If I had done a better job back then, you wouldn’t-“

“Stop blaming your self. You did everything you could have done and more. No one sacrificed as much as you did and you are still suffering for my mistakes to this day. If anyone is to the blame it is the clan that forced this on us!” The pained expression the filled Tian Jin’s face spoke volumes of just how much it pained him to see the love of his life suffering so.

“Son, there is something that you need to know. We thought that you wouldn’t have had to know about this since you had seemingly recovered all those years ago. But I guess we were being to optimistic.” He looked of to the side and for a moment a once more the hint of rage return but it was quickly pushed away.

“Me and your mother used to be very powerful Spirit Masters. In fact I was a member of a powerful group of Spirit Masters known throughout the continent for our strength. However a lot of things happened and me and you mom had to leave. We were no longer welcomed there and a lot of powerful people were targeted us, so we decided to leave before things escalated further. Unfortunately the people who  were after us didn’t want to let us go.” He tightened his fist tightly and Tian Wei noticed that blood had started to drip from his punctured palms.

“We fought back against the people that wanted to kill us and we managed to get away, but not without paying a price. In the end I lost an arm and both me and your mother were heavily injured. At the time she was pregnant with you and we couldn’t afford to keep fighting so we fled as far away as we could. We though that we had finally gotten away but we were wrong.”

Tian Jin got up and quickly went into one of the rooms of the house that Tian Wei was forbidden form entering and came back out with a small jade box. He quickly opened it and inside was the shriveled remains of what looked like a leach. It was blood red with black spots scattered all over its body and even though it was no longer than a few centimeters, Tian Wei was able to see that it had razor sharp teeth in its mouth that would definitely leave a mark if they were sunk into someone’s skin.

The strangest thing though was that as he got closer to the corpse of the worm, he felt his second tainted martial spirit stir and the amount of soul power that it was absorbing increase greatly. He quickly distance himself from the jade box only to notice that it wasn’t a corpse at all. The worm had actually starting to wiggle around, but Tian Jin quickly covered it once more with the jade cover.

“That is a Soul torturing worm. It is a unique beast that is best known for its ability to leech off of other soul beasts to increase its strength. It produce a poison that is notoriously difficult to cure and once that poison infects its prey, it will wait for them to die before reabsorbing the poison along with all the soul power the poison has stored.

What makes it so deadly is that the poison actually corrodes soul power and assimilates new attributes based on the soul power it has corroded. As such, anyone who tries to purge it using soul power will simply feed and strengthen it instead. But as if that wasn’t bad enough, it is able to infect the martial soul of Spirit Masters and slowly corrode the spirit rings that said martial soul posses. In other words, if you are poisoned by this worm, unless you get the poison removed quickly it will slowly weaken its host as it feeds on them and grows in strength. The worst part is that the poisoned persons feels as if their very soul is being burned as the poison slowly eats away at them.”

He gently placed the jade box onto the table and collapsed into a chair.

“The only known way to get ride of it, is to force the soul worm that poisoned you remove the poison itself, or use the blood of the worm to create an antidote. The ingredients needed to make the antidote are extremely rare and difficult to source which makes it impossible to most people to make it and even if you torture the soul worm, the chances of it willingly removing the poison is practically zero. The worst part about this Soul worm though is that if you kill the beast, the poison will forcefully erupt, increasing the pain that the poisoned individual has to endure up to tenfold.

We only realized your mother was poison a few days after our fight, but by then it was already too late. The only silver lining was that the soul worm was on her person and hadn’t gotten away or died during our escape. Your mother used her martial souls special sacrificial ability to draw out all of the poison that had managed to affect you while still in the womb and we thought that we’d eventually be able to find a cure to deal with your moms state, but we were wrong.”

Tian Jin quickly wiped away the tear that formed in the corner of his eyes before they could fall, but Tian Wei had already seen them.

“The soul worm that poisoned you both was a variant beast, so while it would be possible to get the beast to remove the poison if it chose to, the known antidote was ineffective. We tried all sorts of things but nothing seemed to work. All of this time your mother has been suffering the soul burning sensation of her martial soul and soul power being slowly corroded. We eventually gave up on curing you mom and instead focused on making sure that you at least wouldn’t have to suffer because of the poison. When you were born we figured that your weak body was a side effect of the poison but since we couldn’t find any of it on your body we assumed we had succeeded in protecting you from the poison. We gave you special medications and pills in hopes that your weakened body would recover with time and as you grew up and grew stronger we held out hope that you’d be able to live your life without worry. But it looked like we were wrong yet again.”

Tian Jin grew more despondent the more he spoke. Tian Wei had never seen his father look so down trodden and defeated before and it broke him to see his father who was always strong and confident look so lost.

His mother who had been quietly sitting off to the side interjected softly.

“You inherited two martial souls, something that happens very rarely and for those who do awaken two martial souls, they are viewed as geniuses by the various forces of the continent. Your shield Martial Soul is most likely a mutation of my Gem Sentinel Martial Soul, as evident by the gem at the center of your shield.”

She smiled at the thought of her son having such a defense centered mutation especially since he always used to run around talking about protecting them when he got older.

“Your second Martial soul . . . it should have been a dragon based Martial Soul like your fathers, but the poison seems to have drilled into it and corrupted it in some way. Its possible that in order to escape being purged, the poison was forced to target your unawakened Martial Souls, but because your martial souls hadn’t been awakened and since there were no spirit rings to target, the poison must have entered a period of dormancy and was only able to infect one of your Martial Souls. But when you did awaken them, it must have tried to flare up again which is why you felt so much pain. Thankfully because it spent so much time weakened, the poison wasn’t able to truly overtake and corrupt your Dragon Martial Soul, but its only a matter of time before it does.

Even though your Dragon martial soul has been able to fight back against the poison, it is drawing on your soul power to do so. With time the poison will become stronger and your dragon soul will have to drain more of your soul power in order to keep fending off the poison. Unless we find a way to purge the poison from your martial soul the poison will eventually grow strong enough to destroy your martial soul, before moving on to you.”

His mother quickly held his hands and it was only then that Tian Wei noticed that his hands had been shaking. Hearing that both his mother and his own life were hanging by a thread, that it would only be a matter of time before he was dead, wasn’t something that he could handle so easily.

“Is there. . . Is there anything I can do to fix this?” Tian Wei voice trembled but held firm. He didn’t want to die nor did he want his mom to die. If there was a way to correct this injustice that had befallen his family then he would do so.

“There is a way, but it won’t be easy.” Tian Jin said as his eyes once more focused on his son.

“The only hope you have at dealing with this poison is to become powerful. The more powerful you become, the more powerful your dragon Martial soul will become as well, allowing it to better fight back against the poison. Once you are powerful enough, you’ll have to find and get the assistance of an equally powerful Spirit master with a spiritually focused Martial soul. If you can do that then they can force the Soul Worm to retract the poisons that's affecting both you and your mother.

We’ve thought about doing so before, but we haven’t been able to because the people who did this to us are still looking for us to this day. It would be impossible to find someone to help us without alerting them and once they found us, they would make sure to finish the job. Not to mention both me and your mother are much, much weaker than we were back then. Your mothers soul rings have been corroded and her soul power has been downgraded and my  Martial Soul is still recovering from using a sacrificial technique back then to allow us to escape. Even if I do recover, I wouldn’t have made any progress since then.

You on the other hand aren’t known to them and as long as you don’t reveal your dragon soul, no one will think to link you to two fugitives. Your mother still has a few decades before the poison truly threatens her life and as long as she doesn’t use her soul power that time might be extended further.”

Tian Jin joined his wife in holding his sons hands and looked Tian Wei directly in the eye as he spoke.

“I know this a lot to put on your shoulders, and I know It will be difficult, but do you think you will be able to do it?”

Tian Wei looked at his father and summoned his Shield Martial soul.

“I already said that I would be the a defender of the family. No matter how hard it is going got be I won’t stop till I find a way to cure the poison.”

As he spoke his shield Martial soul seemed to resonate with his firm belief and the golden glow from its central gem increased in intensity.