Chapter 1: Failed escape

When Curo's conciousness started coming back to him, he didn't dare to move. He slowly opened his eyes and quietly took a good look at his surroundings. When he did he was shocked to find that he was currently lying on soft bed, in a room that seemed to be quite expensive.

The room was quite big and had a big soft bed, at one side was a big bookshelf, filled with all varieties of books but since no one ever taught Curo how to read, those books didn't matter to him. There was also a simple desk and chair. The side of the room that led to outside, just had a paper door. The side that led to inside the building was a finely crafted wooden door. Curo had never been to a room that looked this expensive. "Where am I and what am I doing here?" These were the only thoughts that ran across his mind. He soon collected himself and started to think how to escape, "Whatever I'm doing here, it can't be good."

In his mind, he was a street rat. No matter how you look at it, he shouldn't be here and it would be wise to get out of here before anyone noticed that he had woken up. Since Curo had lived on the streets alone for the past two years, he didn't trust anyone. He could smile and talk to someone in a happy face but he was always on guard, ready to run at a moments notice.

Since he was alone in the room, he quietly got out of bed, it was then that he noticed his body had been cleaned, his wounds dressed and he was wearing brand new linen clothes, a white T-shirt and white knee length pants. Seeing this, Curo was perplexed, he didn't know how to react to this.

"Whatever their motives behind doing this is, it can't be anything good." He started quietly moving to the paper door that led outside, he figured at worst case scenario he could climb and jump the wall. Although he had never learned any techniques, his nimbleness and swiftness were one of the few things he was proud of. The building complex was built in a Chinese style, that was more used in the southern climates than the city he was in.

Just as he opened the wooden sliding door, the finely carved wooden door quietly creeped open. The person who walked in through the door was around 16-17 and looked like a normal servant girl. In her hands was a basin with water and some towels. She also had a bag, inside which were various bandages and ointments.When she entered the room, and saw Curo sliding open the wooden door like a thief, she was startled and was starting to open her mouth to ask if he felt well enough to move already. Just as she wanted to ask that, she was shocked at what happened next.

All she could hear was , " Ohh, shit" before Curo slammed the door open and bolted out. She just stood there, she couldn't understand what was going on. It was no surprise as to no one knew that the day before Curo had been living on the streets. She stood there for a second, trying to process what had just happened, and quickly put down the basin and bag. She ran into the hallway and shouted towards the guards that were stationed at the end of the hall, "Quick, go tell Clan Master that the boy he brought back has waken up and also that he is currently running away."

When they heard that, the guards exchanged a confused glance and quickly one of the two went to inform the Clan Master while the other started running toward the servant girl. The guards had also seen the injuries on Curos body and knew that, if you didn't want to cripple your future, it would be for the best to stay put. If you started moving around, you would only make the injuries worse.

The guard and the servant girl started chasing after Curo. At the same time Curo had reached a dead end. The wall was 5 meter's high so there wasn't any ways to directly jump on it for Curo, it was also a bit too high for high for him to run up. He started running alongside the wall in hopes of reaching a tree that he could use to jump from. When he finally reached the tree, he realized that the servant girl and now a guard were chasing after him. He immediately jumped on the top of the wall and he saw the the whole bulding complex was quite big. With an annoyed face he quickly started running on top of the wall to reach the end. The guard seeing him running on the wall immediately grit his teeth and told the servant girl, "You follow him on the wall and make sure he dosen't hurt himself anymore than he already has, I will go and inform the other guards to catch him when he passes them."

All the guards here were practitioners. He was quite amazed that the young boy could run so fast and so steadily on top of such a wall. The servant girl immediately nodded and jumped on the wall to chase after him. Her cultivation level wasn't high but in theory, she should be able to overpower him in both speed and endurance. Since it was in the middle of the night, most of the people, except the guards on duty, were sleeping.

Curo kept running on the wall turning along side it to reach a place where he could finally exit this damn place. When he finally saw that the wall was going to end, he instantly felt happy. The servant girl chasing after him, was astonished. She could barely keep up with a boy half her age and she was also starting to run out of breath.

Curo saw that there was a 10 meters to the ground at the end of the wall, he grit his teeth and jumped. He was trying to jump far enough to get a hold of a tree branch that was a few meters away. When he jumped, the servant girls face paled. She knew exactly where they had reached and how high the top of the wall, they were running on, was there. She was cursing inside, "Is this kid insane, as a person who hasn't practised Qi techniques he intends to jumps that? With his already existing injuries, it would be lucky if he survived the jump." She started revolving her Qi, to get a small speed boost to catch him, when suddenly a voice echoed out.

"Well, well, well. You truly are a lively little fellow, aren't ya? You should have been asleep for a few more hours but still, the first thing you tried to do was to run away from here." As the voice faded, the servant girl felt a huge gale passing by that nearly knocked her off the wall. When she stabilized herself, she saw that the Clan Master was currently standing at the end of the wall and he had caught Curo mid jump. She finally relaxed and cupped her hand to the man, "This servant greets the Clan Master." The man only nodded and gestured her to rest before looking at Curo, who was being held as a sack beneath his shoulder. "You can't stay put for even 10 minutes without scaring the daylights out of me, can you? Now then, you don't have to run away anymore or anything of the sorts. The days of living on the streets and surviving on your own are over little fellow."

When the old man had said that, the servant girl finally realized why Curoi had acted the way he did. He was from the streets and suddenly waking up in a mansion like this would make anyone want to run away, when they don't know how they got here. Curo had a bitter face on, Not only did he fail to escape, he was caught by the same man, he tried to steal from before, again. Curo didn't know what the mans objective was but he was certain that it wasn't anything good for him. He stopped struggling when he realized he couldn't escape his grip.

"Why should I trust you? I doubt that a mighty Clan Master like you would take pity on a street rat like me and take me in just out of pity. I don't need someones charity. I have survived on my own on the streets until now and I can survive from now." Curo said in a cold tone. His eyes didn't belong to someone his age.

The Clan Master just sighed, "As I said, you don't have to live on the streets anymore. Come, I'll explain everything to you now and you will see, this isn't charity and is quite beneficial to you too." As he had said that, he started walking towards the main hall, while still holding Curo like a sack, so he couldn't run away.