Druidic Cultivator | Chapter One

A woman’s scream broke the eerie silence of the night. It wasn’t the first scream but everybody located within a mile of the residence from which it originated truly wished it would be the last. For the last few hours, every few minutes, a woman’s scream would sound out and startle anybody who heard it. Birds left, animals burrowed, and crickets fled. The fellow humans knew that the scream didn’t mean danger, but was coming from a woman giving birth. 

    This woman was Weifeng Xue, wife of Feng Zhipei, and her childbirth was anything but normal. Five months into her pregnancy she was struck by lightning while picking herbs in the family’s garden. The sky was clear without even a single cloud floating within miles, but a lightning bolt still struck her. The Feng family assumed it was an attack from one of their enemies and investigated it thoroughly. There were many people who heard and saw the bolt and each of them said something else, some say it was a red bolt of lightning and others white. Some still said yellow, orange, and black, as well as every color in between. What everyone agreed on, however, is that nobody saw an attacker or a cloud.

    In the meantime, Weifeng Xue fell ill and almost lost her child. For ten days she bled profusely as if having a miscarriage and carried a very high fever that came from nowhere. Because Weifeng was a cultivator and her family wealthy enough to afford various elixirs, they managed to make a good attempt toward saving the mother and child. After ten days, the fever dissipated and the bleeding stopped. Many feared the worst, but for the next couple months Weifeng Xue continued to grow. Her baby was safe.

That was that, however, and this was this. Her day of childbirth was finally upon the Feng family and many were excited, none more than Xue and Zhipei. When she didn’t go into labor until nighttime, none were really worried. Sometimes children needed a couple extra days to develop, and if that was the worst that came from the lightning strike it was not a concern for the two of them. It wasn’t until she suddenly started her labor that things started to go awry.

Xue was a rank 4 mortal realm cultivator but the pain she experienced caused her to shriek as if she were a baby being tortured. It was several dozens of times worse than the pain she felt after being hit by the lightning bolt, and infinitely worse than she’d been told childbirth would be. Feng Zhipei rushed out to find a healer after bringing his wife to bed, worried about the pain and what it could mean. When he returned with the elderly midwife, what he saw was a great concern. 

Weifeng Xue was still screaming, her lungs unable to go hoarse anytime soon due to her cultivation, but all her clothes had been stripped off. Not just her lower clothes, which he’d assisted in removing before leaving to find the midwife, but all of her clothing. In addition, the blanket she was laid upon had vanished and the room smelt of burnt cloth. In the lull between each scream, Feng Zhipei’s wife would breathe heavily before the next contraction. With each contraction, her body briefly lit aflame, causing any cloth nearby to incinerate but not causing any other burns.

For hours this continued with the contractions slowly getting closer and closer. Several family members came to visit and inquire upon the problem but where swiftly sent away, Weifeng Xue did not wish to be seen in this state. The midwife prepared several elixirs to help calm the pain of childbirth and assist in the process. She’d not crafted them ahead of time because they had a short shelf life and she didn’t believe that Lady Xue would need them, she’d obviously swiftly changed her mind after seeing the current circumstances.

When the baby finally arrived it had been several hours. The young boy came out screaming loudly, not as loudly as his mother of course, but loudly nonetheless. The midwife washed him off as she prepared to declare the birth of a perfectly healthy baby boy before she hesitated. The boy was pale, as white as the snow that blankets the winter ground, and his eyes were an odd shade of grey so dark that it was almost black but with small flecks of red. Her hesitation was noticed however. 

“Feng Rushi, what is wrong?” Feng Zhipei couldn’t help but asking after the midwife stared down at his child with an odd look in her eyes. The pregnancy had been very troublesome and he was concerned that something had happened during the difficult childbirth.

“Nothing! You have a very healthy boy, it's only… He has a bit of an odd complexion.” The elderly midwife said with a bit of a frown on her face. Zhipei’s eyes, however, lit up at the word son. He and his wife had been trying for many years for a child before finally succeeding, and he got a son on the first try! He couldn’t be happier, regardless of the complexion of the boy’s skin. When he saw the smooth, white skin of his son that would usually be associated with a girl, he’d been a little disappointed even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself. 

“As for the boy’s birthday,” the old granny peered out the window and got a bit of a shock. She’d known it was the night of the new moon and was prepared to have trouble tracking its location, but what she saw shocked her beyond all means. She couldn’t see the moon because the sky was blanked in black clouds. Not only that, but they were even lit up red as if they were burning with an intense fire in the heavens. She cast her eyes around the burning charcoal night sky before she found a region that was brighter than the rest, directly overhead. 

“Your son was born on during the moon’s apex, a very auspicious sign. Not only that, but it was an unexpected eclipse, if I’m not wrong! Since the moon is at its apex and mating with the sun, as well as this coming day being the solstice, that shall be his birthday. Let it be known. Hmm, Lord Feng, what shall you name your son?” The granny midwife asked this as she passed the delicate looking boy to his father. 

Feng Zhipei received his son and looked down at him. The boy felt a lot more firm than any baby Zhipei had held before, as if he were more muscle than fat, with speckled grey eyes and a wide smile. He looked out the window as well, observing the night sky, before slowly walking over to his wife who’d been tracking her baby with her eyes the entire time. He sat on the bed next to her and cradled their son over to her.

The mother received her child and smiled down at him with glistening eyes, as moist as her sweat covered body that was still displayed to the world. Although she and her husband both had black hair and brown eyes, her son had grey eyes and his hair color was unknown. She could see the beginnings of as strong bone structure which was starkly different from his beautiful and smooth skin. He was going to be a very handsome man who stood at the top of the world looking down on all others. As she stared deeply into the infants eyes, he stared back. Not just looking, she felt, but observing with all his might. It was silly but she felt like the child was already a young man in that moment.

“Feng Jiao. He will burn down the world and rebuild it in his image.” Weifeng Xue named her son, then checked with his father for approval. Her husband gave her a nod and smile.

“Feng Jiao it is.” The baby choose that moment to giggle, causing all in the room to notice at once that he had stopped crying almost right after being born. Nobody chose to bring it up, but all knew it was odd for the child to have stopped screaming so soon after being stolen from his mother’s womb.

“Well then, young lord and lady, I will be on my way.”

“Old Granny, wait!” Feng Rushi turned around with a smirk, annoyed at being called old granny but unable to refute the fact that she’d been the midwife during Feng Zhipei’s birth as well. She glowered at the new father for a moment before quirking her eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“You, err…” The man looked helplessly down to his wife, unable to articulate what he was thinking. Weifeng Xue quickly figured out what was wrong from her husband's eyes and spoke up for him as her face turned as red as the flames that had lit up the room earlier.

“Miss Rushi, we have some spare clothes packed away in the other room.”

The old granny looked at her, confused for a brief second before looking at the husband and noticing his nakedness, then looking back at Weifeng Xue’s nakedness. She looked down and realized her clothes had also been burned away during the childbirth, but they’d been so busy and concerned that she hadn’t even registered it.

“Right! Right! Right! Goodbye then!” Feng Jiao’s eyes trailed after the wrinkled old granny as she strutted out of the room before closing the door. He knew this was going to be an interesting life.