Chapter Text
Jin Ling has grown up seeing his Uncle Jiang, hunting down people and torturing them as an everyday normal occurence. He has grown up on tales of the great evils of the Yiling Patriarch. If they used the same cultivation method they had to be as evil as him, right? Right? They were the bad guys, so his Uncle Jiang was just doing his duty and was protecting the cultivation world from corruption.
At least that was what he was repeating to himself when he couldn't sleep and wandered in Lotus Pier during the night, while hearing the screams of the demonic cultivators echoing. He knew he wasn't meant to hear it, but he got a little bit carried away and wandered to an area, where he wasn't permitted to enter.
He couldn't help to notice, that his Uncle Jiang was very happy to follow mere accusations and hearsays, when he captured the so called demonic cultivators. Scholars and historians, whose research area was the demonic cultivation of the Yiling Patriarch weren't safe either. Neither the family members or associates of the 'evil people'.
Jin Ling began to notice, and he began to fear his Uncle Jiang more and more. He began to notice and he just couldn't make himself stop noticing of things, but he didn't dare to speak up either. He had seen first hand what happens to those, who 'sympathize with demonic cultivators'.
The Yiling Patriarch famously didn't pass down his knowledge, but it didn't stop people from beginning their own research on the subject. Of course, nobody was as brilliant as the Patriarch, but once the cat was out of the bag, it couldn't be put back down.
There were really terrible demonic cultivators, but honestly, Jin Ling has seen way more corruption and evil deeds just from the cultivators, who were following the so-called righteous past, unfortunately his own sect wasn't an exception either to that.
With his new awareness towards the world, he made observations, that he wished he had never known. And all of that happened, because he wasn't able to sleep one night, he felt quite annoyed with himself.
One night, after he listened in for hours of the screaming of a demonic cultivator in his uncle's tender care, he just couldn't help himself and he sneaked in after his uncle went to sleep.
What he saw was a horrible scene, definitely not for a child's eyes, but he braved himself, and faced it. He gave some food and water to the man who was wearing tattered, but still distinct scholarly robes. And they talked for quite a long time. Jin Ling couldn't sneak the man out, but he was able to have a conversation with him, for a couple of days.
The things they talked about sat very uncomfortably with the young master Jin. Before the man reached his inevitable demise, he gave Jin Ling his personal research notes, which he hid in a special qiankun pouch.
After that began Jin Ling's quest to try to understand and save the people, who didn't deserve their untimely end. The young master Jin thus began to walk his own dark single plank-bridge road, instead of his nice broad road.