The thick and eerie moonlight shone brightly on a clearing in a vast and ancient forest. A young human boy, between perhaps six and sixteen years, fiercely pounded his fists against an enormous boulder. I had placed the boulder here for the boy to use as practice. It had only been a few weeks, but already cracks had formed. At this rate, he would pulverize this boulder in only a few more months…

I sighed. Being the lazy snail I was, I grew tired from just thinking about carving out another boulder. However, if this boy were to keep knocking down trees for practice like he did before, it would be even more troublesome.

I unhurriedly rearranged my resting spot on top of a tree. Laying here was really not as comfortable as sleeping in my damp and snug little spring cave, but I wanted to keep an eye on this human child. Somehow this boy had roused the interest of this hundred thousand year old me, called the laziest and most apathetic immortal of all the realms.

I had been sleeping comfortably in my cave’s water pool, as I had for the past nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine years, when boom! Crash! Thud! A great fervor disturbed my sleeping. The first time, I simply flipped over and went back to sleep.

And when I did…

Boom! Crash! Thud!

I flipped over again.

Boom! Crash! Thud!

One more time…

Boom! Crash! Thud!

Eventually, I crawled out of my cave to take a peek at whichever meddlesome being disturbed my slumber. To my surprise, it was this young child. He was only a bit smaller than I, with inky black hair and fiery gold eyes. His tattered clothing clearly marked him as a peasant child from some nearby farming village, yet his comportment and expression showed a dignity far beyond his status. Not only that, he had toppled over the ten-thousand year trees with just his bare fists! While I had no contact with humans before, even I knew that they were too weak to perform such a feat without advanced cultivation. Humans, with their short lifespans, could only very rarely cultivate to this level. For this young boy to reach such a stage by himself, a small ripple of shock had flowed through me.

Still, I had been annoyed to have been woken by this kind of ruckus, so in my anger I ripped out a chunk of mountain and dropped it in the field to keep the boy from reaching the larger trees. I then returned to my cave in a huff, and sank back down to my pool to sleep.

But for some reason, I had become restless.

No matter how much I tossed and turned, I couldn’t fall back asleep again.

Was it that I had slept too much? Was my organ for storing sleep already filled? I had never before been unable to fall asleep. A bit panicked, I ended up crawling back out to wander and work off some energy. It was then that I saw the boy again. This time, he started using the rock to train his fists. His tiny hands struck the rock again and again, blood and sweat pouring down, his stern face unknowing of the pain his body surely must have felt. I found myself watching the boy in a rapture, astounded by how much effort he put into his training.

From then on, I had watched this boy train.

Several years had passed since then. I changed my resting spot from the cave to this tree, and my naps lasted for only a few hours or days instead of thousands of years as they had before. I took it upon myself to place new boulders whenever the boy ground down the old ones, and watched as the boy sprouted from a tiny human to a young man whose height surpassed mine. His body filled with muscle, strength lining his thin frame, and his stoic, pointy face grew a bit of magnetism. He was a fine example of humanity. Looking at the biographical novels which my elder sister had brought me, this boy was an exact illustration of those human immortals who started low and ended with powers above the skies. I had great hopes for the future of this young man, and was a bit thrilled to think that, in my own small way, this lazy and sheltered snail me had been involved in such an exciting and passionate story.

My keen eyes observed his cultivation leap from second rank of mortal cultivation, to third, to fourth, to fifth. Now, he was at the peak of the fifth rank, teetering on the cusp of sixth. I think that, by the end of tonight’s training, he would definitely break through.

The boy also realized this. He ended his physical training and sat down for his meditation routine. At this stage, I waved my hand and agitated the spiritual power in the area, making the density thicker than was natural. It only took the tiniest bit of effort from me but had significant effects on the speed of his cultivation, as if he were sitting not in an open forest clearing but an enclosed cultivation haven.

Since he was just sitting and channeling power, it was a bit boring for me to watch, so I closed my eyes and rested.

Hum hum…

I lightly dozed for a few hours.

The faint sound of screams reached my ears. I jolted awake, quickly expanding my spiritual sense to search for the cause of this noise. I saw the tiny mite-like flames of bandits raiding the nearby village, and the bright spark of the boy rushing back.

Oh, it seems the tribulation has come.

In all of the novels, the immortals wrote about how in their youth they encountered some traumatic and terrible event which pushed them past the limits of human cultivation. Sworn revenge was the top motivator for humans to cultivate to immortal power. It seemed that such an event had finally come for this little fighter.

I stepped off the tree and floated away. In what was only an instant for humans, I reached the village and watched it from above. Houses lit on fire, bloodthirsty bandits wielding their weapons, terrified peasants stumbling as they attempted to flee for their lives…

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Hey, wasn’t this a bit too brutal…

With an awkward expression I watched one disgraceful bandit chase after a beautiful woman, his intentions written clearly on his face. That woman whose appearance was like a fairy was the young boy’s mother. The father had gone a long time ago, and it was only this loving mother who raised the steadfast and determined young cultivator. If something were to happen to her, the boy would surely swear deathly revenge against the entire kingdom. With this motivating him, the boy would rise at a speed beyond mortal comprehension, topple countries and wreak havoc in the mortal plane before finally ascending to the heavens as an immortal.

Or so the stories go.

The mother struggled fiercely to escape, knocking over wood piles and throwing pots. She even brandished a pole against the soldier in a last-ditch attempt to beat him off. But obviously, this weak and frail woman wasn’t a match for a fierce bandit. The craven man gripped the pole and yanked it out of her hands, laughing cruelly as he reached out his hands to restrain her…

Ah, I really can’t bear to watch this.

Sorry, young boy. I’ll make it up to you, but for now you’ll have to cultivate without a reason for revenge.

With just a press of my consciousness, I tore the man into the air and crushed him into a tiny, compact ball. He fell to the ground with a light smack. I did the same to all the other bandits in the area, including the leader who sat on horseback. When its rider disappeared, the confused horse stamped its foot and tossed its head around.

The boy had arrived just at the right time to witness this. He stood, shocked, mouth gaping and eyes wide, then hurriedly snapped back to himself and searched for his mother.

At this time, I felt guilty. Even though I disposed of the bandits in the end, there were a few villagers who had been injured before I acted. Well, if I was going to interfere, I should go all the way, I told myself. So I landed in front of the boy’s shaken mother. She looked with wide and frightened eyes at the me who fell from the sky, then pressed herself to the ground in a kowtow.

“This servant thanks the heavenly Saint for saving my life!” she shouted. Whoa – such manners. Though she named my cultivation wrongly, I didn’t correct her and took out a bottle of medicinal salve.

“P-P-P-P-Prease wise,” I stuttered and shoved the bottle into her hands when she came up from kneeling. Ah! So embarrassing. I hadn’t talked to anyone in thousands of years. My mouth already forgot how to shape sounds. My face flushed with heat. I slapped my cold hands on my red cheeks to help my head cool down and wilted into my clothing. If only I were still in my snail shape. I wanted so badly to shrink back into my shell!

“Ah…” the mother confusedly looked at the bottle in her hands. “This…”

Giving up on speaking, I directly transmitted into her head, ‘That is a bottle of medicinal salve to use on the injured. They were hurt only because I hesitated to interfere, so please use this to amend my mistakes…’

The mother was the village’s resident doctor and healer, so it was most efficient to give this salve to her. Also, because she raised such an outstanding child, I had no concerns that she would hoard the salve and sell the medicine I made out of my own body. It’s embarrassing to find yourself on the market as a miraculous cure for all ailments and mortal wounds, after all.

Having said my piece, I launched myself into the sky and hurtled my way back home, unknowing of the boy who just skidded to a halt in front of his mother, bright eyes tracing my path.

For the next few months, the young boy didn’t return to the forest.

In my snail form, I nested under a roof tile of a village house. From my perch, I watched the boy diligently rebuild the burned buildings side by side with the adult men. The villagers took the wood of the ancient trees the boy had knocked down. The boy carried the huge logs here and there, cutting them swiftly with the power of his qi. The villagers took the planks and turned them into houses. When that was done, the boy took up a hoe and set to tilling fields.

This kind of daily labor persisted for a while. I mostly dozed through it.

All of the people who were injured in the attack quickly recovered with the help of the salve. The mother, called Miss Su by the villagers, made it clear that a passing Saint saved them and gave this salve for the villagers’ recovery. Everyone praised the benevolent Saint many times… Hearing this kind of thing was mortifying, so I retracted my senses to only follow the young boy, Su Yulin.

He was, overall, a silent individual. He barely ever spoke, mostly nodding, shaking his head, or staring to communicate. I felt kinship with him because of this.

At the same time, I was slightly worried. He spent so much time at the village, I wondered if my interference drove him from the path of cultivation back to farming. I comforted myself by keeping in mind that he had just broken through to the sixth rank of mortal cultivation, and might just be taking a rest before starting the long path of to the seventh rank.

So I waited, and waited. And fell asleep a couple of times…

When I woke, I heard the rare sound of Su Yulin’s voice.

“Mother.” His quiet, solemn voice echoed in my head, rousing me from slumber.

“Welcome back, Yulin. Are you all done with today’s work?” Miss Su asked, not pausing in her task of grinding medicinal leaves in a bowl.

Yulin made a movement my senses showed as nodding. He had a stressed aura around him, seemingly nervous over some matter. I sharpened my senses.

The sound of grinding stopped. Miss Su put down the bowl with a thunk. She stood and left the room, rustling around to take out what I felt to be a sharp and high grade sword from a hidden part of the house.

Yulin’s aura held a tint of shock.

This sword had belonged to Yulin’s father. Miss Su revealed that the father had been a cultivator of Saint rank, but disappeared before Yulin was born. Since then, she had held on to his only memento while raising Yulin by herself.

She gave this sword and a pile of money to Yulin.

“I’ve always known that you wished to train in a sect,” she said, neither sad nor happy. Simply straightforwardly, as if relaying a fact of life: the sun will rise in the morning, stars will shine in the evening, one day my son will leave. My heart stirred at the elegance of Miss Su. She had long prepared for her son’s future.

In a few weeks, a large competition would be held at the Kingdom’s capital. At this event, many sects and schools would reward winning cultivators and examine potential recruits. This kind of thing was most beneficial for poor cultivators who weren’t able to travel to faraway sects by themselves.

Yulin wished to attend this event.

From this small village to the capital was a traveling distance of exactly two weeks for a sixth-rank cultivator, so Yulin would probably get there just in time if he left immediately.

“The bandits…” Yulin was hesitant to leave his home behind unprotected.

“Yulin!” Miss Su’s voice turned as sharp as the sword she gave. “With your current strength, do you think you can protect us from everything? What will happen, will happen. There is no path for you if you stay here. As your mother, what I wish is to help my son rise to his fullest potential, not to chain him to the ground.”

She took him into her arms and hugged him tightly.

“Even if I were to die right now, I would have no regrets. The world may be wide and treacherous, and the obstacles on your path will be many, but Yulin, be strong, be courageous. You have my heart, and your father’s strength. There is nothing for you to fear.” Her voice trembled with just the faintest bit of tears. “I believe… I know that you can overcome anything. Do you understand?”

Trembling, Yulin lowered his head while hugging his mother.

“… I understand.”

That day, Yulin left his village.

Naturally, I came along with him.

Under a flap of the cloth binding Yulin’s sword, the two snail eyes poked out and waved.