Kenki takes a bite out of a plum, wincing at the throbbing pain originating from his buttcheeks. He shifts his position into a less painful one.

He side-glances Linua, his mother, careful so that she doesn't notice him looking. She's tying her hair, the same brown color as his.

Funnily enough, Ken's hair is longer than hers.

"I just wanted to wake him for breakfast" the boy mutters under his breath. 'I didn't think that the tickling would make him shit himself! I swear, it was an accident, why did I have to get my ass spanked?'

He exhales all of the air in his lungs. Ken has found that taking a deep breath only serves to further fuel his frustrations, whereas exhaling seems to do the opposite. He holds for several long seconds before finally inhaling, his anger suddenly gone.

'Well. if I'm being honest, while I wouldn't have spanked my kids had I been in her position I still would have been really pissed off. A perfectly fine pair of pants are now permanently ruined. No matter how much you wash them, that brown stain aint coming off.'

Finishing off his plums and bread, the same meal he'd had last night, Ken dusts himself off and stands from his spot.

'I better make myself scarce. She was pissed off at the start of the day to begin with - without adding our shenanigans to the list. I think she found out that dad brought me to harvest the spiritual wheat..'

He is reminded of the question he went to sleep with yesterday night. That is - what about his future?

'First things first I need to figure out where to get money. The paper idea's an alright start but it's best if I can avoid dealing with the village cultivator. From what I've heard he's very… volatile. To the point where people have been chopped in two only for looking at him the wrong way - if rumors are to be believed.'

'I don't need to deal with cultivators, I'm certain that there will be plenty of demand for paper in the city of Themten.'

Entering the kid room he prepares for the day. He'll be harvesting the plums along with his mother and Yun while his bigger brother and his father will be reaping the regular wheat. Some of the plums will be sold while most of them will be cut into thin pieces and left out in the sun to dry in preparation for winter.

'I'll have to source my money through more 'mortal' means, if I wish to deal with the cultivator I'd best do it when I have several degrees of separation.'

"Where are my…" Kenki rummages through his pockets.

'Where are my lockpicks!?' Alarmed, he checks his pockets again. He finds nothing.

'Did they drop from my pocket when I was sleeping?' He dashes over to his bed to check. He finds nothing on the wool covering so he removes it to search through the hay.

There's a good reason why the phrase 'to find a needle in a haystack' exists. The boy rummages through the hay for minutes, checking the spots where he usually hides his things but nevertheless still finds nothing.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

'Damn it' he angrily stomps on the wooden floorboards, making them creak. 'I spent such a long time making those. It takes such an unreasonable amount of time to file down bone, I have no desire whatsoever to spend four days doing that again.' He stomps the floor again.

'Ill have to retrace my steps from yesterday, last time I had the keys was when I picked the shed where Ginta lives. There we went from the shed to the abandoned farm. And from the abandoned farm I ran back home. The most likely scenario is that they slipped out of my pocket when I'd been running back for dinner.'

'First, however, I'll have to spend the next few hours harvesting plums.' He picks up the basket in the corner of the room and leaves.

============================

The family has a total of four plum trees, all of them relatively young and close to the ground as they'd been planted by his father when he'd still been a child.

They're close to the ground but not close enough. All of the low-hanging fruit have already been gathered, leaving all the higher ones unpicked.

Normally Linua would get a ladder and pick them herself but ever since Ken learned how to climb trees that has been unnecessary. He's surprisingly good at it.

'There we go' he tests the strength of the cloth tied around his waist and the tree trunk.

It doesn't budge or untie itself.

'Okay then.' He starts off by grabbing the plums within his reach and dropping them down for Yun and his mother to catch. They store them away in the baskets by their feet.

"Tsk '' Ken grips one of the plums slightly annoyed. The fruit has a noticeable hole in it, as if it had been drilled through.

"Pigeons." He mutters with venom in his voice as he drops the fruit. Most of it can still be saved, the parts eaten by the birds can be carved out while the rest of the flesh of the fruit will be sliced and left to dry.

I ought to start doing some pest control, how hard could it be to craft a sling? I can maybe get it done in a day if I'm efficient, there's some young trees around here that have a nice bark perfect for the job. All I need to do is to peel it off of the tree and start weaving…

'How would a pigeon taste like actually? Is it anything like chicken? Poultry perhaps. I could seriously use some diversity in my diet. Having access to meat for only three days yearly has been difficult for a proud American like me. I have no desire to wait until founding day for my fix, that's a whole four months away.'

Running out of plums to pick he unties himself and moves to a different spot.

'Maybe I can get a bow? I can't see a situation in this life where a bow wouldn't be useful. It's Xianxia land after all, but where can I acquire one? It's not like I can buy one… I can make one but I'm really not feeling the inspiration to do all the R&D necessary, it's going to take me weeks.'

'Sling it is. It's cheap, fast and easy to make. All I'm going to need is a bit of practice shooting and I'll be set. I'm getting ahead of myself, all I want to do is to kill some pigeons. Bows are too overkill for some stupid flying pest.

Ken ties himself around the tree again once he finds a good spot.

'I'm trying to do too many things at once. Let's set short term, and long term goals. I'm going to spread myself thin if I try to accomplish everything that I have in mind.'

…

First things first, I need information and money. The biggest piece of information I'm after is how to become a cultivator. I know that you can join a sect to become one but how do you join a sect to begin with? And do you really need to be a member of a sect to become a cultivator?

'I need to start off small with the money, I can't go zero to one-hundred making the big bucks or I'll get burned by those more experienced than me. I'll begin trading for things in the village, the question is… what do I sell?

What would a villager need? Something that is simple enough to be made by a child, something that isn't too labor intensive. Paper sure isn't it.

Ken reaches for a plum to pluck as he contemplates.

'Well, those are the long term goals I guess. Money and information. I'm still five years old, I have eight to ten years to figure it out. While I won't be kicked out of the house it's expected that I move out by the time I'm fifteen. Or at least - be on my way to moving out.'

As a mid-term goal I need to go to the nearest town, scout things out if you will. From what I heard it has a population of around twenty or thirty thousand, its decently sized. It will greatly assist me in my long term goals as that's where I can begin making real money.

Ken looks down below to see his mother ready to catch the plums. Carefully he drops them one by one into her hands.

'So…Short term goals - find my lock-picks, craft a sling, make a small amount of money in the village.'

As he drops the latest plum down, Ken has an interesting thought.

'Wait. Didn't plums have a mild laxative effect?'

…

Oh..