Chapter 2 - Breakfast

  Ryu woke up in the shore of a small river, half submerged, and his once refined blue robes were now so torn and worn out that they were no more than mere rags. He slowly and painfully tried to get up, but he was too weak, too injured and had now a twisted ankle, the best he could manage was to barely sit up. He looked around and tried to figure out where he was.

  ‘I must have fallen into the river that runs in the bottom of that cliff and then was dragged here.’ All he could see was a flush green and thick forest with a small river running by. ‘If I remember correctly that river was the river He that runs north into the great Silver River and then it continues through the Ice Waste and into the North Sea. If so, then this must be the Dark Forest.’

  The Dark Forest was a forest that spans almost all the length of the northern region of the Xia continent, as for width, it went from Rock City in the southern part of the northern region to the Frozen Mountains. It was inhabited mostly by animals, but it also housed low level magical beasts, a great number of them.

  Even though they were low level magical beasts, their presence made Ryu fearful because they were still stronger than any human of the same level, much less him that had no dantian. When this thought occurred to him, he remembered what happened, how his family had treated him for years and how it all ended. He wondered if Zishan was dead, if his mother also died.

  He looked at the river and saw his reflection. He saw a pale, frightened boy with messy dark hair, freckles and missing his front teeth. He looked to his side and saw his broken left forearm just dangling there. His family had betrayed him, acute pain ran throughout his entire body, he was weak, alone and cold in an isolated forest full of deadly beasts that wanted to eat him.

  ‘No they are not my family anymore. Probably weren’t for a long time now.’

  He thought of giving up. Just letting go and dying peacefully, but the fact that he was where he was, how he was, instead of bringing him dread and sadness, brought him an incredible sense of peace and freedom. For very first time in his live, he could do anything he wanted, be anyone he wanted and he had no one to account for or to. His mind was clear and revenge filled his heart, like a fire breathing life into him.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  ‘I will not die here. The entire Zhou clan will perish at my hands. I will rise from the ashes and make the whole world tremble at the mere thought of me.’

  ‘Never will I be this helpless again. Never will others look down on me again’

  He had learned his lesson and now he wanted revenge. He wanted anything and everything.

  And this very feeling etched itself in his mind, in every fiber of his body, in his soul, in his very being. As long as he continued to exist, in all the worlds, in all the times, he would strive with everything he got to stand above all others and to end the damned Zhou Clan.

  As such he stared to ponder how, exactly, was he going to survive? He was cold, weak and hungry, very hungry. Ryu figured that there was nothing he could do about his weakness for now, but he should eat something and built a fire. The only problem was that he did not know what he could eat or how to build a fire.

  Since he did not know what was good to eat and what wasn’t he couldn’t pick flowers, leafs, fruits or berries because they might be poisonous. Since he was so weak he couldn’t hunt and since starving wasn’t an option, Ryu decided that he would risk it and eat whatever he could get his hands on. So he crawled his way to the nearest tree and with his good hand he pried a piece of bark out of it and ate it.

  ‘A true woody flavor.’

  The tree bark was disgusting and hard, but Ryu ate it none the less and when he finished he grabbed another piece, and another and another. Soon he had taken all the bark he could from that tree, but it didn’t even begin to quench his hunger, so he moved to the next tree, and then the next and the next. He also began eating fallen leaves, grass, flowers, ants and worms, but no matter what he ate it felt like it would never satisfy him.

  Night fell and Ryu, hungrier than ever, remembered that he read somewhere that by striking two rocks together it was possible to make a spark and create fire, so he took a few leaves and dry branches, two rocks and crawled back to a small crevice he had found by the river shortly after he woke up. There he spent most of the night unsuccessfully trying to make fire and ended up falling asleep before managing it.

  When morning came Ryu tried to get his bearings and think things trough.

  ‘My family must have sent people to retrieve my body, but I can’t see the plateau of Rock City, which means I am pretty far into the forest and chances are whoever they sent won’t be coming nowhere near here.’

  ‘My front teeth are still missing, I have a few broken ribs and left forearm and now my right ankle is twisted. I should try making a sling for my arm. There is nothing much I could do about the rest.’

  The next few days were pretty much the same. On the third Ryu actually managed to make fire, but he let it die out the next day. Fortunately all the experience he accumulated to make the first fire didn’t go to waste as he was now able to create fires more easily and in less time.

  As the days went by Ryu lost the track of how long he had been in the forest. After a while his foot healed which granted him new mobility, but on the other hand his broken left forearm was looking worse by the day.