Note - First ten chapters can be found here - https://dawnwuxia.wordpress.com/
That precious, beautiful memory of that day… and the short lived joy that accompanied it.
It was a bittersweet memory for the boy…
It all started when he was the age of 5.
This was the time where most children would start to cultivate the qi in their body, and decide what their future path would be once they could change it to Bloodlust or Affinity.
Would they decide to become a mighty warrior? Or a profound magus?
It was impossible to become a magic swordsman. Qi could only change to one thing, after all. If you chose to be a warrior, then you had bloodlust. If you chose to be a magus, then you had affinity.
That was that.
For the elements and the Paths, it depended on your nature.
For example, a person, with a strong and tough body who is also resilient would naturally become an earth-attribute magus if they chose to change their qi into affinity.
Similarly, a person with a righteous personality and kind tendencies would in turn make someone a Radiant Warrior, following the Path of Harmony, if they decide to turn their qi into bloodlust.
Growing up however, even if one’s personality took a radical change, the elemental affinity could not be changed. It was locked to what it was when one decided to change their qi.
When he was 5, he was put into the combat and cultivation training classes with the rest of the clan’s young generation.
That was when, to everyone’s amazement, it was shown that he was unable to gather and cultivate qi!
“What type of freak is he?”
“He’s useless.”
“What trash…”
As soon as this fact was exposed, he soon became a cripple and useless, in the eyes of the clan members.
And thus, leading to the current situation.
That day, when he was 8, she held her hand out for him.
Watched over him.
Protected him, to the best of her ability.
And in the end, died. Died, because of his ignorance, and his stubbornness.
Her actions that day made him view human nature in a new light.
There could be tenderness, there could be affection. There could be determination, and persistence in the face of death. The persistence to protect what you cherish. The morality to keep promises. The willpower to carry out tasks deemed impossible.
Even though he had been pushed around like this, for 3 long years at the time when he was 8, he still managed to keep a little bit of hope, for the nobility in humanity.
Hatred could not be erased. The cynical view of life that the boy had gained during these years would probably develop into his personality. However, new emotions could be formed that could sometimes counterbalance old ones.
Trust. This was something that the boy had developed after being protected by that girl. However, even though he could trust, he still wouldn’t do it easily, without considering someone a true comrade.
The boy’s heart wasn’t ugly. However, it wasn’t pure, either. Muddled up in between resentment and hope, what can one truly think about humans with a grey heart?
The world has an ugly side, and a veil; the world has a façade covering it. Unless you truly experienced the ugly side of the world, you would remain naïve, and prone to accidents due to betrayal.
If you doubted everything, and lived doubting everything and not finding any hope or joy in life, one might as well just take their own life to end their suffering.
This lesson, was taught to the boy indirectly due to his sufferings.
The boy knew that it was a valuable experience… but the injustice that accompanied it was nearly unbearable.
Just to be labeled as useless and trash because he could not follow the path of qi, did not mean that he could not have achievements in other fields.
Alchemy. Medicine. Blacksmithing. Leather Weaving. Botany.
He could have accomplishments in the various other fields that were labeled as necessary professions on this continent.
However, the Clan refused to give him an allowance to learn these arts.
He had to self-study. Teach himself what he wanted to learn, and teach himself what the other kids were learning from the Clan Instructors.
No one could be completely calm facing such injustices.
The boy had cried. He had yelled out. He even wanted to lash out at people sometimes, but he restrained himself. He had no power anyways, and could be crushed as easily as a human stepping on an ant.
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The strong survive, and the weak get trampled over and sacrificed.
What a terrible truth.
However, this had all cultivated the boy’s willpower and determination.
The spirit to never give up, to constantly endure.
The will to get stronger, to find a way to go against Heaven’s decree.
The determination to succeed.
*******************
Enduring the pain, the boy began looking intently at the ground, searching the mountains for medicinal herbs.
The mountain was rough, with little pebbles everywhere, the precipice of it around 550 feet above the ground. In the mountain, various grasses and flowers could be seen blooming within the cracks of the rocks.
“Sunlight Dew, Aurora’s Kiss, Natura’s Will, I need just one of any of these medicines…”
The boy knew a lot about various herbs and medicinal remedies due to him having a lot of interests and almost nothing to do every day except for studying.
Soon, he came to a narrow crag, with a bunch of greenish-silver flowers growing inside, accompanied by a bunch of grass clots.
The boy’s eyes opened wide. He was staring at the crag in shock.
“So many Natura’s Will flowers, and many of them are even first rate, too. I wonder if I can make if I sell them?”
He quickly woke up from his stupor, and started to collect all the flowers, putting some of them in his pants pocket and some in his small pack that he carried around with him.
He then quickly took out a flower, then started to crush it up in his hand, adding a little bit of water to the mixture from a nearby puddle. He started to rub it all over his injured areas, clenching his teeth while enduring the pain of the medicine touching his wounds and intermingling with his blood.
“Hell, why must the recovery process be always so painful…”
After his wounds clotted up for the most part, the boy let out a sigh, and started to trudge back to the clan’s base.
After a half hour walk, giant buildings connected to each other directly through verandas could be seen, in the form of a Siheyuan. Inside, there was a giant courtyard, and various smaller buildings inside, as well as the inner clan member’s living quarters.
The people from the outer clan lived behind the giant mansion in the back of the Siheyuan. That part was also the most dangerous part, as night attacks by wild magic beasts could happen at anytime and catch someone completely unprepared.
The outer sect members were all relatively disposable, and wouldn’t really affect the clan much. It was only the people in the inner sect that really mattered for the future of the clan.
Of course, the boy lived at the outer sect. How was someone who couldn’t even cultivate qi going to benefit the clan in the future?
Many in the clan secretly hoped that he would just die, as he was a deadweight that was wasting valuable resources of the Clan in their eyes.
Entering the first building and waving to the guards, the boy slowly made his way to the courtyard, where the training dummies were.
As the boy was walking away, the 2 guards watching over the entrance started to talk to each other about that boy.
“Don’t you feel a bit of pity for him? I’ve seen him train hard every day, and he self-studies by himself in the library most of the time. Shouldn’t the clan just let him pursue a different occupation in his life, and just let him be a doctor or alchemist instead of letting him waste his childhood like this?”
The other middle-aged guard turned to look at him.
“Sihan. Don’t feel pity for useless people. In this world, it is difficult to survive. The weak are just a burden for us. Personally, I want that child to disappear or die, because he is setting a bad example for the other kids.”
“But…!”
Sihan turned to stare at the older guard. The older guard ignored his gaze and continued, “The clan is the most important thing. We don’t need any weak links breaking it down.”
The young guard took a last look at the departing back of the child, and sighed.
Sometimes, life truly is unfair, and he felt blessed that he wasn’t born with that child’s disability. But the words of the elder guard were right. The Clan really didn’t need cripples that couldn’t do anything leeching off the Clan.