Chapter 1: The Beginning
In Tonton valley, a boy trudged through the wind and rain with only a sled full of wood and the clothes on his back.
The wind was so strong that he could barely walk 10 meters every minute.
He had long lost count of the times he had almost been blown away by the wind.
Every muscle in his body was aching.
His skin had cracked and his feet were bleeding.
The only thing that kept him moving was the fact that without this wood, he wouldn't be able to eat for the next 3 days.
In fact, even with this wood, he would only be able to afford 2 meals. Even with this realization, he continued forcing his way against the wind. If not to eat, then to prove his resolve to himself.
After an hour of fighting bitterly against the wind and the rain, he had made it back to the village. Although small, the village walls provided some much needed protection against the wind.
It was much easier to make it home without the wind blowing against him. Closing the door behind him, Zhou Fan collapsed on his bed, gasping from exhaustion. It had been a long time since he had felt this tired. To no surprise, he fell asleep soon after pulling his blanket onto himself.
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The next day, he awoke at noon to the sound of his own stomach. Crawling out of bed, he made his way to the small yard in front of his house. Miraculously, both the sled and the wood had made it through the storm.
Dragging the sled, he made his way over to Old Man Yang's carpentry store. Since the village was small, it took only 3 minutes to make it to the small store. However, when the store came into view, Zhou Fan saw an incredible sight. Directly in front of Old Man Yang's store, there was once a tree. It had always been the biggest tree within the village walls. However, now, no tree stood in front of Old Man Yang's store. Instead, a smoldering tree trunk no more than 2 meters in size replaced the old tree.
It was unfathomable to Zhou Fan how this could have happened. After staring in awe at what was once a proud tree, he noticed an old man standing right next to it. The old man was Yang Zhuwei, also known as Old Man Yang. " Old Man Yang, what the he** happened here here?" "Hey boy", he said,"I'm not too sure myself." It seemed he himself was as dumbfounded as I. "Have you ever heard of this before" I asked. Old Man Yang was the oldest and most experienced person in the village after all. " Not at all", he said.
Suddenly, the middle aged woman across the street shouted at us," I saw what happened!" Looking over at her, we saw her haggard appearance. "The storm had kept me up all night" she said, "I was looking out the window when all of a sudden, a lightning bolt struck the tree."
"Hisssss." Sucking in a breath of air, Old Man Yang's face paled. It was something too shocking to hear after all. While they had seen and heard lightning strikes before, none of them had ever seen something that had been hit.
Later, after we had all calmed down, I sold the wood to Old Man Yang. He handed me 5 copper coins for the entire load. It was a reasonable amount that would allow me to buy three meals. One more than I had expected. Luckily, meals were one of my only expenses. The house I live in was passed down to me by my parents after they died from the disease outbreak years ago. I was only 6 years old then. 4 years have passed since then and I have been surviving on my own. Luckily, there were people like Old Man Yang and Auntie Sung, the lady across from Old Man Yang's store, to help me before I was old enough to do hard labor.
After buying some bread, I found myself once again standing in front of the tree. It was something truly unbelievable. Lightning is something that no one in this village, or perhaps the entire world, understands. Where does it come from? Why does it only come on stormy days? How powerful is it?
While asking myself these questions, I found my hand moving towards the tree. Touching it, I felt a zap. For a single moment, it felt as if my mind had become clearer. I felt as if everything in the world had become just a bit more understandable. Just as fast as it came, it went.
Even though it lasted a single moment, I felt as if I had understood something of the world. And of myself. Without knowing why, I found myself sitting against the tree, curling up my legs and putting my hands together in a clasp. I felt as if there was something else in the world. Something that I could neither see nor touch. Since I couldn't see it, I decided to close my eyes. Falling into the depths of my mind, I found my mind had become clear of all thoughts. With the sole intention of sitting and breathing, I could no longer sense the flow of time. After an unknown amount of time, I saw something. Not with my eyes but with my mind. It looked like a speck of dust. Grey and tiny. So tiny one would never see it. However, in the infinite darkness of my mind, it was as glaring as the sun. When I saw it, I instinctually took a breath. Not with my body, but with my mind. The grey speck slowly floated over to me. Although I could no longer feel the passing of time, this brief moment felt like an eternity. Eventually, the speck reached me. Flowing into my body, I felt as if a whole new world was appearing in front of me.
Chapter 2: Brains and Brawn
Opening my eyes, I noticed that the day had passed and the moon was hanging in the sky. The next thing I noticed was a horrible stench. Looking down, I noticed some sort of black gook sticking to me. It is ,by far, the most disgusting thing I had ever looked at. Even a mangled corpse would be less revolting than this sticky black monstrosity.
Jumping into action immediately, I ran to the river next to the village as fast as I could. However, just moments after running, I tripped over my own legs. Perhaps it was the darkness of the night or the incredible speed I instantly accelerated too. Unfortunately, I had no time to pay attention to these occurrences as my senses were completely overloaded with the sight and smell of the black gook.
Jumping over the village walls and sprinting towards the river, I was so focused on getting there that I didn't even notice the astonishing speed I was moving. A journey that should've taken 10 minutes from Old Man Yang's house to the river took only 3 minutes!
Seeing the river ahead, I immediately jumped as high as I could to plunge into the river. Once again, I failed to notice the fact that I had jumped from the banks to the center of the 20 foot wide river.
Washing the gook off of my body as frantically as I could, I started to think properly again. Once I had got it all off, I sat on the banks of the river and looked up into the stars. My mind was moving faster than it had ever had before. Without realizing it, I had counted all the stars in the night sky after a single minute. 2,875. That's how many stars I could see this night.
While astonished at my thinking ability, I noticed something touching my body. I glanced down to see an average sized water snake had curled around my body. Instinctually, I grabbed it in an attempt to pull it off of my body and throw it into the water. However, when I grabbed its body, I failed to control my strength and squeezed it into a mush. The snake hadn't even had the chance to realize what was happening before it was killed.
Frantically throwing the half mush, half corpse snake into the river, I once again jumped into the river to clean myself off. Pondering how my body was able to easily crush that snake, I realized that I was much too tired to think. Making my way back to the village, the trip took much longer than when I was running.
20 minutes later, I made it back to my small house and jumped into my small bed. Soon after jumping in, I fell asleep. Waking up, I got out of bed and made my way out of the house to grab some bread from Johns bakery. Even after eating 2 slices, enough to fill me up any other day, I realized I was still starving. Spending the rest of my money, I bought 6 more slices of bread in order to satisfy my hunger.
Afterwards, I was finally able to sit down and think about yesterday's events. The grey speck, the black gook, the quick counting of my brain, and the easy crushing of the snake. Deciding to further test my body, I set off to Tonton valley with my axe. Coming to my usual spot, I noticed the destruction that the storm caused. Multiple trees were either bending or completely knocked over. Luckily, there were many more in fine condition. The valley had a fair amount of protection from the wind after all.
Finding a relatively unaffected tree, I got in position to cut it down. The first swing lodged the axe fully into the tree. Astonished, I pulled the axe out with surprising ease and swung the axe once again. The second swing mirrored the first one and by the twentieth swing, the medium size tree started falling.
I was completely dumbfounded with my own strength. The least swings I had ever needed to knock down any tree was more than 50. Not to mention, a tree of this size often took over 500 swings to cut down. Once it fell and I regained my witts, I started cutting it into sections. I hadn't only come here to test my strength after all. I also needed money as I had used all of it in order to buy food this morning. After an hour of work, I had cut down and chopped up 8 medium sized trees! The quickest I had ever cut down 8 trees was 10 hours! Not to mention, I barely felt any fatigue after the constant cutting.
Turning around, I looked at my sled and realized that it is far too small to carry 8 trees. Loading up as much as I could fit, I dragged it to Old Man Yang's shop. After 3 trips back and forth, I was 25 copper richer. Repeating the action of cutting down 8 trees and bringing them back in three trips 3 more times, I finally saved up a silver. Unfortunately, it took all day. If it wasn't for my increased strength and stamina, I would've collapsed after the first three back and forth trips.
Deciding to pass on dinner tonight in preparation for tomorrow, I went to sleep.
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Waking up, I went to Old Man Yang's store and bought a much better sled from him. This sled could carry 8 trees worth of wood. Old Man Yang was naturally suspicious when he saw that I had brought back 32 trees worth of wood yesterday. However, luckily for me, (since I had no reasonable explanation), Old Man Yang used to live in the Imperial city where asking too many questions is a quick way to get killed. The sled only costed 95 copper, so I had enough to get a couple slices of bread from Johns bakery. Setting off to the valley, I prepared to spend all day cutting trees.
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