7 Ch 07 - An Awkward Opportunity

Author's Note: Unless specified otherwise, the INTENDED mental image for 'robes' are the different variants of mage robes in Skyrim, in different colours. But you are free to imagine anything you want and I won't say anything.

---

Shen Jian's life fell into a routine.

Wake up, eat, hunt, try to cultivate, fail, sleep.

It was mechanical. It needed barely any thought. It was demotivating.

He was once more down in the dumps, mildly depressed. Much less than before but still prominent.

Logically, Shen Jian knew what he had to do. If he didn't know how to cultivate, all he had to do was leave the village and go join a cultivation sect, one of those organizations that specialized in taking in disciples and teaching them to cultivate. Though, he knew sects did more than just that.

However, even for him, travelling the world alone while he was still barely an 11-year-old was a bit too much. His only hope was to grow up quickly. His current plan was to leave the village when he turned 15.

But as someone who had prided himself in achieving things by himself, his continuous failure in what he saw as the simplest of steps in cultivation was difficult to swallow. So it wasn't particularly a surprise that he was dejected.

The feeling of wanting to give up was strong. But at this point, even trying and failing had become a part of his routine.

As things stood however, he effectively had nothing to do for years to come. His physical training felt like it had reached a bottleneck as well. So he really did have nothing to do other than just… waste his time.

Shen Jian felt listless. He was left with no goals to strive for.

Secretly, he wished something would change.

---

On one normal evening, Shen Jian was resting on the couch after having completed a set of exercises. He was covered in a light sweat and breathing deeply.

He had acknowledged that he had nothing to do. Thus for the time being, the only thing he could do was to make sure his muscles didn't atrophy. It would be extremely disheartening if all his years of hard work was wasted away due to neglect.

All of a sudden, he heard the sound of loud gongs.

He raised his head in surprise. That was the sound of the bell the village head would ring to call for a village meeting. His eyes went to the window, glancing at the red sky. It was an odd time to call for a meeting. And based on the number of chimes, it was a call for everyone in the village, not just the family heads.

Wiping off his sweat with a towel, Shen Jian straightened his clothes. Feeling presentable enough, he left the house and headed towards the village centre.

As expected, there was a crowd there by the time he arrived. Though the village he lived in was remote, it was still a decently big village and despite the large number of victims from the recent epidemic, there was still more than a hundred people living in it.

Leveraging his short stature, Shen Jian squeezed between multiple people and made his way to the front. Popping out a bit to the side of the empty centre, Shen Jian looked around to find out what was going on.

His eyes widened.

There was a man wearing a grey robe standing tall in front of everyone. Coupled with the bored and vaguely disdainful look on his face, Shen Jian knew at once who, or rather what this person was.

A cultivator.

Looking at the usually hunchbacked old village head looking even more hunchbacked than usual with how much he was bowing, Shen Jian and the other people in front looked at each other hesitantly before quieting down and bowing slightly.

The man nodded in satisfaction at the display of subservience. Then he opened his mouth. "Hear me!"

Shen Jian almost blanched. Though the voice wasn't loud, his stomach felt like it caved in slightly, as if he was standing next to a deep drum. Glancing around, he found that he wasn't the only one who felt that way.

"I am Elder Mo of the Windy Sky Sect. I have been travelling with my disciple but due to certain circumstances, I will be leaving her here for a period of a few months." The cultivator said.

His words were outright more of an order than a request.

While he listened to the man's words with one ear, Shen Jian paid close attention to the man's presence.

One of the good things that happened from his continuous exposure to the energy needed to cultivate was that he learned the ability to sense the energy even without falling into a deep meditation trance. And though not perfect, he could sense the energy around him in a small area around him even while he was doing something else. He just had to focus.

Shen Jian looked at the cultivator and was feeling that those very same senses of his were going haywire. If he had to make a comparison, while the energy in the air around him felt like numerous fire sparks, the energy within the cultivator felt like a raging wildfire.

It was overwhelming.

"Of course," the man continued and Shen Jian broke out of his trance "If you look after her well, I will see to it that you are rewarded." Saying that, a small pouch suddenly appeared in his hand.

Holding it up so that everyone could see, he put his hand in it and brought out… a gold coin.

Many people stared incredulously.

The cultivator placed the coin back inside and shook the pouch. It made clinking sounds. Presumably, the entire pouch was filled with gold coins.

Gulps were heard all around.

Shen Jian wasn't any better either. As far as he knew, non-cultivators used metallic coins as currency with bronze coins being the least valuable followed by silver coins and then gold coins as the most valuable.

And in their village, silver coins were the highest that was circulated. Even then, the most lucrative trade in their village still didn't involve more than ten silver coins.

A single gold coin was worth a hundred silver coins.

So it was understandable why these simple villagers were feeling so incredulous at someone casually throwing around gold coins as if they were nothing.

"That is if you look after her well. If you don't…" The cultivator trailed off and an incomprehensible heaviness settled on everyone's shoulders.

The feeling wore off just as quickly as it came and the cultivator put away the pouch. Then he calmly motioned his hand in invitation.

From behind him, a girl around Shen Jian's age walked forward timidly and stood beside him. She was a pretty girl with light green eyes and her hair set in a ponytail. She wore a loose blue flowing dress that reached her shins.

She looked at the crowd and fidgeted for a moment. She took a deep breath and tried to compose herself. Then she spoke confidently.

"My name is Mei-" She cut herself off suddenly and without any change in expression, continued. "I will be staying here for about two months. Please take care of me." She almost bowed but aborted the motion midway and stood straight as if nothing happened.

Shen Jian looked at her with interest. While the man had felt like a wildfire with respect to energy, the girl on the other hand felt like a candle fire. Incomparably smaller but still bigger than the sparks. And bigger than Shen Jian's own.

In other words, the girl was also a cultivator. Lower in level than the man but definitely someone who had stepped foot on the path.

Shen Jian was excited.

Afterwards, the cultivator and the girl talked a little with the village head before the man gave his goodbyes to the girl.

A sword appeared in his hand out of nowhere. Shen Jian blinked but tried to ignore the way it suddenly popped into existence and instead focused on its appearance.

It looked amazingly normal at first glance. No obvious shine or glow or anything. It was however a bit wider in width. The only difference between it and a normal longsword was that this one touched his energy senses slightly.

The man tossed the sword in front of him and to everyone's surprise, it hovered in place horizontally about a foot above the ground. The man calmly stepped on the hovering sword and stood with his hands held behind his back.

The sword started rising into the air vertically, carrying the man up above. Once it reached above most of the buildings, it started to move forward. It started slow but then picked up a sudden acceleration and zipped through the air leaving a fading trail behind it.

Within moments, the cultivator was gone. The man had crossed the entire village in less than five seconds and had turned into a dot in the sky in less than ten.

Shen Jian's eyes shone. This was what he was aiming for. Incomparable strength. Indomitable presence. Incomprehensible power!

He looked at the girl, Mei. Probably not her real name considering the way she said it. Shen Jian didn't care much. He just hoped that he'd get a chance to talk to her soon.

As the village head began to lead the girl somewhere – probably to the house she'll be staying in – the assembled crowd began to disperse, talking about this and that. Some of them spoke about the cultivator's barely hidden disdain for everyone else and some spoke about the way he made things appear from thin air.

Shen Jian didn't have much to think about either of those. In most novels he'd read, cultivators always treated those weaker than themselves – even other cultivators – with disdain, let alone mundane non-cultivators. Elder Mo's attitude thus wasn't much of a surprise.

As for items appearing from nowhere, Shen Jian believed it was due to a storage item. Usually in settings like these, people tended to have 'space rings' or 'storage rings' or something else that functioned as portable inventory artifacts where they could somehow store items within them.

Though he didn't see any ring itself because he was too busy ogling at other things, Shen Jian wasn't too startled by the concept.

It was still a nice experience to see such a magical thing though.

With everyone leaving, Shen Jian gave one last look to the girl before turning around and heading home.

---

The next morning, Shen Jian wanted to find that girl Mei and talk to her about cultivating.

Unfortunately, his introvert attitude that hadn't been a problem for a while reared its head and ruined those plans. It ruined them so thoroughly that he wasted the entire day without even stepping foot outside his house.

Shen Jian felt embarrassed of himself.

So the next day, he decided to wander near her house and hopefully stumble into her and perhaps she would start a conversation with him because he was the only other person near her age in the village.

That plan was smashed when he didn't see even a trace of her the whole day.

Another day wasted.

On the third day, Shen Jian just sat on a fence in a relatively open area and hoped for the best.

To his luck, the girl did appear that day, wandering around the village, looking at the few stalls set up. While Shen Jian tried not to make it seem like he was ogling her, Mei walked near him, glanced at him and…

… passed him.

She kept on walking without sparing him a second glance.

For a fleeting moment, he entertained the thought of calling out to her but his mind refused to even let him open his mouth.

Shen Jian silently went home, climbed onto his bed, buried his head in a pillow and let out an embarrassed cry.

As he laid on his bed a while later, staring blankly at the ceiling, he suddenly thought about his actions the previous few days.

"I feel like a stalker." He mumbled.

He cringed and buried his face in the pillow again.

The next day, Shen Jian decided not to go looking for the girl again. He clearly didn't have the courage to speak up properly. Not yet at least. Never had he hated his introverted mind until that day.

He decided instead to let nature take its course. Anyway, the girl would apparently stay in the village for a couple months. Perhaps he'd stumble onto an opportunity for conversation. In the meantime, he still had training and hunting to do.

---

Mei stepped out of the house given to her and wandered towards the open area at the centre of the quaint village. She was still settling down from entering the first level of cultivation a few days ago and didn't need to focus on her cultivation yet. Although she knew she was procrastinating, she didn't mind going a bit slow for now.

Looking around her surroundings, she wondered if she'd get to see that boy again.

She was aware that someone – specifically, a boy her age – was trying to get to know her. She first became aware of it when she overheard some gossiping women giggling about the fact a boy was roaming in the general area near her house while glancing at it every now and then.

Having no desire to acquaint herself with a random boy, Mei had tried her best to avoid the boy. It was surprisingly easy because some villager or the other was always talking about him and his whereabouts.

The only things she learned about him were his name – Shen Jian – and that he was a great hunter.

Mei was sceptical. How good of a hunter could a non-cultivator her age possibly be? She concluded that he was probably a good hunter relative to his age. Animals were usually skittish anyway so the boy probably had some good skill with a bow.

Hunting a boar or deer with a bow wasn't too hard with some decent skill and support.

Regardless, Mei did admit to being a bit curious though. So the next day, she didn't try to avoid him. She at least wanted to see what he looked like. It also wasn't wrong that she craved some company. With how Elder Mo had pressured them, the villagers had collectively chosen to either avoid her or keep contact to a minimum.

She couldn't quite blame them.

She spotted the boy she was looking for quite quickly. Even for a villager, he was quite well kept and handsome. It was easy to pick him out of a crowd. He was also trying and failing to not look at her.

Mei was amused. Was this the rumoured 'love at first sight'?

Feeling more curious than before, Mei kept a blank face and walked near him. She gave him a deliberate glance and kept walking, anticipating his call.

Yet he didn't call.

After a few moments, she peeked at him to see what he was doing. He was staring at the ground with his lips sucked in. Then he suddenly hopped off the fence he was sitting on and power marched out of the area.

'… What?'

Mei was confused. Was he not looking for her?

Feeling a bit silly, Mei returned to her home for the day and decided to stop procrastinating and cultivate instead.

Snapping back to the present, Mei discreetly looked around as she wandered, distantly feeling grateful that the other villagers didn't bother her. Perhaps Elder Mo intimidated them a tad bit too much seeing how they left her alone most of the time.

On the topic of her current interest however, she didn't see the boy anywhere. Even after she made a full circuit of the village, she still didn't see him.

Bummed out by his absence, Mei started to make her way home. When she neared her house however, a new piece of gossip entered her ears.

"Did you hear? Shen Jian got injured during a hunt!" A gasping woman exclaimed.

"What?! When?" Another woman asked in surprise.

"Just earlier. About an hour ago, he stumbled into the village holding his arm. The other hunters nearby checked him out and said his bone is cracked or something."

"No way!"

"It's true! I saw him visiting the doctor and coming out with a cast on his arm. I asked him if he was okay and he said that it'll heal in a month or two."

"Unbelievable… But it's strange. I've never heard of Shen Jian getting a serious injury like this before."

"I thought so too. Who knows? Maybe he was having a bad day."

"Could be. Or maybe he's trying to…"

"Hmm?"

"You know. The last few days…"

"Oh? Oh! I see. Hehe…" The two women fell into giggles.

Having heard enough, Mei stepped away from her hiding spot and moved towards her house.

She felt confused and exasperated. Was this some elaborate scheme to garner her attention?