Village Life

"You're such a good boy, always helping your uncle gather food for the village," she said with a smile.

Yuan smiled back, feeling grateful for the kindness. "Thank you, Auntie. My uncle is the strongest person I know," he said with pride.

Just then, another group of older boys ran past, shouting and laughing as they carried their hunting spoils. Yuan watched them go with admiration, knowing that someday he, too, would have to learn how to hunt and provide for his village. But for now, he was content with the simple joy of gathering fruits and vegetables.

Thinking about this, Yuan sighed. The past CEO of a multinational company was now picking fruits and vegetables from the forest.

" How far the mighty have fallen" - Yuan felt amused by this thought. But if he had to be honest, he really enjoyed this type of manual labor. Every day when he returned home, he would feel satisfied with doing a good day's honest work.

The little boy, Yuan, skipped his way into the village with a large basket in his arms. As he hummed, he couldn't help but feel happy about the simplicity of this life he was living.

Yuan had just turned seven, and from what he had learned in his last life, he knew happiness was important. He knew that even when things got tough, it was important to try and find joy in the little things.

Yuan's uncle, Wen Shan, was the village blacksmith. Wen Shan had come to the village of Jingshui when Yuan was only a year old. Wen Shan was exceptionally good at his craft, and his personality was as gentle as water. His presence in the village meant that the villagers no longer needed to travel a dozen kilometers to the nearby town when they needed weapons or tools. Sometimes they even chose to use their hands instead of tools because of the distance in the past.

The village head and some elders recognized the importance of Wen Shan's presence and contributions to the village. They decided to give him some land, officially making him a villager of Jingshui.

With the majority of the villagers being Huntsman, there were now three main centers of authority in the village. One was Xiurong, the medicine man. Another one was the village head, a retired military officer. The last one was Wen Shan, who, along with the other two, supported the future of the entire village as everyone in the village used his tools, for hunting and farming.

Life in the village of Jingshui was serene and unhurried as years went by in a blink of an eye. Yuan had grown a couple of centimeters taller this summer and now looked like an eleven or twelve-year-old child. However, he still needed to learn to set traps for rabbits and other small herbivores, which was a tradition for children in the village.

Yuan continued to carry a basket on his back up the mountain every few days, trying to get as much food as he could to help his uncle. His uncle would also teach him some cooking and smithing skills in their free time.

His uncle also asked him to collect medicinal plants, each type collected during a specific season and processed using certain methods. His uncle would brew those medicines and make him take a bath.

Life in Jingshui remained peaceful and slow-moving, with his uncle always busy either making tools or cooking. Yuan had finally learned to set traps himself, which was a significant milestone for the village youths.

Setting traps required experience, watchful eyes, agile hands, and some luck. Yuan had his experience and knowledge of his past life. It's not that he had created traps in his past life, but he had the wisdom to learn by paying attention to details, so whenever anyone created or designed traps, he would pay attention carefully.

One day he decided to create a trap himself. On his first try, he overcame the problem of making traps with crude tools that could injure an inexperienced Huntsman. The adults in the village praised him for his success, and even his uncle was jubilant, even though he did not contribute anything to it.

In just a few days, Yuan became proficient in many types of traps, and he started going deep into the forest, setting up large, complex traps. He encountered a wild deer.

As he observed the deer's struggles in a trap.

He approached the deer, he took a deep breath, and raised his bow. He tried to steady his shaking hands as he took aim. The deer looked at him with large, innocent eyes. Yuan hesitated for a moment, but then he remembered that this was necessary for his survival.

With a swift release of the arrow, the deer fell to the ground. Yuan stood there for a moment, frozen in shock. He had never taken a life before, and the sight of the dead animal made him feel sick to his stomach. But he knew that he had to finish what he had started.

He approached the deer and knelt beside it. Yuan ran his hand over the deer's soft fur, feeling a strange mix of guilt and gratitude. He whispered an apology to the animal, thanking it for providing him with sustenance. He promised to use every part of the deer, and not to waste anything.

As he started to drag the deer back to his village, Yuan couldn't help but feel a sense of pride. He had accomplished something that he never thought he would be able to do. He had taken the life of an animal, but he had done so with respect and gratitude. He realized that this world was full of new experiences and that he was capable of much more than he ever thought possible.

That day Yuan and his uncle had deer meat for dinner.

By the following summer, Yuan had grown and but he enjoyed being a child. He had joined the ranks of the hunters in the mountains, and the hunting knife at his waist was no longer just a decoration. Although he didn't venture too deep into the wilderness, he still assisted with tasks such as setting up traps and collecting prey. His uncle was overjoyed and forged Yuan a new knife with strong, tempered steel. He beamed with pride whenever Yuan used it to kill a beast.

However, the life of a hunter was always fraught with danger. Countless beasts roamed the mountains, and some occasionally made their way to Jingshui. Once, Yuan encountered a pale brutal hog, a genuine rank one beast that even the village hunters treated seriously. Luckily there were other hunters with Yuan at the time, and it took a fierce fight to bring it down. All of them suffered serious injuries, but they managed to bring the hog's corpse back to the village.

The villagers were amazed by Yuan's composure during the battle. Even the best hunters in the village couldn't have done better. Without Yuan's precise arrow to the back of the hog, the outcome might have been different.

Despite the many dangers he faced that year, Yuan remained calm and collected in every situation. He never once backed down from danger. But he made sure he followed the experienced hunters not to endanger his life.

One day Wen Shan after finishing his work at the smithy came back home. When he entered, Wen Shan heard the sound of knife practice in the courtyard. Yuan was hard at work again. The child already had a stable foundation to practice his immortal heritage, but he'd never really done so. He'd forbidden him from even practicing martial arts too.

Ten years of age was the threshold for a boy to be considered a youth, only three or four years away from adulthood. Wen Shan thought deeply and decided it was now the right time to start guiding Yuan about his heritage.

When he entered the study, Wen Shan saw Yuan practicing knife skills diligently. He smiled, "Yuan, you are going to be ten years old soon. It is time that you know about your heritage and begin your cultivation journey. "

He noticed the word heritage in Wen Shan's statement. Yuan always wanted to know about his parents in this world. He had a clear memory of his mother disappearing in front of his eyes. He had a lot of questions. Where did she go? Did she die? He had no knowledge of who his father was.

Whenever he asked his uncle about it, his uncle would just sigh and show a sad face. Later Yuan stopped asking because he did not want to upset his uncle. He had the patience of the CEO. He decided to wait until his uncle disclosed it himself.

With time keeping himself busy with hunting and manual labor, Yuan had almost forgotten about it. But today, his uncle mentioning his heritage made Yuan curious again.

"Yay!" Yuan leaped to his feet, acting childish to make his uncle happy. He had heard villagers talk about immortals and arcanists.

He always wanted to be a powerful immortal or Arcanist. As a CEO in his past life, he knew the importance of power. Especially in this world that respected the strong and the weak were frowned upon.

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Many people mention why he acts childishly when he is grown up. In his past life, he did not get to enjoy life as much as he wanted. Now that he had found childhood again, he wanted to enjoy it fully.

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