Meeting

There were a total of 4 people sitting around the table. One of them was village chief for obvious reasons, and the other was old man Yong Yan, who knew the best of the current situation.

The other two were the only other people who survived alongside Jun Hao and Yong Yan. The current and only doctor in the village, Tang Yi and the leader of village 'guards', Wu Qing.

Tang Yi had a small build and black hair; he gave off a scholarly feeling, unlike Wu Qing, who had massive muscles and many scars on his body.

Immediately after Jun Hao started the meeting, everyone looked at Yong Yan so he could continue the explanation, and the old man knew what they wanted and started his story.

"I will begin from the start. After we finished selling our goods and wanted to return home, we heard a rumour going around other sellers."

"From what we could gather after asking around, there was a raid going on on nearby islands. The bandits presumably consisted of around 30 men. Also, it appears that they were doing it for a long time and just now started to raid around our territory."

He took a small pause as Yong Yan looked into everyone's eyes before continuing.

"And from the nearby caravan, we heard that they think that they are led by a Gu Master."

That instant, other people's faces had fear written on them, just like yesterday. The room went silent.

Seeing their faces, he added.

"But there is some good news. Apparently, they only raid around 2 islands per year, and they are still quite far from us."

Everyone's faces eased up a bit after hearing that, but Yong Yan's news wasn't good news at all, but at least this delays the inevitable. 

"How long do you think it will take for them to reach us?" Tang Yi asked the old man, as he was the only one besides his crew who went out of the island the most.

"This..." After thinking for a bit, he answered, "It would probably take them 5 years."

Once again, everyone went silent and started to think of solutions. Tang Yi then gave a suggestion.

"What if we leave and make a village somewhere else?"

"We can't!" instantly responded Jun Hao before adding.

"We don't have enough money or manpower to move an entire village, plus it's not like the old times where the four of us travelled from one island to the next. This time, we will need to take care of the other elderly and the children."

What he didn't say was that if the situation arose where they truly could die, the four of them and their children would leave alone.

Everyone knew that but didn't point that out. A few minutes later, Wu Qing said it with strong battle intent in his eyes.

"Then we fight."

"And how do you plan to fight them?" Jun Hao said it with a big frown. "We don't have enough men, and those who can fight aren't properly trained."

"We could ally with other villages and combine our numbers; that way we may survive," Tang Yi said before they could fight.

"You are right. We can do that. Yong Yan, your mission is to contact other islands and give our proposal when you go out. Wu Qing, your job from now on will be to train every man so they can fight. Finally, Tang Yi, your job is to help with the training when they get hurt."

The village chief said this while looking directly in the eyes of those he addressed. Everyone had no problem with that, so they nodded.

Yong Yan once again brought up the main problem.

"What about the Gu Master?" he said in a slightly fearful voice.

"We can't do anything about that," with a heavy tone, Jun Hao responded. "We just hope that with numbers we could defeat him."

They knew that it was virtually impossible to do that unless the Gu Master was at low cultivation rank and they fought him numbers.

"Alright, the meeting is over."

And just like that, the meeting was over. They knew they had only 5 years to get ready; it wasn't much in grand scheme of things but to them, it was everything.

***

The sun was already shining brightly and everyone has gotten back to work and is still talking about yesterday's incident.

Hai Feng didn't need to wait for long to get discharged from the hospital. After he went out, he didn't want to go back home yet, so he wandered around the village.

'Right, I need to find Mei Ling,' he realized.

'But where? I don't even know where she lives.' with a slight frown, he said.

And as fast that frown came, it went away as Hai Feng thought, 'Never mind, then if I see her running around, I will thank her.' 

And he didn't have to wait for long, as he saw her picking flowers from the side of the road.

He saw that she was very concentrated at her job so he didn't want to distract her. But Hai Feng needed to thank her so he walked up to her and asked.

"Whatcha doin'?" while prolonging the letter 'o'.

*Aaaaaah*

Mei Ling screamed a little and dropped the flowers onto the ground. Hai Feng still managed to scare her, even though he didn't intend to do that.

She was quite ashamed, and her cheeks turned red because that was unladylike, like her mother would have said.

"What did you say?" nervously asked Mei Ling while her voice trembled.

She completely ignored that previous scream, like that didn't happen at all and Hai Feng wasn't planning to embarrass her more so he didn't bring that up.

"I asked, 'Whatcha doin'?'" Hai Feng repeated the question like the last time in the same tone.

"Nothing... Just picking flowers and what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in the hospital?" 

"Well, because I'm healthy, they discharged me," he answered with a smile "Do you like flowers?" 

"No... Yes! Yes I like them. It just..." she quickly took all of the flowers from the ground and gave them to Hai Feng with trembling hands.

"They are for you," she very quickly and quietly said as Mei Ling's ears turned red as her cheeks.

She then ran off the opposite direction and couldn't hear when Hai Feng thanked her.

He was surprised and just stood there without moving.

'Does she have a crush on me?'

After some time, he continued walking around the village with flowers in one hand until he came back to the same tree as yesterday and simply sat under it.

He put the flowers on the ground next to him and looked around. After looking for a minute, he smiled.

'This is actually very nice spot.' 

The tree was located on a small hill so Hai Feng can see quite far and around him there weren't any other trees or obstacles to obstruct his vision.

As he sat there, a random thought came to him.

'Wait! I don't need a Spirit Spring. All I need is Hope Gu!' Hai Feng's eyes widened at his realization.

'Right, Spirit Sprint don't awaken the apertures themselves but Hope Gu does. They are just attracted to them. How I could have forgotten that?' he furrowed his eyebrows.

'But that doesn't change things.' he got even angrier. 'Where'm I going to find them? They are already attracted to Spirit Springs so without finding them first, I can't hope of finding them anywhere else!'

He stood up and stated that he would complain.

"Argh! problem after problem without any solutions! Why did I have to transmigrate here? Of all the imaginable worlds! Why here?"

"And why me? I don't know if I can live in this world! I know I'm nothing special, and I definitely don't have any distinctive talents that could help me whatsoever."

Hai Feng was very frustrated. In his head, he thought about how unfair and awful it was that he transmigrated here. So he started to punch the tree to let his frustrations out.

The punches were slow without any form because he didn't practice any martial arts in his previous world, but they were quite strong as anger was fueling them.

But still, Hai Feng couldn't even break the tree's bark, and his knuckles were bleeding.

After letting his emotions out, he decided to go home. Completely forgetting the flowers on the ground.

There was silence; all one could hear was a lonely young bird who sat on a tree that Hai Feng was hitting right now, just chirping and waiting for his parents to come back.

But his parents won't come back, so the bird must survive alone in this god-forsaken world.