Past memories

"Don't touch me, you beggar!"

What? Where am I?

"I don't want those dirty hands to even get near me!"

Ouch! Somebody hit my head. I opened my eyes and saw people looking at me in disdain while avoiding me.

"I said get away from me! Take this!"

There are some of them that's kicking and punching me. Can you people stop?

*Thud

I finally fell down, I looked at my body and noticed that I'm holding a small cup that's filled with few coins, I'm also wearing tattered clothes and I have the body of a 6 years old.

I tried to run away but my body won't listen to me, it's only moving on it's own. Why am I not fighting back? My body sat back down and held the cup tightly, ignoring all the pain caused by others. What a wuss...

...

This same scenario happened over and over again for 10 years. Not everyone is bad though, there are still some that's nice enough to give me coins. But my body only endures if it's get beaten. Sigh~

"Hi there kid."

Hmm? Who you calling a kid? Someone sat beside me. My body turned around and I saw the person who came.

"I can help you go to school and you can learn martial arts there."

This guy is the strict looking man I saw before! Why is he here? My body shuddered in excitement when it heard the strict looking man said "martial arts".

It's not a surprise though, there's that one time that a martial arts master using a sword that helped this body, it must've wanted to become like that person.

My body nodded fervently with it's small remaining energy.

The strict looking man smiled and asked, "What's your name? You can just call me instructor Yu Xiulan."

"Fang Tanxing..."

...

I went to school that Yu Xiulan enrolled me to. As expected, most people weren't happy that they're going to school with a beggar. Only Chun Bo approached me without feeling any disgust.

"Fang Tanxing, use this manual to cultivate."

Yu Xiulan came to me and handed me a book containing few pages. Skimming through it, I saw strange hand positions.

My body immediately respectfully bowed towards Yu Xiulan.

"Thank you instructor Yu Xiulan!"

"It's fine, I just want you to work hard." Yu Xiulan patted my shoulder and went away.

"Yes!"

That Yu Xiulan must've paid a big price for my body to have this manual. I also listened to lessons so I know that all cultivation manuals are precious even if it's common.

...

"What a tragic life this body went through."

I opened my eyes after that scene. That dream must've been the memories this body have.

"He must've died because of that boar, allowing me to occupy his body. His death was miserable though, dying because of a common animal that's not even a spirit beast."

I can only sigh at the life of this body. But I'm still curious as to why the dream started when it was 6 years old, what happened before that?

There's nothing I can do about that. I shook my head to clear myself from useless thoughts and got up from bed.

I went to bathroom to clean myself up, afterwards I changed my clothes.

I think that I still got some spare time since it's still dark outside, that Chun Bo will also come here to pick me up later.

I looked around the house and the only notable things that I found are the cultivation manual that the Yu Xiulan gave me and a wooden sword. Other than that, there are a few dried meat.

I opened the cultivation manual and read the weird hand positions. I went to a lotus position and followed those hand positions.

After finishing one set of it and continuing to do more, I can see qi threads that's going inside the middle of my palms.

Closing my eyes to focus, I can feel that the qi threads moves faster. From the palms, it goes directly to my head.

Hmm? I can see where they're going. Above my head, there's a miniature sized version of me sitting in a lotus position.

Three fourths of it are filled with qi while the remaining one fourth of it are still colorless, the qi threads are filling it up. By the speed of the qi threads, it'll be finished next week.

This must be the "soul" that's mentioned in the cultivation manual.

"Fang Tanxing, let's go!"

That must be Chun Bo. I looked outside and noticed that the sun has already risen. Time sure is fast while cultivating.

"Coming!"