1 A Miracle Falls From the Sky
"Living is so hard…" a plain-looking young man said. He stared at the darkening sky absentmindedly. A whole day of labor had deprived him of most mental function.
After having spent most of the day ceaselessly swinging an axe at trees, he still had to drag his tired body back to the city. Another day of this would repeat tomorrow, and the day after that.
Living was very hard for the young man named Shura. It was tiring and exhausting, but never rewarding or fulfilling. Three tasteless meals accompanied by tiring work during the day and troubled sleep at night.
He had lived like this for so long that it had all become a habit. Each day and night he would repeat the same motion. Perhaps the only thing that had yet to become mere habits would be his own inner thoughts and complaints at reality.
He would complain in his mind, but he would continue with the same motions. He had seen examples of what happened to those who didn't. They stopped living—they died, or they resorted to some other less-than-honest means of survival and ended up dying to someone's blade sometime later anyway.
People without power, knowledge, or wealth could only end up in bad lots—like him.
It was dark by the time he'd felt that he was halfway to the city. The lumber camp he worked at was outside the city next to a large forest. The moon shone brightly in the sky, illuminating a familiar path leading to a large city with high stone walls in the distance.
High up in the night's sky, very high up in the atmosphere, something descended. It headed directly for Shura who was walking slowly on the ground.
It quickly reached him and hit him on the head. He fell down and lost consciousness on the ground.
Shura appeared to be unharmed. There were no signs of a visible wound anywhere on his body. Normally, if an object had fallen from high in the sky, even if it was a small rock, it would've made a hole in his head.
...
Shura woke up. The sky was clear and blue. It was now morning. He felt refreshed and full of vigor. His body didn't ache and hurt anymore. His mind was also very calm and clear. Every sensation and thought was very lucid and vivid.
It was as if he had been in a half-sleep state all of his life before. Only now was he awake. He'd also discovered something miraculous on his body. He could finally feel qi, and it was very abundant, very domineering sort.
Shura smiled. He was very happy. He had been suffering a lot through life because he couldn't feel qi, couldn't cultivate. But now, all of a sudden he could finally cultivate. It was as if a prisoner had been released from his cells into the wide world. Endless possibilities were now within his reach.
"It must've been because of last night. Before I lost consciousness I felt something hit my head. Right, my head!"
Shura felt around his head and body, he couldn't find any abnormality at all.
"There's nothing? How could there be nothing? I could've sworn something really hit my head. There's not even a bruise."
"This is just… miraculous, indescribable. But it doesn't matter. The good thing is that I feel really great and can feel qi, and I'm not hurt at all. There's no way I'm going back to killing trees just to keep living. I'm now a cultivator, I can feel qi now. I'm going to increase my cultivation and life a good life. I've been to the bottom, now it's time to go to the top!"
Shura made a decision deep in his heart to never again have to say "Living is hard," to himself. He was going to become powerful. As long as he was powerful, everything else will naturally come to him. He was done being a normal man living a bad life. He was going to be a great cultivator! He will eat good, live good, and sleep well.
Shura breathed in deeply. The qi in the atmosphere came into his body and nourished it, he could feel it accumulating in his core. Once he had accumulated enough, he would have a breakthrough and achieve a higher stage of cultivation. Or at least that's what he heard. Shura did not have a good understanding of cultivation as he was just a normal man before.
"I want to increase my cultivation, but I am very ignorant about cultivation. What is it that cultivators do and where do they learn how to cultivate? I should seek out information about cultivation."
Satisfied with his goal, Shura made his way back to the city. Compared to last night he moved quickly, and every step was full of energy.
There was a long line of people and carriages at the gate of the city. It was very packed and Shura could not get to the front.
He looked around for someone and asked them what happened.
"The guards closed the gate. I heard they're looking for an assassin. There's been an assassination attempt on someone important in the city," a well-dressed merchant said.
Shura frowned. He couldn't get in like this. He didn't know when they would open the gate and allow people in and out again. Should stay and wait? No, he wouldn't wait. But the gates are closed by the authorities. Should he scale the walls then? He didn't know how, nor did he have the capability to. It was unlikely that anything he could say or do could change the mind of the guards to allow him entry.
He wasn't willing to waste his time waiting either. He had been patient and waiting all his life. He was now full of vigor and ready to blast out a trail of glorious and well-lived life.
"I won't wait, but that means I'll have to scrape my goal of finding information about cultivation in the city. Man plans and god laughs indeed."
Just as Shura turned around to leave, something happened. A loud explosion sounded behind him and a blast of shockwave roiled his clothes. The weaker people and things near him were blown back by the shockwave.
Shura turned around and saw a marvelous scene. The massive steel gate of the city was gone. It was as if a giant had gouged it out. There was now a massive hole where the gate used to be.
A figure dressed in a black cloak walked out from the ruins of the gate.
"Yes! This is my chance, now I can get inside the city!" Shura hurriedly ran toward the hole that used to be a gate.
People were screaming and running away, but at that moment the only thing on Shura's mind was to quickly get inside the city and learn about cultivation. The mood in the city should probably be strange seeing as how there's an assassin and a gate just got blown through.
Shura only noticed it when he got near the wreckage of the gate, but the cloaked figure had stopped walking and stood still. A sword had appeared on his hand out of nowhere.
Shura was still running forward. Now that he was getting very close, he saw that the eyes under the cloak were watching him—watching him very closely. Why was he watching him?
The man suddenly moved. His blade moved with him. And it was coming towards Shura. The movement was very quick, very fast. One stroke and Shura would be headless.
Shura knew that the man wanted his life. But he didn't know why. He was no match for this man who blew a hole in a steel gate. His intellect told him so, but his body had a different response.
The quick movement of the man's limb and sword, while fast was also slow in Shura's eyes. Before the sword connected with Shura's body, his body moved on its own. It was as if life and death and combat was something that it had gone through so many times that it was simply a matter of habitual motion.
It was like his habit of chopping wood. If someone told him that his woodchopping skill wasn't comparable to any other master's skill of any kind, he wouldn't believe them. That was how confident he was in his woodchopping, not because he was talented in woodchopping, but because he had done it so many times that his body knew everything there was to know about woodchopping.
His body was responding to danger in the same way. It was odd because he had never been in a fight before. Many weird things were happening today, but since it was all good, Shura didn't hang on it for long.
All of this took time to describe but it happened near instantly. The sword slashed at Shura's neck, but he dodged it. The cloaked man hesitated for a fraction of a second, shocked at his failure, and then launched another half a dozen slash all over Shura's body.
The result this time was the same. Shura's body was feeling hot with energy and vitality. He smoothly dodged through all the slashes of the man's fatal weapon.
The two of them kept a distance between one another.
"Fellow traveler, why are you trying to kill me? You want to leave the city while I want to enter. We should mind our businesses and be on our way. There is no need to make life hard for other people," Shura said to the man.
The man looked at him in silence.
Seeing that the man didn't reply. Shura ran forward. Just a little bit more and he would be in the city. The great path of cultivation laid before him.
Just as Shura neared the assassin, the assassin struck again. Dozens of sword qi shot out from the deadly blade toward Shura, threatening to engulf him.
The sword qis were very thick and held a palpable aura. They homed in on Shura from all direction. Just as it seemed that he would be minced into pieces, he twisted his body and dodged through them once again.
The assassin stared at Shura with bloodshot eyes. Shura also stared back at the assassin.
"I am a peace-loving man, but it seems the path of cultivation is one filled with conflict. Fine, I shall not shy away from a fight. Let's do this!" Shura yelled at the assassin and lunged toward him.
If this man would block him from his path, then he would beat him up!
By this time, the mysterious warm feeling in his body had filled him so much that he believed he could even fly through the heavens and fight gods. There was no fear. Shura no longer even doubted his very normal self who had never fought and knew nothing about fighting or cultivation could fight mano a mano with someone who could blast a hole through steel and could still remain alive after having tried to assassinate someone in a city full of strong cultivators.
He moved in quickly toward assassin, dodging each of the assassin's strikes, one by one. The rain of sword qi was very dense and it made it very hard for Shura to strike back. He would not waste his energy on an attack that wouldn't connect.
He would only attack when he was sure that the strike would reach his opponent.
A long strip of flesh on his chest became cold and he felt a piercing pain immediately after. He stumbled back and fell on the ground. The seemingly endless wave of warmth and energy in his body was receding.
"So the windfall has run out, huh. Maybe it is too much to expect me to fight and defeat a real expert."
The assassin was about to land the finishing blow on Shura but hesitated on hearing footsteps.
"Over there, it's the assassin!" One of the soldiers yelled inside the city. A large group of soldiers and guards were approaching quickly.
The assassin sheathed his weapon and fled.
Shura's consciousness was becoming dim. On hearing the disappearing footstep of the assassin, he felt disappointed. It was as if he lost something very precious in that fight by being defeated. As he was in the middle of trying to grasp what it was that he had felt, he fainted.
