5 First cultivation steps (2)

Looking back at his younger self with 3 years of added experience and knowledge Huang Mu found his former self´s fears quite laughable. For one he had clearly broken the curfew rule but none of the elders seemed to care or take notice, which should have told him that something was up.

In fact the elders were aware of the situation and were looking after him at night and had shifted the patrolling to include his resting area. He had also later heard that elder Mo, the man in charge of herb gathering in White Valley and someone that had since become akin to his mentor, created quite a fuss after he was beaten. One elder had told Huang Mu privately that elder Mo at the time told elder Pin that if anything fatal were to happen to one of his charges because of the political games he was want to play, he could kiss any future appointments goodby as elder Mo wouldn't mind wasting him as one last good deed before kicking the bucket.

All this let Huang Mu later understand why some episodes played out as they did, but for the young kid of that time having to face and overcome these kind of fears at such an early age helped tremendously by strenghtening his will and resolve.

Another problem soon manifested however, no matter how hard he tried Huang Mu was unable to till the fields by noon like the other kids, this led to him having to forego lunch, luckily dinner would be served no matter what because of the various tasks that were individually given, but that was also a very dangerous time for Huang Mu as the risk of meeting the rest of the kids and getting bullied, especially if they went after his only meal of the day, increased a lot. After a few bad experiences, thanks to his gradual improvement in the movement tecnique and him developing an awareness for when it was safe and when not to try and approach, and also in part due to the unknown help he was recieving from the staff at the dining hall, he slowly managed to increase his daily caloric intake.

Still considering how physically taxing his days, and how harsh his nighttime training routine were, despite the portions being calculated for an 8 year old there was no way that was enough for him to grow, not to mention the times, especially early on, when he did not manage to eat anything from the dining hall.

Huang Mu soon realized that foraging along the woods'edge in the evenings could provide a much needed source of food, he had a few mild cases of food poisoning by eating fruits he was not supposed to, but sticking to picking what was cultivated in the fields when possible and since there wasn't anything particularly dangerous in the area, again with foresight probably due to the elders care, he managed to gradually learn how to provide food for himself from the surroundings.