3 Life at White Valley

Huang Mu was only 4 years old when he was first moved to White Valley, being 3 to 4 years younger than the rest of the kids, ostracized by the valley leadership for being an outsider to Blue Lake County and for having caused the downfall of the much beloved old prefect, one can immagine the hardships he had to face in his early life.

In this sink or swim situation the boy's character had been forged, he had to learn to cope with the usual bullies while being smaller and weaker than them, to do the same share of work as the rest to earn his meals despite being significantly younger and to keep a low profile lest he draw the unwelcome attention of some elder.

One would immagine that his life in White Valley was constant misery, and, while there were many moments of dejection and even life threatening situations, that was mostly untrue and the reason why is that Huang Mu learned early on that White Valley was also an ideal place for cultivating.

Much to his surprise Huang Mu realized that he really enjoyed cultivating, without friends or distractions he could immerse himself in the intricacies of the white foundation manual and even the farming and miscellaneous work he was required to do could be used to further improve his understandings.

There were 4 main branches detailed in the foundation manual; internal cultivation, body forging, unarmed combat and movement tecniques.

Internal cultivation required one to sit in meditation for 1 to 2 hours daily and internally visualize strands of energy circling around the body following a set of gradually expanding channels. Huang Mu had started as soon as he reached the valley and read about it, he religiously meditated each day after supper until he felt he had achieved some measure of progress, but he managed to finally visualize the energy strand depicted in the book only half a year later, now there were 3 different strands of energy flowing around once he started his routine and he was trying to erode the block to the larger circulation path required for the fourth strand to materialize.

Each advancement in the number of strands had greatly increased his strenght and stamina, making the daily routine much easier to bear and further solving the bullying problem while motivating him to continue to put effort in his cultivation, but the first thing he learned and what proved the most useful to live through his early days of White Valley was the foundational movement tecnique described in the book.

There were 3 sets of moves one had to master in the white foundation movement tecnique, each responsible for a specific type of movement; dodging in close combat, quickly approaching and disengaging from the enemy and finally maintaining a constant speed without getting tired or being influenced by the terrain for as long as possible.

For each of these aspects Huang Mu had a more than willing sparring partner in the form of his daily tasks and the rest of the kids living and bunking with him, in his early days in the valley learning could be equated to surviving, and despite a few close shaves and especially one time where he was badly beaten and couldn't finish his chores for a few days, nearly starving to death until one of the visiting elders took pity on him and helped him out, he endured and became more and more proficient.