The Boy

"Chop…"

"Chop.."

"Chop..."

A ten or eleven years old looking boy can be seen diligently cutting up logs in a fairly large yard along with several muscular men. They were diligently cutting up those logs to fulfill that day's quota. They were a small village who specialized in dealing with Honey Wood, a type of wood that burns slowly and emanating a fragrant smell during the burning process, the heat produced by the burning wood was also a constant one, not too hot or too weak, this this kind of wood was very popular with restaurants, noble houses and entertainment places. 

In the Emerald Dragon Empire and the surrounding empires, these kinds of woods were commonly used because the Emerald Dragon Empire itself was blessed with various kinds of wood related natural resources. From making furniture to weapons, the merchants who supply the raw materials were always flocking the Emerald Dragon Empire to look for the best resources. Conscious of the prosperity of the Empire, the Emperor implemented rules to maintain the environment that can not be violated by any party within the empire. Rules such as minimum requirements for logging activity. Commonly used wood such as Honey Wood and other types of commonly used wood must be strictly monitored by the related government officials. They must make sure that the logged trees are fit to be logged before they started to harvest the resources, the requirements included but not limited to age, size and location must meet the minimum requirements before the logger were permitted to do their job. The related party was also required to plant tree saplings in the specified time, otherwise sooner or later, if they keep taking from the mother nature without giving something back, the life line of the empire will be destroyed.

It was an extremely common sight to see a bustling village with the majority of the villager bustling doing their job, some cutting up logs, some doing the house chores and some were taking care of the exaggeratingly massive cows which is called Four Horns Demon due to them having four horns and being five times larger than the average cows. It is said that due to a necessity of carrying a large amount of logs, the empire invented a way to cross breed an actual Bull Demon with a common cow in hope of creating a docile enough species yet capable of undertaking a huge amount of physical labor. Each Four Horns Demon were the state property, meaning the villagers were given permission to use them as a tool to aid them in carrying out the logging activities, but forbid them to use The Four Horns Demon to do other tasks much less treating them as a common animal. Ten percent of the annual income of the village was entirely used to take care of the monstrous beast.

The Four Horns Demon were useful for two things, one as a tool to transport the wood recourse from the nearby lumber yard to the designated city that is 50 kilometers away, and the other one is to keep away the demon. Because of the thin bloodline belonging to the relatively high class demon that was the Bull Demon, common demons such as cat demons, dog demons, or even the bird demons were afraid to be near a place where the Four Horns Demon was located. Thus a village that 'owned' Four Horns Demon was relatively safe compared to other villages which did not own one and owning one cannot be considered a loss because of a ten percent loss of the annual income due to the said reasons. 

The villagers had been for generations doing the same businesses for sustaining their livelihood, that being logging the famous Honey Wood, planting the tree saplings every five years in the nearby Honey Wood Woodlot and selling them to the merchants in the Green Wood City 50 kilometers away. Thus the village got its name, The Honey Wood Village. For the winter season however, the villagers would rarely do their routine, and chose to stay warm indoors. The village only had around 40 households in which the 40 head of each family along with their able male descendants would divide the job of logging the trees in the woodlot, transporting it to the lumber yard, cutting them up, and storing them in the storage for better perseverance. The women of the village would stay at their homes to do the household chores like cooking and taking care of the young until they are proven to be capable of being the proud member of the logger team, and that is usually after they underwent their coming of age ceremony at the age of fifteen. Unless a very unusual thing happened, this would be a common pattern. Thus seeing a ten to eleven years old looking boy joining the adults to cut wood at the lumber yard was very unusual to say the least, considering cutting up logs was a very intensive type of work.

That boy did not originate from the village, no one knows the origin of that boy. On one rainy night 10 years prior, there was a small typhoon in the area surrounding the village, no one knows how or why, after the typhoon subsided, there was a baby lying peacefully in the front door of the village chief. The villagers were initially afraid of the situation, such an uncanny thing to Happen to such a tiny village would mean one thing but good. They originally wanted to kill the baby for good because they were afraid that the baby was not human to begin with, but a demon in disguise. However after the village chief careful observation, the boy was indeed a human baby, considering the red blood that he had compared to the blue blood of the demon, furthermore, the baby's condition at the time were very concerning, despite breathing, the baby would stay still like a log with his eyelids close no matter what external stimuli was given. The baby also did not cry when the village chief used a needle to take a blood sample. However despite being silent and quiet, the baby still responded when he was given milk. The villager simply took pity on the poor baby, apparently according to the only shaman in the village, the boy was blind and mute, that's why he was silent and could not open his eyelids. From then on, the heirless village chief simply took care of the boy. The village chief suggested to the villager that he was the one who would be responsible for taking care of the boy, considering he had no heir of his own and no significant other to oppose his decision, thus from that day on, the lone village chief took care of the baby, until ten years later.