2 The slumbering vegetable (1)
The end of the Dawn war signified a huge turning point in history, the long awaited ending of a era ripe with strife. It now ushered in a new era, the post-dawn era.
Slowly life had returned to the lands once ravaged by war. The once desolate and inhabitable lands had morphed into what is now rolling plains flush with color and full of life.
The vegetation ranged from dense shrubbery in the undergrowth to towering trees which reached out to touch the clouds.
Though it had taken innumerable years for the arid wasteland to eventually terraform, the end result was one which bears no trace of resemblance to its previous identity.
One example of such lands was the area once known as the 36th front - it had been a contested battlefield in the past, countless lives were lost for every inch of ground gained by either side.
Many years had past, and with its previous identity nowhere to be seen, Chu country (previously 36th front) now stood as a vast expanse of fertile, arable land.
Gentle mulberry fields encompassed the geography of chu country - farmland, potholed with small settlements here and there.
Though a large country, hegemony in Chu County is divided by the various powers who hold the numerous cities and areas scattered across the land.
One of these cities had quietly risen in a secluded and neglected corner of Chu county. It was on the small side of a medium sized city. In fact, Darkwell with its population of 51,500 just barely classified as a grade 2 city (grading 1~10, 10 being biggest).
This city was Darkwell city, one of the countless others also situated within Chu country. Just 410 years ago a small group of migrating settlers decided to settle down near the nearby lake, which would be adequately named Darkwell lake.
They chose this place not because of its beauty or any particular resource, more that they had grown tired and weary after long periods travelling - reluctantly settling here.
This was a fairly unremarkable city, it wasn't big or small, no events of real meaning had ever happened or would ever happen through the entirety of this city's eventual lifespan.
Darkwell's legacy would have been fully prone to the passage of time had it not been recorded as the birth site of a certain vegetable.
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Rain gently descended upon Darkwell city, it signified little to what was a particularly gloomy spring.
Disease had been potent these few months, leaving many crops unsalvageable and many farmers
Because in this city was lived the Ye clan. Their ancestor Ye Peng had been amongst the small group of settlers who founded Darkwell city, and Ye Peng's lineage had continued down for these 400 or so years. Eventually, the Ye clan had become a dominant local power amongst the inhabitants of Darkwell city.
This clan had been steadily gaining power since its conception, however, it was not to be. You see, the Ye clan had an enemy, the Song Clan. The Song clan have had long-standing conflicts with the Ye clan as they were both hegemons in the same city, and as the saying goes, two tigers cant fit on one mountain.
There had been nearly two hundred years of peace between these two clans, but the old tension was restarted with every successive generation of each clan, and over time a hatred and resentment began to gradually build between these two powers.
On one fateful day though, the Song clan struck. Igniting the century-old feud between the clans by invading the homes of the Ye clan with the intent to kill. It was a one-sided massacre undoubtedly in favor of the Song clan, and as a result, the Ye clan was briskly razed to the ground following their defeat.
This was only possible because the successor of the Song clan's current generation, Song Yazhu was a man vastly superior in terms of cultivation and talent when compared to the Ye clan's successor Ye De, who was a carefree and lazy person by nature - electing to use his time to care for the vegetables in the clan's garden instead.
And today he would pay for that.
Ye De was a young man, just 25 years of age when he had to flee for his life. He was escorted by Ye clan guards who sacrificed their lives to allow the safe escape of their young master and the resulting continuation of the long Ye clan lineage. They succeeded.
Ye De had escaped, but his whole clan had died because of him for his sake. His innate talent made it so that he had been designated as the Ye clan successor from birth and as a result of that all the cultivation resources of the entire clan had without question been dedicated to nurturing his growth.
These efforts had been wasted. Ye De was a disappointment and one that would eventually prove fatal. Song Yazhu, on the other hand, was a son blessed by heaven, he had talent that vastly outstripped Ye De and the corresponding arrogance. Song Yazhu had from a very young age learned about the feud between the Song and Ye clans, and when he was 8, he pledged to make the clans' long time feud see a conclusion. A prophecy that would one day turn out to be true.
Ye De had fled with every fiber in his body. He had let everyone down, his clan, his mother and his sister. Ye De had been set to live his life comfortably but now all of the comforts came crashing down, and Ye De, unable to cope with the pressure had collapsed, and his clan with him.
Stranded in the middle of nowhere having run for his life, and with everything gone, Ye De coiled up on the floor and wept. He kowtowed to the heavens, praying furiously for his family's safe passage to the yellow springs. He could only feel regret, the Song clan was too strong, there was no way he could ever exact revenge in this lifetime.
Knowing this, Ye De decided to kill himself. It was the right thing to do, he was a man who deserved to die. Ye De dragged his dilapidated body slowly downstream of Darkwell river, looking for the place that would be his deathbed.
He found it near a bamboo forest, a quiet and serene riverside which he thought would be a fitting place for taking his own life.
Ye De jumped in.
Ye De struggled for air, but he forced himself not to breathe, to accept his death as punishment for his incapability. But just as Ye De was about to pass out, his eyes passed once again over that bamboo grove that he had noticed on the road, as his life flashed before his eyes, a thought passed through Ye De's head, and that thought was-"wow life is beautiful".
He cried.
This wasn't it, this wasn't the fulfillment he had wanted. He had to live on, even if he was only going to live his life for the sake of his deceased family, he would live. His clan had escorted him away from danger so he could continue the lineage, and that is what he now decided he would do.
Ye De clambered out of the river, his hands shaking vigorously. He knew what he would do now, he would settle down somewhere far far away from here, and he would rebirth the Ye clan.
So he ran.
And ran and ran and ran, till his legs could run no more. Ye De found himself in a small village called Southrock village, legend had it that this village was built upon the remains of an ancient rockshell devil that had fallen during the great war. Nobody really believed in this rumor though, the great war had happened so long ago that even if a great being had seen its end here, nobody would be able to tell its body apart from the mountains that littered the horizon. The great rockshell devil could, after all, grow up to 2,000 kilometers long, about the same area as the whole mountain range where their village was in.
As far as Ye De could tell, their village could be situated on its very corpse, but it was so large that nobody would ever know if that was true or not.
Ye Decided to settle down here, he bought a big plot of land on a mountain to the west, deciding to act as a farmer to cover up his tracks as he secretly cultivated to gain the necessary power to start building his clan again.
Ye De built his house up from scratch. Every day he would plow his fields tirelessly for many hours, doing the work of many oxen himself to raise his strength and temper his body.
It was like this that 10 years unknowingly passed. However one day whilst plowing his fields, Ye De noticed something unusual. His hoe stuck inside something, he tugged his hoe loose but whatever it was stuck in didn't come out with the hoe.
That's odd, I don't remember any rocks on this field thought Ye De to himself. That's when he turned around and finally saw the perpetrator of the hoe-trapping.
It was a small and green little choysum.
