Chapter 3 - Preparations

Li Kang awoke with his head throbbing, a dull ache permeating his body. As he shook off his disorientation and pulled himself up, he found himself in the dusty and cluttered storage room of the tavern. Once he had gotten his bearings, a painful wave of realization washed over him as he recalled the events of the prior day. Li Kang slumped against the wall. His money was gone, taken to pay his father's debt, and prospects were not good.

"Damn, that bastard. My old man just had to fuck me over one last time…" Li Kang lamented to himself. Looking down sullenly he noticed the dried blood on his arm. Suddenly, his father's drunken words cut through his hazy mind, "You just need to find a martial spirit that has aspects of both Light and Darkness…"

After stealing some rations and hiding them in his rucksack, Li Kang burst out of the dirty cupboard and pushed past the town layabouts beginning their drinking in the early afternoon. Strangely enough, his useless father was nowhere to be found. Li Kang had thought he would surely be drinking already, with his impressive tolerance built by years of alcoholism. Leaving the tavern, he strained his eyes against the bright sun rays and began trekking back towards the center of the village.

He had made up his resolve and hatched a basic plan. It was likely that his grandfather would announce his banishment from the clan tonight at the clan forum, therefore he could slip into the library and steal some maps and other manuscripts. So long as he avoided his grandfather and the other elders. From then on he could steal the last supplies he would need and leave the village in search of his martial spirit.

As Li Kang crept past the librarian, who sat furiously writing in a small bound book. He felt a sudden pang of guilt. The librarian, a kindly old scholar named Li Guansho, had been a rare ally. After it was discovered that, despite Kang's build and fighting prowess, he had little spiritual aptitude, he had been quickly disdained and ridiculed by the rest of the clan. In his despair, he had turned to research and old Guansho had never disparaged him and even aided him on more than one occasion. As he reminisced in these melancholy thoughts, he heard voices echo down the aisle from around the corner.

"It's a shame about your grandson, as if your luck wasn't bad enough already, hahaha," needled Elder Li Fei in an innocent tone.

"Don't remind me Fei, when it comes to that wretch, let's just say if he had any cultivation to speak of then I would cripple it." The clan elder bellowed.

Li Kang panicked and froze when suddenly the ancient Li Guansho blurred with spirit ki aura and in the blink of an eye grabbed Kang and whisked him out the side door.

"Kang'er, you fool," Guansho admonished. "We don't have much time, if the Elders had caught you in the library hall you could have been executed." In a rush he continued, "when I learned you were banished I had a feeling you might come so I copied some useful scrolls into this book." He pressed the leather bound book into Li Kang's hand. With a bright flash, Guansho used his ultimate ki ability, Holy Spiritual Gazelle: Blinding Heavenly Speed, and instantly Li Kang was back at the outskirts of town.

"Haha, that old man was really just looking out for his scroll collection," Li Kang muttered fondly, as the adrenaline from the situation quickly faded.

Now standing at the village gate, Li Kang took a moment to look back at his childhood home. The elaborate wooden pagodas, cherry blossom trees and waving banners emblazoned with the Li Clan crest. "You may cast me out now, but once I bind a godly immortal jade 7 heavenly gates rank martial spirit, I'll be back." Having let out his grievances, Li Kang turned and strode powerfully out of the village into the wilderness.