A Mortal Life

"Yaan, could you pick up some eggs from the market for me? Sigh I'm truly getting old, walking to the market is already getting to be a bit much for me..." Granny Ging sighed as she shot Yaan a grateful smile.

"Of course, granny, I'm happy to help out." Yaan nodded and smiled back, then quickly headed out before she could say anything else.

"Sigh...youngsters really do change quickly. It's only been six months, but Yaan has opened up so much in this short period of time, he's almost like a completely different person! But this is a good thing too. When he first arrived, that boy worried me, he was far too formal and reserved, as if he felt cautious and distrustful towards everyone around him. He was so distant back then, but now, I think he has truly made our village his home."

As Granny Ging watched Yaan walking off into the distance, heading towards the market street like he did on most days, she couldn't help but smile. In her mind, this boy was almost like her own child, so she was happy to see him growing and getting along with the other villagers.

In the back of her mind though, Granny Ging subconsciously understood that Yaan would not remain here forever...she could not explain this feeling she had, and honestly, she suppressed this feeling whenever it arose, not wanting to dwell on this vague uncertainty for which she lacked any rational evidence.

"He's been living here for six months...for such a young boy, that's a long period of time, I'm sure that he must feel that the village is his new home by now...right?"

"What a pleasant day." Yaan smiled relaxedly as he looked up at the clear blue skies. There was not a cloud to be seen, whilst birds flew over the village and chirped their pleasant songs.

"The weather is often very nice in Tian Village." Yaan muttered to himself. "It almost makes me not want to leave…"

Yaan trailed off and abruptly stopped walking. As thoughts of what he would do after leaving the village began to enter his mind…as thoughts of what he had been doing before he came to this quaint place almost came back to him…Yaan's mind became blank for a moment, he lost track of his line of thought.

With a smile, he laughed at himself and shrugged his shoulders.

"I keep losing track of what I'm thinking about these days...no matter, it can't be that important if I forget it so easily."

As he continued walking, Yaan blinked to himself and showed a pondering expression.

"Maybe I really should just settle down here. Travelling is such a pain, and the villagers in Tian Village are all so nice. Hmm, wait, why was it that I was travelling again…?"

Once again, Yaan stopped and stared off into the distance in a daze. At this point, he had reached the edge of the market street, so his strange actions attracted the attention of a few people around him.

"Yaan! Hey, Yaan, wake up sleepy head!"

Yaan was torn from his daze as a young girl tugged on his clothes. He was no longer wearing his fine silk robe since that made him feel like too much of an outsider. Instead, he wore simple wool clothing without any fancy dyes used, leaving it with a greyish brown colour. Of course, the simplicity of these rags could not disguise Yaan's exquisite physical appearance.

"You fell asleep again Yaan! Ehe, I've never seen anyone else fall asleep whilst standing up, you're really weird!"

A young girl called Delia laughed as Yaan snapped back to reality. Yaan showed a wry smile, then gave a cough and stood up straight, turning towards Delia sternly. Even though he was still a child, he was older than Delia by a few years, so he felt the need to lecture her when she acted improperly.

"Delia, you shouldn't say things like that. Besides I'm not weird...maybe I should see a doctor though…"

The frequency with which Yaan found himself losing focus these days was increasing. Whenever this happened, he would always completely forget what he was doing, and why he had fallen into a daze in the first place. It happened so often that he wondered if perhaps, there might be something wrong with his health.

Well, he wasn't overly concerned though. Aside from this small matter, he otherwise felt fine. He had food, shelter, clothing, and a warm, loving community. What more could he want from life?

After greeting those around him and returning Delia to her exasperated parents, Yaan arrived at Old Felix's shop.

Well, rather than a shop. it was more like an old man sitting on a wooden chair, closing his eyes and waiting for someone to pick out some eggs from the crates at his feet.

"Old Felix, how is business going today?"

"Hmm?" The old man slowly opened his eyes and blinked a few times. From the expression on his face, it was clear that he had dosed off and fallen asleep just now. After his eyes adjusted to the light, he smiled brightly.

"Little Yaan! Good, good, would you like to buy some eggs?"

"Mhm." Yaan nodded. "Another dozen please."

After exchanging some more pleasantries with one another, Yaan departed with a sack filled with eggs. Old Felix stared after him and his smile widened.

"Good kid! He helps out so much, Granny Ging is lucky to have found such a good helper, haha."

Yaan made his way through the village street as usual, greeting people with a smile as he went. Compared to when he first arrived in the village, his smile had changed slightly. When he first arrived, his smile was formal and polite, like a mask he put on for the sole purpose of handling his interactions with people.

Now, whilst he remained polite and somewhat formal compared to others, his smile contained a hint of warmth and vibrance, an energy and depth that wore off on others as it was exuded from his person.

For this reason, Yaan was actually quite popular amongst the Tian Villagers.

However, whenever Yaan looked into the silver mirror in Granny Ging's house, a valuable heirloom passed down through generations of her family, he would stare at himself and see something else. When Yaan looked at his own smile, he felt as if there were two layers to his face…

There was the surface layer that he showed to others, this was also the layer that he liked to see in himself. Below this layer though, Yaan sometimes felt like he possessed another face, a face that wore an expression filled with cold indifference, with a dark light that did not care for those people he held dear around him. That gaze did not even seem to care about his own feelings…

For this reason, Yaan no longer looked into the mirror in Granny Ging's house, he preferred not to look at himself and dwell on the strange thoughts that emerged in his mind when he gazed into his own eyes.

Yaan did not immediately return home after buying the eggs, but first wondered around the market street as he searched for other ingredients which could be used in today's lunch and dinner.

Most of the food sold by the enthusiastic villagers included the vegetables farmed within the village, as well as those grown around the village outskirts. However, there was also no lack of meat, fruit and nuts, all of which were collected from the nearby forest.

Interestingly, Tian Village did not have a culture of farming animals for their meat, any animals were kept exclusively for their produce; chickens for eggs, cows for milk and sheep for wool. The reason for this was that the nearby forest offered a wide variety of different animals which were hunted regularly by the village hunters. There was no need to kill livestock when the nearby forest already conveniently provided them with all their meat needs.

"Yaan! Hey, can you play with me today, or are you busy again?"

Just as he was looking around at the various market vendors and making casual polite conversation with the village's adults, Yaan was approached by another child.

This child was not quite so young as Delia. This girl, Gina, was 11 years old, though she made it a point to tell everyone that she was now almost 12. She was presumably close to Yaan in age, but for some reason, Yaan could not recall exactly how old he was.

"Gina…" Yaan muttered quietly as the girl approached him.

For an unknown reason, whenever he saw this girl, a melancholic feeling of nostalgia would well up within his heart. Those bright blue eyes, that long, straight blonde hair, the way she was always smiling kindly…it made Yaan feel as if he had once known someone like this, but whenever he tried to delve into this memory, he would always fall into that same peculiar daze.

Regardless of why this was, he knew that Gina was not the person he might have once known, she only looked alike to that unknown individual.

"Gina, I'm busy right now. I need to buy food for Granny Ging." Yaan explained apologetically.

Hearing this, Gina pouted and folded her arms, staring at Yaan in discontent.

"You're always busy Yaan! Why do you never play with us kids, do you really like doing chores with the adults so much?"

Hearing this, Yaan could only give a wry laugh.

Truthfully, he really had no interest in 'playing' with the children. Whenever he got dragged into doing so, he felt more like he was babysitting them...honestly, spending his time helping Granny Ging to enjoy her retirement really was a much more enjoyable use of his time, in Yaan's opinion at least.

"I'Il play with you next time Gina, I really am busy right now."

"That's a promise! You can't take it back now that you've said it, ok Yaan?" With that, Gina giggled and skipped back across the street towards the other kids. Yaan smiled and gave the group a wave as they were shoed out of the market by the adults. The adults laughed when the children complained about Yaan not receiving the same treatment, despite being a child also.

"Yaan is actually here to buy things, you all are just in the way! Shoe, shoe, there are plenty of other places you can play! Oh, or perhaps you'd like to help out with-"

"No thanks!"

"Ah, let's go!"

"See you later Yaan! Remember your promise!"

And with that, under the threat of being made to do work, the children vanished instantly. The adults chuckled amusedly after watching this display, before they returned their attention to their stalls and tried to sell more of their produce before lunch.

"Missus Lin, do you still have any cabbage remaining today?" Yaan stopped in front of a tall woman whom was well dressed by the standards of this village. Her dress hung down to a few inches above the ground, swaying slightly as she turned away from an old man to face Yaan.

"Oh, if it isn't little Yaan! Cabbage, you say? Of course, I still have plenty left over." The woman beamed a smile as soon as she saw Yaan, then carefully pulled out a perfect green cabbage from her thin leather sack.

This lady whom Yaan called Missus Lin, was actually the village chief's wife. There was not a huge difference in wealth and status between the various villagers, but the village chief and his family natural stood at the top of this small hierarchy. Even so, Freya Lin had the hobby of growing various vegetables. She tended to her produce with the utmost care and produced the highest quality foods in the village. Granny Ging always encouraged Yaan to buy her wares, despite the slightly higher price compared to the other options.

"Oh, Yaan, my husband visited Granny Ging earlier, I'm sure she has some good news for you." The woman spoke again as Yaan departed, causing him to stop and look back at her curiously.

However, when he inquired further, she just laughed and told him to hurry on home, so that he could accompany Granny Ging for lunch.

Not long later, after Yaan returned home and assisted Granny Ging in preparing lunch, he remembered what the village chief's wife had mentioned.

"Granny, I heard that the village chief visited earlier. Did he have any interesting news?" Yaan asked curiously.

Seemingly only now remembering this matter, the old lady slapped her thigh with a laugh and nodded quickly.

"Right, Yaan, you said that you were interested in the matters of cultivators, isn't that right?"

Yaan paused for a moment, feeling like he knew what was coming. After all, Granny Ging had asked him this very same question six months earlier, only the topic had not been brought up again until now…

"The village chief visited earlier, he said that the resource collector will be coming by next week. Haha, perhaps if you impress him enough, the resource collector might take you on as his disciple!" Granny Ging teased, but an expectant look could be seen in her gaze.

'Yaan's background is quite the mystery, it's completely possible that his family members were Cultivators! If that's the case, perhaps he inherited their cultivation talent? Sigh, I really don't want to see this boy go, but for his future, I can't be selfish...'

If Yaan were to know Granny Ging's thoughts, who knows what expression he would make.

He knew it was strange, but for some reason, he had absolutely no interest in cultivators, nor in becoming a cultivator himself. This was definitely unusual, all of the people in the village, especially the children, would excitedly talk about the mysteries and various rumours surrounding cultivators and their mystical world of cultivation. Everyone fantasised about one day becoming such an incredible figure themselves, even though they knew that such a thing was really just a farfetched dream.

As it was, Yaan forced a smile and nodded in response to the old lady's excitement, saying:

"Yes, I did mention that I was interested in cultivators, didn't I…"

As he thought back to that time, the time when he first stepped foot into this village, Yaan indeed remembered saying this. He even remembered asking some other strange things, but he could not quite remember why he had such interests back then.

"Haha, you even asked me about dao back then." Granny Ging smiled as she reminisced over Yaan's arrival in the village. "I wonder how the resource collector would answer that question, I'm sure his answer would be much more insightful than my own."

Yaan remained silent.

For some reason, the thought of a cultivator visiting this small and relatively secluded village made Yaan feel a sense of unease...he could not explain this feeling, but he knew that he did not want the resource collector to come.