The last night

Zhao Wei had come here every once in a while. He always cooked something and left it in the middle of the village grounds. Maybe it was his form of apologizing not being here in time, maybe he thought that as he cooked here in the cold and dark. Maybe, he held a little hope that they would return and he'd have a nice meal waiting for them. Or maybe this was just what he needed to do to forgive himself.

Whatever the reason may be, it gave him an actual time to think as he cooked. The thing is he knew he was completely lost. He was hunting with different styles, testing out his skills in different ways. But through it all, he knew he didn't know what direction he was going to cultivate himself, was he going to focus training as a fighter, a trapper or assassin. Each style of fighting had their own strengths, but he didn't even know what was beyond the jungle, if the style he took wasn't compatible what then?.

From his fight with the Myra, he was already using the trapper style proficiently. But the fact was that it was difficult to know everything about the opponent led to his mistake. Although using this style he was always relatively safe, if he was in a position of being compromised by the enemy, his physical abilities would leave him a sitting duck.

If he changed to a fighter style it would be even more difficult because that meant he had to fight every beast head on while his skills although good was still very basic and he had no one to teach him how to fight better than he did now. He could cope most of the beasts but there were some beasts which couldn't be taken down just by fighting and in the future who knew what beast he would meet.

If he took an an assasin style, he needed to be able to kill beasts in one breath, although his skills were sufficient to decapitate most medium and small beasts. His class was good at slowing down his opponents and creating the opportunity for a fatal stroke, but it didn't give him enough fire power to do enough damage to large beasts. And once his attack failed, like the trapper style, he'd be in a difficult situation. He was training full time that's for sure, but to what end?.

There was no guide on what level he needed to achieve or what kind of style he needed to learn to fight. At the end of the day he just kept throwing his body at the beasts and tried to learn what he needed to do to beat them. Before all this, he was an ordinary person, there was nothing in his head about fighting skills and combat tactics, there was absolutely no focus to his current methods.

Like every other night he was deep in his thoughts, the veins in his arms bulged as he held the pan, his breath turned to fog but he was still sweating profusely all over. At this point the chicken was almost cooked and lifted the pan from the fire..

Laying the pan down, he sat on a nearby stump. His fingers were locked together in a big fist and his thumbs rubbed against each other. The chicken stayed warm from the heating stone's characteristic as the fat in the bottom sizzled.

Just as the the skin of the chicken had a nice sear, he slapped his knees and stood up. Back straight and eyes forward with a new determination. He thought to himself, "I may not have any direction, but forward is as good as any."

He'd been thinking it over for quite some time. Regardless of how he grew, it was a means to an end. His goal at the end of the day was to find Xi Ya. If he didn't know what he was going to focus on for now, he'd just take it all on and see what happens later.

He hadn't picked his weapon yet anyway. For now he had the spears, a tooth blade and his staff. Although they were good weapons to use and he was pretty good at it after several months, they didn't click right with him.

Maybe it was also because he didn't have a style to use them in the first place. His basic stance was a boxing stance and the way he used his weapons were mostly based on this stance. Even though he could still use it, he wasn't using the full potential of the weapons. The staff which was a nigh indestructible weapon from what Zhao Wei saw, was reduced to a shield and a beating stick in his hand.

At some point he needed to get past these limitations, whether he figured it out on his own somewhere along the way or he finally found others that could teach him.

Around him, at least a hundred or so portions of chicken were finished. Today he'd cooked enough to give the village a feast if they were here. And he cooked chicken which was Gowan's favorite. The white monkey loves to eat the tender flesh right off the bone.

It was different from any other day as today was the last time he was going to be cooking here. He'd been living up on that hill for almost 9 months according to the time of the old world. If he stayed any longer, he wouldn't be any closer to a path that he would cultivate himself in as compared to now.

He hoped he'd meet the monkey's tribe again in the future, no matter how bleak their prospects seemed right now. Each of those primates were probably tougher than him anyway, if he could survive, they should be able to, he thought optimistically.

Even if his constitution was weaker than all the beasts, he was sure to keep his life in any situation. Although Panda was still incapacitated, he could work with Myra for the time being and she could help with the bigger beasts.

He'd made up his mind it was time to say goodbye.