Awakened

Little Cripple was a very unusual kid, his was a Cripple yes, but more importantly, he is impossibly strong, The adults usually were able to chop some logs from morning till mid day, some even have up after four hours. It wasn't that the Villagers were lazy, but being a lumberjack was truly exhausting. They needed to lift the heavy logs, chop them, process them so it became a perfectly sized cube to meet the market demand, and finally transported the processed woods to the warehouse. To make a sizable final product could take hours.

In such rural villages, the final product, from beginning to end was done manually by hand, the tools used were limited to heavy axes and carving knives. Most villagers divided their job into several posts, some responsible for chopping the logs, some responsible for carving the woods so that It may became perfectly sized cube, some responsible for transporting it to the warehouse, some even took turns to do a particular job.

This routine was done by all villagers, it became non routine when one particular kid did all the necessary processes even after the rest of the villagers took a break for the day. Even after all of that, he continued until the sun set. At the bugging, the villagers were ashamed to be beaten by a ten year old, but after a several months, they were truly tired of following the kids' action, after all a person's capability of doing heavy work was not always related to their physical strength, but also their mental strength. Some particular villagers who had more mental strength can even last till dusk. But none can last till night like little Cripple, and to top it all of, he continued to do it for every single day. It has been nine months since the day Little Cripple picked up the job as a lumberjack, it has also been nine months since he proved that he was not an ordinary Cripple.

Generally, an individual was only allowed to partake in the lumberjack businesses after the young had undertaken the Coming of Age ceremony at the age of fifteen and tested for special talents like Cultivation Talents. Before that they would have to undergo a formal education conducted by the villager, those who had the talent in reading and writing followed the village chief to learn literature, those who had less aptitude in reading and writing would choose another form of training like the warrior training conducted by the head of the village guard. This was done to make sure that talents were not wasted in a particular Field if he or she was not particularly outstanding in a specific field, after all resources were very limited, only a limited number of individuals were allowed to be specially trained.

Those who are average and below in talent can only did other types of training that did not include any important resources like paper, Cultivation pill and others. Those kinds of training included but not limited to learning how to read with the absence of learning how to write on top of precious papers or parchment, learning basic mathematics and helping the warehouse keeper to keep track on how many wooden cubes had been produced for the day. But most of the youngster would still learn they way of warrior even though they cannot receive any Cultivation related resources, they hoped that once they conducted Coming of Age ceremony, the shaman could detect their Cultivation talents and they could embark on becoming a true warrior and received Cultivation related knowledge from the various schools in the big city, that was the most important stage for all the youngster in the village.

Once their Cultivation talents were detected, not to mention writing on papers and parchments, any kind of resources were acceptable for them to use. Of course, according to their talents and determinations, it is entirely possible for them to surpass the early talent that were recruited to be trained using precious resources. Afterall those talents were recruited early because their performance was excellent during the tournament of the champion conducted by the village once every five years. That is why the Coming of Age Ceremony was very important. To see if any real Cultivation Geniuses appeared.

Because of the nature of the Coming of Age Ceremony, the youngsters would be gathered and tested inside a formation in the village plaza. That formation has a function to detect Cultivation Talents, it was constructed 200 years ago by the founding ancestors of the village. Although the villagers were all ordinary humans, they still had hope for their descendants to break the chains that bind them from the fate of mortals. Most people would think the same, therefore most villages would have the same idea to construct the same formation.

The formation has existed since the day the village was established, the villager only need to buy one activation Gems to activate the formation. In actuality, the Activation Gems were just regular gems imbued with a tiny amount of Qi. That was why if the Village had a shaman or other similar individuals who trained in some form of True Internal Art, that individuals can simply choose to activate the formation using their own Qi.

Truth to be told, the emergence of talented individuals who could reach a high level was pitifully low in number even in the entire Empire, not to mention in the village. Virtually since the day of the village establishment, the amount of individuals who had the Talents to be a true Warrior who could wield Qi could be counted using fingers, even then they only possessed ordinary talent. Yet Talents were talents after all, the low leveled talented individuals were still recruited by the smaller schools given that they are willing to pay tuition. The village shaman was also the same, he was then only an individual who was detected possessing a low level talent in the last 30 years. After a rough journey of 30 years, the shaman decided to return to the village after being stuck at Level 5 Qi Disciple for decades. Knowing only basic forms of Qi magic, the shaman was still considered the most esteemed individual even if he was placed in a town, not to mention a village.

Thus, talents were usually recognized as important to any village, be it scholar talents or warrior talents. Scholars were the pillar of the social construct of the Empire and the warrior talents are the military pillar of the Empire. Thus having talent in any shape or form was considered a blessing. That blessing also applied to the Little Cripple, if having a lot more physical power compared to a seasoned adult lumberjack could not be considered talent, what could be considered so? However no one knew, Little Cripple truly did not have any talent related to physical strength. He accidentally acquired said talent five years ago, when he accidentally awakened an ancient inheritance of the way of the Dao. The Dao of Soul Magic.