Chapter 1: The Taoist Fatty
In the endless vast mountains, there reside hundreds of greater and lesser sects, Mystical Sky Yard is one of the more tyrannic and powerful schools. Although Mystical Sky Yard only has a population of a few thousand, it possesses up to tens of thousands of miles of land in this area, and they are without a doubt, the rulers of these land, any practitioners who would dare make trouble here would be killed without mercy. Mystical Sky Yard’s reputation is built upon the corpses of numerous foreign practitioners.
At dusk, when majority of the practitioners in Mystical Sky Yard were having dinner or practicing, a little Taoist monk around sixteen or seventeen year old suddenly appeared in all the different side yards. The little Taoist monk appears a little chubby on the outside, dressed in a dirty green Taoist robe. Despite having a naturally delicate look, but with his pair of perverted little eyes has completely undermined his efforts to create the temperament of an immortal, which doesn’t make him look like a Practitioner. Instead, it made him look like an illiterate. In addition, he has an uncomfortable name, Song Zhong, which sounds like ‘Song Zhong’, thus causing everyone to despise him. Anyways, nobody calls him by his real name but instead calls him little fatty.
Little Fatty has a miserable background, his parents were elite disciples in the branch sect, but ten years ago, they met with an accident, and passed away. The Sect is famous for being cold and heartless, thus without the protection of his parents, his shocking ‘innate talent’ which can be considered as ‘Legendary Trash’ caused his status to take a plunge. From a child who was constantly under the protection and love of his parents, he became a servant who was constantly bullied by everyone.
A person who has an average affinity with all 5 elements has a title in the martial arts world, a ‘trash of all trades’. Although he can practise the spells of all elements, unfortunately he can never be outstanding in anything, and will never be able to become a true practitioner. Even by using countless elixirs to aid his training, there is still no hope for him to be an expert in any way. Under such circumstances, no school will be willing to waste any of these precious training materials on such a guy.
If not for the prestige of his parents, little fatty would long ago been chased out of the sect, left to perish on his own. But even so, his circumstances are not good. He cannot even be considered an outer court disciple, he can only be a lowly servant who does odd jobs. He specialises in helping the different side yards clear up their trash during dusk every day.
Even though little fatty is always silly and blur, but he is actually a very strong willed boy, even though he has seen through all sorts of ugliness and kindness from people over the past 10 years, not only did he not give up on himself, but continued to struggle in the face of difficulties. Even knowing that he has horrible talent, he has never given up on practicing.
Every day, other than his job of collecting rubbish, he spends the rest of his time on cultivating, for almost 20 hours a day(1 Shichen = 2 Hours). This sort of hard working attitude, even the practitioners who are considered to be martial art fanatics would be scared if they heard about it. After all, not everybody is able to be a statue, sitting down for a whole 16 whole hours without any form of entertainment nor anybody to converse with, just purely focusing on channelling your Qi. That sort of feeling can make any person alive seat til his brains turn to mush!
But, not only has Little Fatty been able to sustain this for 10 years, he firmly believes that as long as he doesn’t stop practising, he will be able to step upon all those who once bullied him before. As the saying goes, ‘The heavens do not disappoint the hard worker’. Alas, in his practise session yesterday night, little fatty had successfully converted all his Qi from HouTian to XianTian and became a true practitioner.
When mortals are born, they are all considered to be at the HouTian stage. Only by removing all the stench of HouTian and converting it into XianTian are they able to begin practising martial art techniques. If they manage to do it, they will become a practitioner. Otherwise, they will forever remain as a mortal.
However, in the face of such results, other than laughing bitterly, Little Fatty had nothing to be happy about. This is because those with talents have been able to cross this hurdle before they are 10. Some genius, supplemented by their family’s resources, are even able to achieve this when they’re merely 5 years old or younger! In other words, as compared to Song Zhong, these people have many more years to cultivate.
One must know that cultivating is an act which defies the heavens, it is essentially competing with the heavens for time. If one is unable to achieve any progress before his lifespan is over, what awaits him is nothing but death. Time spent cultivating is very precious, and it directly affects the future of the practitioner. For people like Song Zhong who needed 16 years to cross the hurdle towards becoming a cultivator, unless he is able to have any miraculous opportunity, he can basically wait to die.
In fact, the reason why Little Fatty is taking this gamble is because he really has such an opportunity which comes from an unknown treasure left by his parents. According to his parents, this treasure came from an ancient cave, and looking at the structure of the cave, the cave owner is likely to possess paramount strength. Chances were that his possessions would be extraordinary. Unfortunately, before Song Zhong’s parents were able to figure what it was out, they were sent out on a mission and never returned. This object was the only article which was left to Song Zhong by his parents.
Little Fatty’s intention was after he had cultivated to the XianTian stage, he would refine this treasure into his Natal Artifact. If he is lucky and it turned out to be a unique treasure, it could be the solution to all his problems. If not, he can only give up the idea of cultivating and slowly await his death.
People are naturally in a good mood when they have a good day. With this happy event, he became more light-hearted in his job since he had something to look forward to. He first went to the Mystical Sky Yard’s Talisman Hall, where disciples of the Sect practises the usage of the talismans. As such, there are a lot of discarded talismans here every day. The Taoist Children of the hall would clear up all these rubbish once the elite disciples leave. Little Fatty’s job now is to sweep up all these rubbish. Compared to the previous jobs of washing the dishes, cleaning up the place, the work is tougher, because the road to and fro is long.
There are 2 baskets of discarded talismans, as Song Zhong went to the shed in the backyard, he placed his empty basket down in a trained manner, after which he picked up the 2 full baskets of discarded talismans and briskly walked towards the outside.
Servants have no rights to walk out via the main door, they can only take the back door, and run along the mountain passages. After all, Little Fatty has been cultivating for 10 years already, even though he is unable to ride on his weapon and fly, he is still able to cover a few feet with every step, his plump figure is not affecting his speed in any way. The distance of many miles was covered very speedily. Along the way, Little Fatty will occasionally see practitioners flying in the sky on their spiritual weapons. They can see him too, but they would never bother about a servant.
Even as they fly arrogantly across the sky, Little Fatty thought that it was already very good. If he met some of the more childish people, they would even criticize him. Some lowly bastards would even use low-level spells to find some entertainment from Song Zhong. Over the past 10 years, Little Fatty has been splashed with water spells countless of times, there are even people who would set his ass on fire, resulting in him having to run around half naked for half a day, becoming the biggest joke amongst the servants. The most dangerous time was when a disciple who wanted to find some fun, did not control his spell properly, and instead of using a wind blade to shave off Little Fatty’s hair, almost chopped off his head instead. From that day on, Little Fatty changed his appearance, dressed as low profile as possible, worked where there are fewer people, in order to avoid these childish people.
The place where Little Fatty is going to now is called TianGou, it is a deep abyss behind the mountains of the Mystical Sky Yard, all the waste from the Sect is thrown into this abyss, and even after a few thousand years ever since the founding of the Sect, this abyss which stretches for hundreds of miles have never been filled.
However, when it is time for Little Fatty to take over the job, the garbage has piled to the point where the highest mountains of rubbish are not more than 10 feet away from the cliff.
Little Fatty is currently in no mood to appreciate the massive amount of waste. He just casually threw the trash within the 2 large baskets away and rushed straight to the Elixir Hall. There are also two baskets filled with Elixirs which failed in production.
After the Elixir Hall, Little Fatty also has to go to the Weapons Hall, where there are also 2 baskets of trash which are filled with the failed products of the Weapon Hall, and some ashes.
After throwing away the rubbish from the 3 halls, his job for the day is finally done. Running for hundreds of miles within 4 hours, even though he is a practitioner, he is also panting hard and soaked with sweat.
Like a dead dog, Little Fatty returned to his hut, not bothering to wash up, he immediately began meditating.
An hour later, as the crescent moon silent crept above the willows, after finishing his meditation, Little Fatty opened his eyes, and he is now at the peak of his physical and mental state. Adding to the fact that he stays in a deserted place, there is nobody who comes to disturb him in years, this is the best time to refine his unique treasure.
Carefully opening a hidden compartment by his bed, Little Fatty retrieved a black pearl of the size of a peach. This pearl is perfectly rounded, it is neither gold nor jade. Made of unknown materials, there isn’t a single design on the pearl, and there aren’t any visible benefits to the spirit. If not for the fact that this was discovered in an ancient cave, Little Fatty’s parents would not even have spared it a second glance.
Actually, even Little Fatty also has doubts as to whether or not this is a unique treasure, and whether or not it could be refined into a Natal Artifact. Everybody can only refine a single Natal Artifact in their life and it is impossible to be changed. It can be said that a person’s Natal Artifact would determine the future path which a practitioner would take. Normally, practitioners would wait until they train to a certain level before choosing a high-grade Artifact to be refined into their Natal Artifact. If they were unable to find any good Artifacts, they would rather not refine anything, instead of refining an Artifact with dubious origins.
However, for Little Fatty, he has no room for choice in this matter. This is the only Artifact which he can come into contact with. If he doesn’t refine it, he would for sure have no future, only biding his time awaiting death. Thus, even though refining it could be dangerous, he hung on to that sliver of hope for a miracle.
Little Fatty stroked the black pearl and laughed bitterly telling the black pearl, “Pearl, O pearl, please do not let me down.”
After saying this, Little Fatty’s face tightened with determination, and resolutely cut his wrist with his nails, dripping his Natal blood essence on the Black Pearl. As the blood essence came into contact with the pearl, it was immediately sucked into the pearl, as though the pearl was a monster with a voracious appetite.