Volume One: Zhuqi County Town

The history of the Central Continent is a history of mortal wars, as well as the origin of cultivators. Through countless millions of years of survival and battle, mortals comprehended martial arts and became warriors. Warriors then grasped the path of cultivation, giving rise to the earliest cultivators. Zhuqi County Town is a secular small city dominated by warriors.

Chapter 1: Troubled Times

Troubled times.

That year, Zhuqi County in Pingzhou suffered a severe drought, and bandits rose up everywhere.

Henry Clark knelt on the ground, clutching a piece of broken tile he had picked up from somewhere, digging with all his strength at the base of a lonely, withered old tree, trying to unearth its roots to eat. The tile was not sharp, but after prolonged digging, his palms were already worn raw.

The sun in the sky was scorching and blindingly bright. The sparse, withered branches of the old tree barely shielded him from the blazing heat.

After digging for a while, Henry Clark grew tired. He hadn’t eaten anything all morning; hunger gnawed at his belly, his throat was parched, and his thin, small hands could barely muster the strength to keep digging.

On the other side of the old tree, lying on the muddy ground, was another farm boy who had fainted from hunger—a child from the same village, Ben Carter, with a head of messy hair like a bird’s nest and a tattered piece of burlap covering his body. Half-unconscious, he muttered incoherently in his sleep.

Henry Clark glanced at Ben Carter, licked his cracked lips, and gritted his teeth to keep digging.

He was originally the child of a hunter’s family from a remote mountain village hundreds of miles away. Years of war, banditry, and heavy taxes had left the villagers gasping for breath. The drought that began at the start of the year had nearly wiped out the crops, and the game in the mountains had dwindled, causing many to die.

It was hard enough for adults to survive, let alone children. As the eldest in his family, eleven-year-old Henry Clark bid farewell to his parents and left home to search for food, hoping to ease the burden on his parents and allow his younger siblings to have enough to eat. According to the village’s custom, once a child bid farewell to their parents and left home, it meant they would make their own way in the world and no longer rely on their parents or clan.

Henry Clark couldn’t be said to have established himself, but he was at least out in the world on his own.

Fortunately, there were four or five other children aged eight to ten from the same village who had set out together to look for food. Among them, Henry Clark was the oldest and most experienced, so he led the group.

Over the past half year, they had wandered through the countryside and villages of Zhuqi County. Due to a lack of food and attacks from wild dogs and wolves, three or four of them had died along the way, leaving only Henry Clark and Ben Carter alive.

Ben was a year younger than him.

Yesterday at dawn, they slept in a makeshift shelter in the wilderness. While they were fast asleep, a starving old wild dog crept in and bit Ben's calf. If Henry Clark hadn’t woken up in time and driven the dog away with stones and sticks, Ben would have lost his life. No matter what, neither he nor Ben could afford to die now—being alone in this world would make survival even harder.

Henry Clark endured the pain in his hands as he dug, thinking all the while. He had already dug a foot deep, but still hadn’t found any edible tree roots.

The old tree was already withered; whether its roots were edible, no one knew. But he had to try—there was almost nothing else to eat nearby, not even grass roots or bark. The half-year drought had nearly killed all the vegetation.

At last, a section of old root was unearthed, still fresh and moist.

Ah! Henry Clark joyfully struck at the root with the blunt tile, and after a long effort, managed to dig out a small piece. He bit off a bit of the moist bark, crawled over to Ben Carter, shook him awake, and fed him.

Ben Carter, smelling the moisture of the bark, opened his eyes in confusion and actually woke from his half-faint, barely able to chew a little bark, though he didn’t have the strength to swallow.

Henry Clark quickly chewed the bark into small pieces and stuffed it into his mouth.

If they didn’t eat, they would die.

After eating some bark, Ben Carter finally caught his breath, regained a bit of energy, and became more alert.

Thanks to that piece of tree root, Henry Clark and Ben Carter managed to survive for another half day.

Although eating bark made their stomachs ache, it was still better than starving. The two of them rested in the shade of the old tree root for half a day. When the sun finally began to set and was no longer so fierce, Henry Clark helped the limping Ben walk eastward.

Night was falling. In the wild, there were many starving wild dogs and wolves—it was unsafe. They had to find a place where people lived.

Henry Clark led Ben to the shelter where they had stayed the previous night, which was a few miles east, beside a post road on a barren slope.

Merchants and horses often passed along the post road, and travelers would stop there for water. During the day, an inn from a nearby town would set up shop there, selling tea and food to passing guests.