Chapter 23
Though the environment was still the same, there was something that was different about it, such as the position of the clouds in the sky, the time of the day, the location of some fallen leaves, the angles of some tree branches and some other smaller details.
These were all somewhat dissimilar to what they were only a few moments ago.
As for Hua Yan himself… he had turned 10 years old!
And, from his perspective, it was as if he were looking at his past self's actions from an outsider's point of view. He had no control over his younger body's actions, but he somehow knew exactly what it was doing and where it was planning on going next.
This was because he was actually viewing a scene from his past!
This illusion was showing him the events that had occurred back when he had first come out to the forest to make some money. In the beginning, he didn't take on any Truewood Essence extraction jobs because his tiny body couldn't handle extracting even a single bottle of essence in the short span of a day.
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So, since he thought that it was a waste to take on jobs like that, he instead focused on completing simpler tasks, like collection jobs for gathering things such as specific plants or animal droppings.
Though the pay was much lower than what he would get it he collected essence, it was enough for his purposes. After all, making something was better than making nothing.
In the first few days of his collection routine, he had often roamed around hungrily in an extremely pitiful condition.
Due to familial reasons, his life had just took a turn for the worse, and young Hua Yan didn't know how
He reluctantly ventured into the forest because he knew he needed money to eat, so he did all that he could to stay alive an extra day longer.
He made a lot of mistakes during this initial period. He was often robbed by bandits, trampled on by animals, and injured due to carelessness. His biggest problem, however, was getting lost in the dense expanse of the forest.
Since there was nothing interesting to collect in the shallower parts, he needed to venture in deeper to find the things that he actually needed.
And that's exactly what he did.
Since the deeper parts of the forests were not really marked that well and had little-to-no human presence, he often got lost while traveling there. He had no one to guide him or to teach him how surviving in the wilderness worked.
Sometimes, he would even spend whole days in the forest, trapped and unable to escape.
Every single time that happened, he would think that he was going to die. He would be afraid of what was going to happen to him and he would be wondering if he could ever return back to his normal life.
Somehow, perhaps through sheer luck alone, he always made it out alive.
Had it been any other ordinary person, they wouldn't have dared to head back into the forest again, as most people valued their lives and could not muster the courage to face such traumatic events again.
Hua Yan was no different. He also valued his life and was deeply afraid of what lay in the depths of the forest.
Being pushed to near death was no joke!
However, though he had his thoughts, he also had his responsibilities.
He still remembered the time when his father was alive. Those days were tragic, but at least he was still well-fed.
Now that his father was gone, his mother's relatives really made things difficult for him.
They had even relocated his sister and him to a random manor's servants' courtyard.
After his father had lost all of his power, their treatment of his family had turned sour. Even Hua Yan's own mother joined in on their bullying and treated her children like air.
After his father had pa.s.sed away, his mother's relatives became even more bold and committed all sorts of heinous crimes, going as far stealing all the inheritances that were meant for Hua Yan and Hua Yin.
To top it all off, they had practically left the two to die by abandoning them to live by themselves without any adult guardians.h.i.+p.
Placed in a new environment with no money or supporters, Hua Yan felt the heavy burden on his shoulders weighing him down.
It was also this burden that pushed him forward.
It was the desire to live that brought him to the Trial Grounds of Ashura.
It was his need for a better way to make money that brought him to start punching trees. And, by doing this repeatedly, he was poisoned by none other than the Poison Gate Ashura.
"The poison that's growing inside of you is none other than I, Frenzy!"