Chapter 257 - Changes
Xiang Da’s life had changed a lot over the last four months. Born to farmers in a small village in the middle of nowhere, he’d always been realistic about his chances of achieving greatness, as in he knew he had exactly zero chance. Not that he’d been unhappy. He had a wife and children and the prospect of a grandchild in the near future.
Like everyone else in the village, he’d been fearful about what the fall of the Righteous Rain Sect meant for them, and they had all been proven right to be afraid. Over a period of years, outside visits had dried up, and the number of spirit beasts prowling around had greatly increased until the villagers eventually became prisoners locked inside the protection of their walls.
Though they did their best to stave off starvation by growing crops in every empty spot where there wasn’t a building, all of them knew that the available land simply couldn’t support the nearly one thousand people inside.
The future appeared bleak.
One day, though, a cultivator and his two disciples had appeared. Xiang Da, like everyone else, had been apprehensive at first. Wandering cultivators, after all, did not have the most sterling of reputations.
Instead of bringing pain and speeding up the doom facing the village, the cultivator had improbably brought salvation. First, he’d delivered a load of Orange Vigor Spirit Wood to Sixth Flawless Flowing City and returned with a wagonload of food. Then, he’d founded a sect and stated his intention to have everyone in the village become cultivators. Finally, he’d staved off a beast tide that otherwise would have killed every man, woman, and child in the area.
Now, not only could Xiang Da exit the walls safely whenever he wanted because there was no longer any danger, but even if a beast were present, he could fight it as a cultivator in the fifth minor realm of Qi Gathering. And not only was he a cultivator, but he was one of the sect’s leaders, the head of the Formations Pavilion.
His life had definitely changed.
The problem was that he felt unworthy of the position granted to him. His only claim to fame was that he was good at math. He could add four or five numbers together in his head and had the times tables memorized. Where most of the villages found percentages and fractions nearly indecipherable, he could figure them fairly easily.
Essentially, he had a head for basic math, making him better at simple computations than his fellow villagers. That ability did not make him a scholar.
The sects and the Emperor’s faction had decreed long ago that all people on the continent were to be taught basic literacy and math, but the key word was basic. Most could read a decree sent out by one of the governing organizations and do basic sums. Peasants who showed aptitude were taught somewhat more advanced material. Had Xiang Da been born in a larger village, he probably would have been given the opportunity to study in the city in hopes of eventually working for a rich merchant or a noble.
No one searched Prosperous Gray Forest Village for people with such ability, though, so he was left a simple farmer until conditions had become too unsafe, requiring him and his family to move inside the walls.