Chapter 426 - 319: Mortal Transformation_2
[The tenth year, Uncle Wang passed away, and you became the Hunter Team Captain.]
[According to the villagers, you’re nearly thirty, and children of your age have begun to learn farming.]
[Under the villagers’ teasing, you developed special feelings for the village beauty.]
[The eleventh year, the village beauty married into the neighboring village, and you felt uncomfortable.]
[The fourteenth year, you’ve entered middle age, and you can feel your physical functions gradually declining, so you started training your successor...]
At this point, Xiang Wuji seemed truly immersed among the masses.
He didn’t have anything outstanding about him.
His hunting skills in the team were merely above average.
Xiang Wuji’s body age had already reached thirty.
Thirty is the peak of a mortal’s physical abilities.
The society here is in the feudal era.
If it were a cultivator’s family, with Spiritual Qi pills for conditioning, even without Longevity Pills, they could live over a hundred years.
But living to one hundred is a luxury for mortals.
Eighty years old would already be considered venerable.
Ordinary people often die between fifty and sixty.
A cycle is sixty years.
Before leaving the village chief’s house, Xiang Wuji quietly watched as the village chief’s coffin was carried into the cemetery.
The villagers weren’t particular about other matters, but they took issues of life and death seriously.
Xiang Wuji coughed twice, a trace of old age appearing on him.
"Master, how are you?"
"No problem." Xiang Wuji lovingly patted the head of the child beside him.
This was his stepson, Wang Ming.
Xiang Wuji lived like this in Xiaonan Village.
Wang Ming’s body gradually grew stronger, while Xiang Wuji’s body gradually hunched.
Xiang Wuji slowly handed over Hunter Team matters to Wang Ming and planted a small vegetable patch in the village.
The small Hunter Team might not mean much elsewhere.
But in the village, it held power over meat distribution, those domesticated pigs and sheep were reserved for major festivals.
Everyday, families had to curry favor with Hunter Team members to get a bigger piece of meat during distribution.
Xiang Wuji gradually grew old.
Gradually, Xiang Wuji’s small house in the west part of the village became neglected.
Until his forty-ninth birthday, news came that Wang Ping had died.
The aging Xiang Wuji trembled as he picked up a dusty broken bow hanging in the house.
At this moment, Xiang Wuji was shrouded in old age, his Qi-Blood declining.
"Uncle Dazhuang, don’t go."
"We will avenge Brother Ming."
"That’s a big beast, we need traps to handle it."
"Uncle Dazhuang, we remember everything you taught us, and we will definitely avenge Brother Ming."
Xiang Wuji’s beard was graying, he huffed and glared: "Get out of the way, young rascals! When I was young, I’ve fought big beasts too."
For any hunter, battling a tiger is a true honor.
When the tiger skin was sold in the county, Xiaonan Village became briefly wealthy.
Xiang Wuji’s prestige was particularly high.
But now... the once high-spirited Hunter Team Captain, Wang Dazhuang, had become the gray-haired Old Wang.
The stubborn old man sneaked into the mountains at night.
Carrying the bow and spear that had accompanied him for most of his life.
The bowstring was borrowed from Blacksmith Li in the east of the village, who refused to give it to Old Wang.
Because the blacksmith knew, the bowstring was excellent, but Old Wang didn’t give up, and secretly took the bowstring at night, stringing it onto his bow.
The next morning, the hunters found Old Wang missing.
They began searching the mountains and finally found two bodies in the forest.
One was a tiger, one was a human.
Three arrows pierced the tiger’s body, one nailed into its eye socket, a spear broken off but stabbed into the tiger’s heart.
The other was a tall elderly man, his chest clawed open, exposing white bones.
Even then, with eyes wide open in anger, he had no breath.
The old man was naturally Old Wang, named Dazhuang...
A foreigner that no one remembered anymore...
[Changtian Calendar, year 12,091, your consciousness briefly woke, then continued to sleep.]
[The villagers collected your corpse.]
[Two years later, a confused teenager climbed out from the dirt, starting to walk aimlessly towards a certain direction.]
[Natural disasters strike, causing man-made catastrophes.]
[A severe drought hits the country, crops fail, grief fills the land...]
[The teenager walked within the confusion to a somewhat rundown mansion...]
"Now the White Lotus Sect has risen in revolt against the Imperial Court."
"Though my family of Marquis Zhenyuan has weakened, we are still willing to serve the Imperial Court!"
The Elder General, riding a tall horse, clenched his teeth and opened his granary, gathering a team.
In turbulent times, raising troops from the populace, how strong could they be? Each looking pale and thin, but ultimately taller and stronger than the average folk.
Among them, a teenager stood out.
The Elder General’s eyes lit up, and regardless of who the teenager was, pulled him into the ranks.
An old general seeking to revive the Marquis Mansion’s prestige, repay the Imperial Court, alongside a bunch of naive soldiers, began their campaign.
[The teenager became a soldier, he wasn’t familiar with the Imperial Court, nor rebels.]
[The Elder General seemed to have another story, with excellent training methods, and the teenager, mixed amongst them, in half a year of combat became a qualified warrior.]
[The Imperial Court lost its power to suppress the realm, calling for loyalists everywhere, the Zhenyuan Army stood out among the lazing noble armies.]
[Blood baptized the teenager, who gradually trained a sharp saber technique, each stroke honed between life and death.]
[The teenager couldn’t forget every life ending under his blade; some were youths like him, others elderly, and fearsome warriors akin to beasts.]
[Similarly, comrades beside him left him one-by-one.]
[Nameless, the Elder General appreciated him and gave him the Marquis Mansion’s surname; thus, the teenager had his name, Li Xu.]
[After three years of campaign, the natural disasters faded, man-made calamities subsided, the Imperial Court, established shortly before, maintained its authority, returning the realm to peace.]
[Some of the loyalist armies gradually conflicted with the Central Army.]
[Eight years passed since the teenager arrived at the Marquis Mansion.]
[The Imperial Court decided to act against the loyalist armies, the teenager had become a young man.]
[At age 28, the Elder General was dragged onto the execution ground like a dead dog.]
[High achievement threatening the ruler, just like the cycle of hiding the bow after the birds are gone in history.]
"This time, kill the corrupt officials, rescue the General."
In the dark night, a group of sturdy, savage-looking troops secretly gathered.
They bore a fierce aura, their eyes filled with murderous intent, a demeanor only those adept in killing possess.
"The Elder General has treated us well, naturally we fight with our lives."
Encircled by the group was a scruffy middle-aged man.
The adopted son of Elder General Li, Li Xu.
Li Xu was unkempt, appearing somewhat fierce.
"Unexpectedly, after battling rebels for half a lifetime, today we will become rebels ourselves..."
"Move out!"
The cold voice sounded.
Flames flickered, illuminating the sky.
The sound of slaughter echoed across the heavens...
[He hadn’t expected, the benevolent Elder General, to avoid implicating them, took his own life in prison.]
[When the troops broke into the cell, all they saw was a corpse, blood gone cold.]
[From then on, the Zhenyuan Army collectively rebelled, occupying Wuer Mountain, famed afar as bandits, using the terrain against the Imperial Court...]