Although the world around him had become dark, Timothy continued to wait for a minute as his body felt as if it was simply floating across the universe, drifting in a state of emptiness. A moment later, a large thump could be heard by him as he tried to force open his eyes.
Slowly coming into consciousness, loads of memories and information had begun to hit Timothy's mind, causing him great pain. It was clear to him that someone else's life was flashing before his eyes and he was unsure why this was the case until he thought about it. The Demon King mentioned that he would be placed in a cripple's body and this person's life must have been the one flashing before his eyes.
The final memory Timothy received, was the cripple being unable to live as he was any longer and chose to drink some poison that he personally went outside of his village to gather the ingredients and to make it in order to not be caught. This boy's name was Leo and he was twelve years old.
Luckily for him, he was born in the Iron Will Sect, which although small, was a cornerstone of the small area and was strong enough in this extremely weak region to after several hundred years build a small village using only its own forces. From his new memories, the Iron Will Sect was a sect that had disciples that through their blood were in tune with the earth element and had upwards of an average affinity with it.
This meant that besides their local foes, the Iron Will Sect was able to slowly grow its foundation to what it had today and their original sect creator was an outer disciple of the Iron Will Clan, a clan considered to be in the top twenty powers within the Twilight Empire. Unfortunately, this outer disciple was not talented enough in his cultivation to keep up with his peers, so he took his entire family to this area in order to build a sect for himself.
Such things were normal when it came to these big powers, but it did not stop them from not having some local enemies as well over time since a top power such as the Iron Will Clan would not even bother with a non-official branch such as themselves.
Leo was indeed considered a cripple and had the social standing within the sect as a simple peasant who had to look after his mother. The reason was because his mother was badly injured while she was pregnant with him but due to the lack of cultivators of her level at the time, she was forced on a mission while pregnant with him which was not considered a dangerous one, but still did not end so well for them.
As the child of two adults who were rather strong at their peak and who put their lives on the line several times before in order to protect the Iron Will Sect from several invasions of nearby mercenary groups and bandits, Leo and his mother were still given fairly good treatment even though Leo showed no signs of breaking through into the first rank as a cultivator which if someone had the ability to walk towards the path of immortality, they would be able to have done so by the age of eight.
Not many sect members would bully Leo since his parents also had a handful of students that ended up having children near the same age as Leo, but there were still many bullies whose parents competed with his own that took their anger out on him. This did not bother him as much as it would, because all Leo cared about was being strong for his mother and many of these instances would be resolved by the Third Elder of the Iron Will Sect who was responsible for watching over the two of them and giving them their weekly pension so that they could eat and live peacefully.
It was unfortunate, because even if Leo had even a low affinity for the earth element like several youths and adults within the sect, he would have been treated much better since there was a chance for him to still cultivate and join the village guard once he became an adult, but alas, even those considered wealthy were looked at as peasants in the eyes of cultivators in this world.
