I just wanted to run a farm, what was my sin? I was born to a cultivator family, The Li. My father must have thought he was very cute because he gave me the bizarre name of Zhong. Yes, Zhong Li. A stupid pun, meaning gravity. Continuing the theme of my father’s stupidity I’m very badly crippled, even by mortal standard, my spiritual bone, essence blood and even my dantian were removed shortly after my birth and a certain someone even tried to crush my spine by stepping on my back. All in retaliation for my father challenging someone he ought not have challenged.
I live as a 19 year old farmer on Hupei mountains of the Gutai region on Gumei continent, a cultivator world that was only recently wrestled out of the primordial chaos by Tin Lao, God emperor of this world, thirty years ago. He’s at the God realm and he populated this world with mostly his own court. The inbred fucks breed like rabbits. By the way, Tin Lao is who my father challenged. Why? Don’t know.
I am only a pepper farmer sharecropping on a pig farm, I largely care nothing for these dimwitted cretins that populate the “spiritual” world. They buy my peppers and that’s all I care about. Well, it was, I didn’t think I cared much about anyone until a mutilated baby impacted on my little part of the farm, narrowly missing my hut. This happened when I was 16, a cold year that one was.
It took weeks and massive pulleys made from vines and branches to get her little bones to straighten out, but as a natural cultivator she was many hundreds of times stronger than anything in the “mortal” world. It’s why the farm was isolated to this mountain, it had already been strip mined of spiritual materials to make some noble’s dick one third of an inch longer, not that I cared. In fact I was happy about it. Somewhere I could live without some behemoth monster killing me for being mortal.
Away from the kind of people who could punt a baby into a mountain and not so much as check on her, I morbidly named the little bud. Lianhua, after a Lotus. The reason that name is morbid? It’s from the shape she was mangled into and what it reminded me of. Poor little bud, but once I straightened her out she bloomed in no time. Despite how things sound I wasn’t too economically burdened and I was in fact a very good farmer...so I may have spoiled her.
Down the mountain was a small village and due to being crippled I have a profound scoliosis that renders my full standing height somewhere around 149 centimeters and I don’t care much for food so even before my little Bloom had arrived I was short, thin and very muscular. The villagers found me very unsettling at first when I was a child, but recognizing that I was no charity case and steady contributor in taxes I slowly became a sort of celebrity due to my odd parcels.
Every month I would come down to the village and return with a small basket of rice, some soup stock, a few chickens and herbs. I also had a mountain of books on my back every time. Cultivation manuals, current politics, war strategy. I may enjoy being a bumpkin, but I also had pride in being well versed. I cultivated something very different than most in my world. A quiet dignity.
It was the change that shocked the villagers. I switched. Suddenly a mountain of rice on my crooked back and a few books in my basket. I needed the rice for Lianhua. She was a cultivator and as such our mortal food could barely sustain her. This brings us to today.
Today I lost my mind completely.
