MA Book 2, CH2: A Day In A Life

AN: #LFG Wohooo!

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The world was still a thing of shadow and mist when he awoke, the silence of the pre-dawn mountain broken only by the distant, mournful call of a night-hawk. He slipped from the rough, homespun linen of his cot without a sound, his movements a fluid, practiced grace that felt both deeply familiar and utterly alien. The air in the small wooden hut was cool and carried the comforting, earthy scents of drying herbs, woodsmoke from the banked hearth, and the faint, sweet aroma of old pine.

He dressed in the dark, his now calloused fingers finding the simple trousers and tunic with an easy familiarity. He crept past the sleeping form of Old Man Bao, whose gentle, rhythmic snores were a steady, reassuring counterpoint to the mountain’s profound silence. So perfect was his balance that the old, warped floorboards did not creak beneath his bare feet.

Outside, the world was a masterpiece of muted tones. The great, brooding shapes of the Whispering Peaks were silhouettes of deepest indigo against a sky just beginning to soften from black to a bruised, violet-grey. Although far from the peaks’ elevation, their little village was still quite high up in the mountains, and dawn would be arriving swiftly. A fine, cool mist clung to the alpine vale’s floor, swirling around the bases of the ancient Spirit Pines like a slumbering dragon’s breath. He moved through it, a shadow in the gloaming, his path taking him away from the sleeping village, up a winding, little-used track towards a small, flat clearing he had discovered weeks ago.

There, in the center of the clearing, he picked up his “sword” — little more than a sturdy, well-balanced branch of fallen spirit pine, its surface worn smooth and dark by his own hands.

He took a moment, his bare feet planted firmly on the damp, cool earth, the wet grass a soft, tickling caress against his skin that seemed to connect him to the living world. He closed his eyes, breathed in the clean, wild air, and then… he began to practice.

It was not a conscious act, not a sequence of forms recalled from a manual; nor any martial art taught by any known instructor. No, this was something altogether different -- a current that somehow flowed through him, a muscle memory that resided in a part of his soul his conscious, waking mind simply could not access.

His body moved seemingly on its own, a dance of deadly, silent grace.

The pine branch was slick with morning dew, a challenging surface that forced a perfect, unwavering grip – and yet, it felt like a natural extension of his arm. Slowly, the length of wood became a blur, a whisper of displaced air, its passage a series of soft, sharp hissing sounds that seemed to tear at the silence of the morning. It traced intricate, lethal patterns in the mist, each movement flowing into the next with a perfect, liquid economy.

There were no wasted motions, no hesitation. Thrusts that would have found the heart between ribs. Parries that would have deflected a killing blow with contemptuous ease. Sweeps that would have severed a kneecap.

It was a martial art of terrifying, pragmatic efficiency, and he had no idea where he had learned it.

He felt no thrill in the movements, no joy of a warrior honing his craft. Instead, there was a profound, almost sorrowful sense of purpose; an alien, chilling certainty that these beautiful, violent motions were something this body had always known how to perform.

Perhaps, somehow, they were even what his body was made for.

He felt the familiar contradiction that was the core of his new existence. He looked down at his hands, bathed now in the first, pale light of the coming dawn. They were certainly strong, capable hands; the fingers long and deft.

But they were also rough and calloused -- the skin on his palms and along his fingers thickened and toughened by months of honest, repetitive labor of chopping wood, mending fences, and working the soil. His skin, once an eldritch stranger’s pale canvas, was now tanned a healthy bronze from nearly half a year of working under the unforgiving sun.

In short, his body was, unquestionably, that of a mortal man — a fit, healthy, and strong mortal man by any standard -- but a mere mortal man nonetheless. He felt the familiar ache in his shoulders, the satisfying burn in his thighs. He knew, with an absolute certainty, that he possessed not a single wisp of the spiritual Ling Qi that was the lifeblood of the cultivators he sometimes heard whispered about in the village; nor any Xue Qi that Martial Artists used to temper and reinforce their bodies.

And yet, what in the nine hells was… this?

What was this impossible, innate knowledge of combat; this warrior’s instinct that felt more real to him than his own name?

Who am I?

The question was a constant, quiet hum beneath the surface of his contentment.

Just who was I, that I know so much of the arts of violence?

As the sun finally crested the eastern peaks, its rays lancing through the dissipating mist and setting the dew-kissed leaves ablaze with a thousand tiny diamonds of light, he finished his final form. He stood still for a moment -- his chest heaving, sweat beading on his brow.

And, for a fleeting, breathtaking instant, he felt something… new.

A flicker at the very edge of his awareness.

A sense of… oneness?

For a moment, the stick in his hand was not simple wood; it was an extension of his will. The air around him was not empty space; it was a medium through which his intent could flow. Intent to move. To sever.

To cut.

It was a feeling of such profound, absolute control that it made his heart ache with a strange, beautiful longing.

But then, just as quickly as it came, the new feeling was gone -- leaving him once again but a simple man standing in a beautiful, sun-drenched clearing.

He smiled, a genuine, uncomplicated expression of pure joy, and let out a long, contented sigh. He realized that, regardless of his past, he was happy here.

Truly happy.

He sneaked back to the hut, the first rays of the sun now warming his back, and slipped back into his cot, closing his eyes just as he heard Old Man Bao begin to stir.

He must never know, Chen Mu thought, a familiar pang of guilt twisting in his gut. I will not bring my shadows, whatever they may be, to the doorstep of this peaceful place.

A rough, calloused hand shook his shoulder, pulling him from a light doze. "Are you a stone, boy? The sun is already chasing the chickens, and you're still warming that cot like a broody hen!"

Chen Mu blinked his eyes open to see Old Man Bao standing over him, a wry, affectionate grin creasing the roadmap of wrinkles on his face. The scent of woodsmoke and simmering rice congee already filled their small hut.

"But I was having a good dream, Old Bao!" Chen Mu mumbled, stretching with a satisfying groan.

"Hmph. Dreams don't fill the woodpile," the old man grumbled good-naturedly, tossing a clean tunic at him. "Come! Eat! Widow Lan needs that fence of hers finished before that stubborn old goat decides to eat her laundry again."

Their breakfast was a simple, comforting ritual. They sat on low stools by the hearth, spooning hot congee from earthenware bowls, the silence broken only by the crackle of the fire and Bao's occasional commentary on the quality of his latest batch of dried mushrooms.

"For a man with a head full of clouds and stories of a moon that is no moon," Bao said, his shrewd old eyes appraising Chen Mu over the rim of his bowl, "you're awfully sturdy. I've seen you haul logs that would make two of our village boys grunt and strain. And that hair…" he gestured with his spoon towards Chen Mu's stark white locks, "...and those eyes. None of it is the stuff of simple mountain folk."

It was a familiar conversation, a gentle prodding that Bao engaged in every couple of weeks.

"I'm but a simple man, Old Bao," Chen Mu replied, giving the same quiet, honest answer he always did. "I remember nothing before the Crater. You know that."

"Aye," Bao sighed, a flicker of something —pity? awe?— in his gaze. "The Heavens work in mysterious ways, blessing and cursing in equal measure. They gave you a body of impossible perfection but took your past as payment. Still," he chuckled good-naturedly, a twinkle returning to his eye, "it makes you a cheap son to raise. True, you eat like a horse -- but you work like two!"

They shared a laugh, before he got on with the rest of his day.

And the day unfolded with the comfortable, predictable rhythm of village life. Chen Mu -- the name Old Man Bao had given him after finding him wandering around, naked and lost in the woods -- was now a fixture in the small community. He was the strange, quiet young man with the perfect body, the white hair, and rather striking dark blue-indigo eyes. The villagers had been wary of him at first, but his diligent work ethic; kind, gentle nature – and, of course, his uncanny, inexplicable skills -- had quickly won them over.

He moved through the village in a quiet whirlwind of helpfulness.

He helped Widow Lan -- a woman whose face was a permanent mask of weary kindness -- mend a section of her fence that had been damaged by a particularly rude goat, his hands moving with an engineer’s precision as he set the posts and wove the branches.

He redesigned the village’s inefficient water wheel, creating a new system of gears and channels from his strange, innate knowledge that now brought water to the upper fields with twice the pressure and half the effort. The village Chief, a man whose caution of the world was as deep-rooted as the ancient pine he often sat under, had simply stared at the new design, shaking his head in bewildered disbelief, and then clapped Chen Mu on the back with a hearty laugh and a force that had almost sent him stumbling.

He even found himself kneeling in the dirt beside a weeping six-year-old girl named An-An. Her pet fox, a beautiful creature with fur the color of autumn leaves, lay whimpering in her lap. Its back leg was caught in the cruel, rusted teeth of a hunter’s forgotten snare. The trap had not broken the bone, thankfully, but it had still torn the delicate flesh -- leaving a ragged, angry wound that was already beginning to swell and weep. The fox’s dark eyes were wide with a mixture of pain and terror.

“Shhhh. It’s alright, little one,” he murmured, his hands, which had so recently held a weapon with lethal intent, now impossibly gentle; his voice a low, soothing hum that seemed to calm the creature’s frantic trembling. The fox, which had been snapping weakly at anyone who came near, stilled under his touch, its small body relaxing slightly. With a series of deft, precise movements that seemed to anticipate the mechanism's every catch and release, he worked the rusted jaws of the trap open, freeing the mangled leg.

He then produced a small leather pouch from his belt. From it, he took a pinch of dried, silvery leaves and a small piece of a gnarled, dark root. He placed them in his mouth, chewing them into a rough paste. That strange, innate knowledge, a whisper from a forgotten life, told him the Silverleaf would guard against infection while numbing the pain, while the Blood-Knot Root would stem the bleeding and speed up healing.

He applied the improvised poultice to the wound with a touch as light as a butterfly's wing, then wrapped the leg in a strip of clean linen he tore away from his own tunic.

An-An looked at him with wide, tear-filled, adoring eyes.

“You’re magic, Big Brother Mu!,” she whispered. He could only offer her a small, sad smile in return.

He was working on reinforcing the new axle of the new water wheel, the rhythmic thump-thump of his mallet a steady beat in the warm afternoon air, when he heard her voice.

“Daydreaming again, Chen Mu? Or are you planning to build a second wheel to race against the first?”

He turned, a smile already forming on his lips.

Xiao Hua stood there, a woven basket resting on her hip, the sun catching the freckles on her nose and the warm, honey-brown highlights in her hair. She was a creature of simple, wholesome beauty, her eyes bright with a teasing intelligence, her smile as warm and welcome as the sun itself.

She was the village chief’s daughter, and, over the past few months, their shared chores and easy companionship had blossomed into a sweet, uncomplicated, mutual fondness.

“Well, someone has to make sure our crops don’t die of thirst, Little Flower,” he retorted, his voice light with affection.

He watched as she approached, her movements graceful, the simple fabric of her dress swaying around her.

He remembered the first time he had truly spoken to her. He had been a silent, haunted figure then, still grappling with the blank slate of his own mind. She had found him out staring at the stars -- and instead of treating him with the cautious fear of the other villagers, she had simply sat beside him and asked him what stories he thought the stars were telling.

It was then that his own forgotten talent – and passion – for storytelling had awoken. He had spun tales for her then: fantastical, strangely-familiar stories of other worlds and impossible heroes, and she had listened -- rapt, her eyes shining with a wonder that had, in some small way, begun to heal the aching void within him.

She set the basket down now, revealing a lunch of still-warm steamed buns, a small clay pot of savory wild mushroom stew, and a flask of cool, refreshing fruit wine.

Their banter was easy, a comfortable dance of teasing and affection.

"Are you quite sure you weren't a court storyteller in a past life, Mu?" she teased, handing him a warm bun. "No simple woodsman knows tales of wars among the stars and cities floating in the sky."

He chuckled, taking a bite.

"And I suppose no simple village girl wages such a fierce battle with the dough for these buns either. Why, I could hear you pounding it all the way from the forest this morning!"

She swatted him playfully on the arm, a blush rising on her cheeks.

"I’ll have you know, ‘tis is a noble and worthy battle! And one you seem to quite enjoy the fruits of, I might add!"

They ate in comfortable silence for a moment, the only sounds the gentle gurgle of the water wheel and the distant call of a mountain bird.

"What do you want from life, Little Flower?" he asked suddenly, the question surprising even himself.

She looked at him, her teasing smile softening into something more thoughtful.

"What a strange question." She considered it, looking out at the village, at the smoke curling from the chimneys, at the children chasing a butterfly in the field. "What I want… is this," she said simply. "A good harvest. For my father's brow to be free of worry. A healthy family someday. For the village to be safe and peaceful. Is that not enough?"

He looked at her then -- at the simple, profound beauty of her dreams -- and suddenly felt a pang of something he couldn't name. A longing for a simplicity he had only just found, and a faint, shadowy echo of grand, forgotten ambitions that felt like they belonged to another man.

"It is more than enough," he said – and was surprised to find that he meant it.

…

Unfortunately, their peaceful moment was not to last.

It began not with a sight, but a sound: a single, high-pitched scream of pure, animalistic terror that tore through the tranquil afternoon air, echoing off the nearby boulders. It was a sound so raw, so filled with pain and fear, that it made the birds in the trees fall silent and the gentle murmur of the village die in an instant.

Heads snapped up.

The laughter of children playing in the square was cut short.

Xiao Hua gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, her eyes wide with alarm.

Chen Mu was on his feet before he was even conscious of the decision, his half-eaten bun forgotten, every muscle in his body suddenly coiled with a tension that was at once both alien and deeply familiar.

Then, a man stumbled into view from the direction of the northern forest path. He was one of the village's best hunters, a man named Da-Li, known for his steady hand and quiet courage. But the man who staggered into the village square now was a ghost of that person. His face was ashen, his eyes wide and vacant with a horror that seemed to have scoured his very soul. And his right arm… his arm was a ruin, hanging at a grotesque, unnatural angle, the sleeve of his hunter’s tunic soaked a dark, glistening crimson. He took two more lurching steps, leaving a trail of blood upon the dusty ground, before collapsing in a heap.

The villagers rushed to him, a wave of panicked, concerned voices rising in a chaotic chorus. Chen Mu moved through them, his own movements calm and precise, a stark contrast to the surrounding hysteria.

The gentle storyteller, and the quiet handyman, had vanished -- replaced in an instant by a serious man of focused, chilling competence.

He knelt beside the fallen hunter, his eyes taking in the scene with a clinical detachment. The arm was not just broken; it was shattered. The bone had been driven through the flesh, a jagged white shard protruding from the bloody mess. A deep, ragged gash ran from the man's shoulder to his elbow, as if he had been gored by something of immense size and force.

"Get back! Give us air!" Chen Mu's voice was sharp, authoritative, cutting through the panicked chatter and silencing it. He tore a long strip from his own tunic, his innate knowledge guiding his hands as he expertly applied pressure to a point high on the man's shoulder, quickly staunching the worst of the bleeding.

"Someone fetch Old Bao! And bring clean water and bandages! Now!"

His commands were obeyed without question. Two of the stronger village men, their faces pale but their expressions resolute, helped him carefully lift the delirious hunter and carry him towards the village head's house, the largest and most central building in the community.

The main room of said house was simple, but filled with the warmth of a well-kept home. A large stone hearth dominated one wall, its embers glowing softly. Polished wooden furniture, dark with age, stood on clean-swept floorboards. The air smelled of woodsmoke, savory stew, and the sharp, clean scent of drying herbs. Normally, it was a place of community, of safety.

But now, it had become a makeshift infirmary.

Old Man Bao arrived, his face a grim mask, his own bag of herbs and remedies already in hand. He knelt, his old eyes assessing the horrific wound, and he began to reach for a cleaning cloth. But Chen Mu gently, respectfully, stayed his hand.

"Let me, Old Bao," he said, his voice quiet but firm, leaving no room for argument.

What happened next was both shocking and illuminating. Old Man Bao, the most skilled healer they had ever known, became a mere assistant. And Chen Mu's hands, which had earlier been so steady and strong at the water wheel, became a blur of motion, moving with a speed and grace that no simple human could match. He called for items with a calm, clipped authority.

"Boiling water. A sharp, clean knife, held in the fire until the blade glows. Silverleaf. Ironbone Grass. And more Blood-Knot Root."

Bao and the other villagers scrambled to obey, their movements clumsy and slow compared to the impossible efficiency of the young man who was now in command.

With the heated knife, Chen Mu cleaned the wound with a surgeon's precision, his touch so light and fast that the delirious hunter barely seemed to register the pain.

Then, with a series of impossibly quick, precise jabs of his fingers, he pressed on a series of points along the hunter's shoulder and neck. The effect was dramatic and instantaneous. The man's frantic trembling ceased, the terror in his eyes softening into a hazy confusion as the bleeding was slowed and the pain blocked by a method none present had ever witnessed. This was not mere herbalism; it was an exotic application of the magic of acupuncture — a specialized subset of healing Martial Arts techniques carefully passed down through families, which only the physicians in the larger cities (and only the most skilled ones at that) were rumored to be able to use.

Old Man Bao simply stared, his own lifetime of knowledge rendered utterly inadequate in the face of such a display.

Next, the bone was set with a sickening, audible crunch that made Xiao Hua, who was holding a basin of water, flinch and turn away, her face pale. A thick, pungent poultice of crushed Blood-Knot Root and Ironbone Grass was applied to the wound, and it was bound tightly with clean linen bandages.

Finally, the hunter, his pain eased by a draught of a potent numbing herb, was given a cup of water. Gradually, his delirious terror subsided in earnest, replaced by a deep, shuddering exhaustion.

The village elders — the white-bearded Chief Tian, Widow Lan, Old Bao, and two of the oldest farmers — gathered around, their faces grim.

"What happened out there, Da-Li?" Chief Tian asked, his voice a low, worried rumble.

The hunter took a long, shaky swallow of water, his eyes still wide with the memory of what he had seen.

"It was… the Boar King," he whispered, his voice a hoarse rasp. "The old one who lives in the northern caves. But… it was different, somehow. Changed."

He began to speak, his words a jumbled torrent of fear. He told them of a beast as big as a hut, its hide thick as iron plates, its tusks like sharpened swords. But it was the eyes he kept coming back to. "They glowed," he said, his voice trembling. "Not with animal cunning, but with a red, hateful light. It… hunted me – and it wasn't hunting for food. It was hunting for sport! For the sheer joy of killing!"

The elders exchanged uneasy glances. The Boar King was a known danger, a powerful but mundane beast that had lived in these mountains the past few years. But it had always been a simple creature. A creature of pure instinct, keeping to its own territory. This… this was different. This spoke of a spiritual power awakening, which also brought with it a degree of malevolence.

A corruption.

A kind of cunning cruelty that no simple beast could possibly possess.

Old Man Bao, his face a grim mask of concern, finished tying the final knot on the bandage and looked up, his gaze sweeping over the worried faces of the elders, and then towards the high, mist-shrouded peaks visible through the open doorway.

“The beasts have grown bolder of late,” he murmured, his voice a low, troubled rumble. “It has been some months since we have seen a disciple from the Azure Cloud Sect fly by. The Sect is no longer patrolling this area, and the clouds upon the high peak have grown still and silent. I know not the reasons for it – but without the Sect’s patrols, the natural order here is disturbed. If the patrols aren’t resumed soon, this land… may no longer be safe for us.”

A cold, unwelcome premonition -- a feeling of deep and profound unease -- settled over Chen Mu. He looked up at the silent, indifferent mountains, at the place the villagers called the Azure Cloud, and suddenly felt a strange, inexplicable connection to the silence.

But surely that could not be!? After all, regardless of his appearance, he was but a mortal. He had no memory of that place, nor any reason to believe he was involved in cultivator affairs.

And yet… as he stood there, the scent of the hunter’s blood sharp in the air, a cold knot of dread tightened in his gut. Deep down, Chen Mu had a feeling that the silence on the mountain, and the resulting dangers in the Vale, were somehow, in some way he could not yet comprehend…

His fault.