I used to think that the world was simple. You're born, you live, and you die. Those were the steps. Everything else? It was just noise. I didn't care about grand philosophies or the endless squabbles between the powerful. I was just a slave—a cog in a wheel, running endlessly for a few scraps of food and the barest semblance of freedom. At least, that's what I used to believe.
Now? Now, I've learned the truth. There is no simplicity. Life is a series of decisions—some forced upon you, some made in desperation, and some so small you don't realize you've crossed a line until it's too late. My first decision came when I left the Li family. A few days after, when I ran into the wilderness, I thought I was choosing survival. I wasn't. I was choosing to live a lie.
Survival wasn't as simple as I thought. I had no skills. No network. No alliances. No one to teach me anything. The days blurred together, my only companions the rocks, the trees, and the occasional sound of beasts in the distance—beasts I had no intention of facing.
Three days after my escape, I was deep enough into the wilderness to let my guard down a little. I'd checked the terrain carefully, marking it on a small, weathered map I'd stolen from the Li family. The landscape was vast, wild, and untouched by humans for miles. I couldn't smell the stink of the city or hear the echoes of my past life. The air was clean. It didn't matter, though. It felt wrong somehow. Like a tomb with no one to bury.
I remember crouching beside a river on the third day, eating what I could forage—a handful of wild berries that tasted bitter, the skin of a small, stringy rabbit I'd managed to trap. No spices. No seasonings. Just meat. That's all I could afford. It wasn't satisfying, but I was used to it now. The thought of tasting something fresh, something real, seemed like a distant memory.
The first night alone, I had been restless. Thoughts crowded my mind like an army of ants, every question spiraling into the next. What now? What am I supposed to do? I was a broken man in a broken world. I'd stolen the spirit seed, sure—but it was useless. Even if I could cultivate, it wouldn't matter. A broken root couldn't power anything. I wasn't going to change the world, not with a cracked seed and nothing more.
I'd been lying to myself. The truth was, I didn't know how to live anymore. I'd been so focused on escaping, on surviving, that I hadn't thought past the immediate. What was my end goal? To die alone in the woods? To starve in some dark corner because I couldn't get my hands on the right resources? I wasn't some hero in a story. I was just a man. A failed man, at that.
I moved on after my brief respite by the river, heading into the dense forest again. The land was unfamiliar, but I didn't care anymore. Every step was a step away from that past I had left behind. No one knew where I was. No one cared.
The next three months were a blur. I kept moving, never staying in one place for long. I lived in caves, out of sight and out of mind, with no real company but my own thoughts. The simple act of surviving—finding food, finding shelter—consumed every waking moment. I would sleep, dreamless, in cold caves with damp walls, my mind too tired to process the nightmares.
Every now and then, I would attempt to cultivate, though it felt more like a ritual than a true practice. My spirit root, that broken, cursed thing, was a dead weight inside me. Every time I tried to push energy through it, it felt like I was fighting against a wall. It drained me. The energy, so precious, so hard to gather, slipped away like sand between my fingers. It made me angry—angry that I was cursed with such an ineffective tool. What good was a spirit root if it couldn't even power me up enough to do something useful? What good was it at all?
But I couldn't stop. I didn't have anything else. The practice was the only thing that gave me a glimmer of purpose, even if it was a tiny one.
The cave I called home for the first few weeks was nothing more than a hollowed-out rock, but it was mine. The walls were rough, unyielding. The air smelled of damp moss and earth, and the silence was deafening. I made it my base of operations, if I could call it that. The trick was to leave no trace. No tracks. No sign of where I had been. I learned to cover my steps. To erase every sign of life.
Sometimes, I would spend days crafting crude weapons—spears, crossbows made from twisted wood and bone. I practiced on small game—rabbits, birds, squirrels. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get by. Every time I thought I had mastered something, I realized how little I knew. I had no real talent for crafting. No inherent skill. I was just a man, trying to survive in a world that didn't care.
But the longer I stayed, the more I felt myself breaking. It wasn't just the spirit root. It wasn't just the lack of food or shelter. It was the isolation. The crushing loneliness. It ate at me like a sickness, and no matter how much I told myself to keep going, to survive, it wore me down.
Seven months passed before I decided to leave that forsaken cave. I couldn't stand it anymore. The silence. The dark. The endless battle to find enough food just to keep living. It wasn't living—it was barely surviving.
I packed up what little I had—my rough clothes, a map, a few traps I had made. I couldn't stay there any longer. I had to find something else. Something better.
I took a risk. I ventured into the nearby town, keeping to the shadows, blending in with the beggars. I stunk. My clothes were ragged. My face was streaked with dirt. I was nothing more than another hungry, filthy man, begging for a scrap of food. I stayed hidden, close to the edges of the town. I wasn't sure what I was hoping for—maybe just a glimpse of normality, maybe something to remind me that there was still a world out there worth living in.
The beggars didn't care. They ignored me, as they ignored each other. We were all just ghosts in the city, scraping by in the gutter. I begged for a few days, surviving on the pity of strangers who would throw me a crust of bread or a half-rotten vegetable. It was better than nothing.
But it wasn't enough.
I was still trapped—trapped in this body, with this broken spirit root, and with no real way to change anything. It was a bitter pill to swallow. This was my life now. A life I had chosen, and a life that would never be anything more than the desperate, hollow survival I had forced myself into.
I didn't know how much longer I could do it.
But I had no choice but to keep going. What else was there?