Li Zhexian's eyelashes trembled slightly. Before he could fully open his eyes, he heard an excited child's voice, accompanied by quick tap-tap-tap footsteps drawing nearer.
"Ma! Big brother woke up!"
He tried to open his eyes, but the sudden flood of sunlight stabbed into them, forcing him to shut them tightly again.
After repeating this several times and slowly adjusting,
his vision finally became clear.
What entered his sight…
was a child with chapped, reddened cheeks, and a woman wearing coarse hemp clothes with a few blades of grass clinging to them.
"Where… is this?"
His voice was hoarse and raspy.
"Li Family Village."
The woman said, helping him sit up and holding a rough clay cup to his lips.
"Which family are you from, kid?"
"How did you end up sleeping out in the fields?"
"There's no one like you in Li Family Village…"
She kept muttering as she spoke,
but her gaze suddenly paused when it landed on the boy's face.
It was as if his features were shrouded in a thin veil of mist—no matter how she looked, she couldn't see them clearly.
Strangely, she didn't feel surprised at all. Instead, she vaguely sensed that this boy's appearance should be quite good, not something a small village like theirs could raise.
"Xiao Hu, keep an eye on him. Ma's going to light the fire and cook."
"Okay, Ma!"
After drinking the water, Li Zhexian felt much better.
He smiled at the child who was curiously staring at him, then began to look around.
The mud-brick house was plain at a glance.
Aside from the earthen bed beneath him, there was only a wooden table in the corner propped up at one leg, and three old chairs polished smooth by years of use.
Fine cracks ran through the mud walls, where strings of chili peppers and wild vegetables hung drying.
If there was anything in the room that could even be called a "belonging,"
it was probably the small wooden sword in the child's hands.
"Big brother, what's your name?"
the child asked, tilting his head up.
Li Zhexian looked at him, stayed silent for a long time, then shook his head.
"I don't know."
The child's round, dark eyes widened as he stared at him for a few seconds, then he turned and ran outside.
"It's over, Ma!"
"Big brother's a dummy!"
...
At dusk,
the man of the household returned from work. Seeing that the boy they had picked up had awakened, he showed a simple, honest smile and said nothing more.
At the dinner table,
there were five coarse wheat buns and two large bowls of vegetable soup shimmering with oil.
As the woman distributed the buns one by one, she muttered softly:
"I thought we'd picked up some rich young master and might benefit a little."
"Instead, it turns out he's an idiot who doesn't know anything."
"We'd just barely started living easier, and now there's another mouth to feed."
"Sigh!"
The man tugged at her sleeve beneath the table.
Her brows shot up.
"What?"
"Am I wrong?"
Of the five fist-sized buns, the man took two; the child, Li Zhexian, and she herself each took one.
The bun had barely landed in her bowl when her brows knit even tighter.
She broke off half of her own bun and, without another word, placed it into Li Zhexian's bowl.
When the boy looked up at her,
she took a bite of her bun, sat down on a stool stacked from bricks, and said gruffly:
"You're sickly. If you don't eat more, how are you supposed to recover?"
"Thank you, auntie."
After dinner, Xiao Hu pulled Li Zhexian to the doorway of the adjacent room.
Warm yellow light spilled out from behind the lifted cloth curtain, and a faint scent of sandalwood drifted through the air.
The Zhang couple stood with palms pressed together, devoutly kneeling and bowing three times before a small clay figurine set against red cloth.
Li Zhexian noticed…
that although this room was just as simple, it was completely spotless.
They themselves had eaten coarse, plain food that evening,
yet before the figurine were offerings of fresh fruit.
"Auntie, uncle—who are you worshipping?" Li Zhexian asked.
Xiao Hu stared at him in surprise.
"Big brother, did you really forget everything?"
"As a person of Heaven Dou, how could you not know Lord Sword Wine?"
"Lord Sword Wine…"
"He's our great hero of Heaven Dou!"
The child's tender face was full of reverence.
"Even though Li Family Village is remote, every household worships Lord Sword Wine!"
"Ma says that the peaceful days we live now, and being able to eat white flour buns—all of it is thanks to Lord Sword Wine!"
"Lord Sword Wine is the greatest prodigy of all ages!"
"He wielded the Qinglian Sword and was even stronger than the gods!"
With that, the boy raised the wooden sword in his hand and swung it about with whoosh-whoosh sounds,
as though he himself had become the legendary youth who roamed the world with a sword in hand.
"Xiao Hu, come inside,"
the woman called softly from within the house.
The two of them went in.
The woman handed each of them three sticks of incense.
Xiao Hu knelt and bowed with practiced ease, his devotion no less sincere than that of his father and mother.
Li Zhexian, however, stared at the simple clay figurine before him, its features blurred and indistinct, and fell into a daze.
"Everyone in Heaven Dou owes Lord Sword Wine a debt,"
the woman said with a gravity she had never shown before.
"The fact that you could sleep peacefully out in the fields until the sun was already slanting westward is also because Lord Sword Wine defeated the Spirit Empire."
"Otherwise, you'd have been stabbed to death long ago by their Spirit Masters."
The usually easygoing man also put away his smile and looked at him seriously.
Li Zhexian nodded silently, took the incense, knelt down, and bowed solemnly three times toward the clay statue.
As thin blue smoke curled upward,
the family's gaze toward him softened all the more.
"Alright, why don't you think about what your name is while watching me chop firewood here,"
the woman said, leading Li Zhexian into the courtyard.
She swung the axe with both hands. With a few sharp crack sounds, the log split apart.
"When you're feeling better, this job will be yours. We're farmers—no one eats for free."
She wiped the sweat from her brow and continued hacking, breathing heavily.
Li Zhexian's eyes fixed on the cold gleam of the axe blade.
Gradually,
in his vision,
the arc of the falling axe seemed to slow.
He watched as the blade cleaved the air, landed precisely on the wood, its edge flashing—and the log split apart.
"Auntie, you're chopping it wrong,"
he said, stepping forward.
The instant his right hand wrapped around the axe handle,
his mind reeled.
Countless blurred fragments of memory surged through him like a tide, too fast to grasp even a single one.
His breathing quickened. He released the axe involuntarily and instead made a casual beckoning motion.
The wooden sword lying by Xiao Hu's feet suddenly flew up into the air and landed steadily in Li Zhexian's hand.
The moment the wooden sword touched his palm,
his entire bearing changed.
Before the stunned eyes of the woman and the man who had looked up at the sound,
his wrist flicked lightly.
The wooden sword descended.
That rough, unpolished edge struck precisely at the weakest point of the log's crack.
A thread of exceedingly subtle sharp intent burst forth.
Chh—
With a soft sound,
the firewood separated cleanly.
At the break,
the surface was smooth as a mirror.
"Th-this… this…"
The couple stood dumbstruck.
Xiao Hu, meanwhile, had already cheered and rushed over, hugging Li Zhexian's leg and shouting excitedly:
"Big brother is amazing!"
"Teach Xiao Hu how to use a sword!"
"Teach me, big brother!"
From that day on,
the chore of chopping firewood officially fell to Li Zhexian.
He was glad to shoulder some of the household labor.
Yet—
he increasingly felt that something about himself was not quite right.
Whenever he gazed up at the starry sky in the deep of night,
or when a gentle breeze brushed past him,
or even when lightning tore across the heavens on a rainy day…
a heavy, indescribable stagnation would surge up in his heart,
as if something were being deeply suppressed, desperate to break free.
Until one evening,
the man returned from outside,
bringing news that sent the whole family into excitement:
"A storyteller has come to town! They say he's from a big city—and he specializes in telling the stories of Lord Sword Wine!"
...
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