Dawn had barely broken when a commotion arose outside the temple.
Li Xuan woke almost instantly, but he stayed huddled in the straw without moving, his eyes cracked open in a narrow slit.
The temple doors were pushed open, and the wind and snow poured in along with them.
A man in his forties walked inside, his left leg slightly lame, walking with an uneven gait.
He was draped in an old fur jacket, and a scar ran from his brow bone to the corner of his mouth, his knife-sharp gaze sweeping across every person in the temple.
All the refugees who met his gaze lowered their heads.
It was Zhang the Cripple!
He didn't speak, walking straight over to the campfire and holding out his hands to warm them.
The firelight reflected off his face, that scar lying across it like a centipede.
The temple grew so quiet that the sound of snowflakes hitting the ground could be heard.
After a dozen breaths, Zhang the Cripple finally spoke, his voice as raspy as a broken bellows:
"Black Stone City, Iron Fist martial arts school, recruiting handymen in three days."
"I have ten spots here."
He paused, letting those words ferment in the refugees' hearts.
Some began to breathe heavily, some clenched their fists, but no one dared to make a sound.
"Three conditions." Zhang the Cripple raised three fingers, pressing them down one by one:
"One, lift a fifty-jin stone lock overhead ten times."
"Two, take a token from the dead tree three miles away and return within half an incense stick."
"Three, take three of my punches without falling."
He lowered his hand and swept his gaze across the crowd once more: "Pass, and I recommend you. Fail—" He didn't finish, but everyone understood the meaning.
Li Xuan's heart hammered violently.
An opportunity! An opportunity he had to seize!
Yet his current state...
More importantly—take three punches from Zhang the Cripple?!
He looked at Zhang the Cripple.
The man's temples bulged slightly, his stance like a stake driven into the ground, his breathing long, even, and completely unlike those brawny men who possessed only brute strength.
"Those who have thought it through within an hour, come here and give me your names." Zhang the Cripple sat down, and a subordinate brought over a stone to use as a stool.
The refugees looked at each other in dismay.
A few relatively strong men hesitated and stepped forward, eight in total.
Li Xuan took a deep breath and stood up as well.
Zhang the Cripple's gaze swept over him, lingered for a second, and then shifted away.
"Write it down," he said to the burly man beside him.
The burly man made a mark in a tattered ledger.
"In three days, right here. Now... scatter."
The crowd dispersed.
Today Li Xuan was assigned to the southern gully to gather firewood, the most dangerous job, though good-quality firewood might earn him an extra half-bowl of porridge.
There were three men going together, all young fellows.
No one spoke on the road, each keeping their head down as they walked.
The southern gully was two miles away, a shaded mountain ravine with dense trees and deeper snow.
Li Xuan chopped dead branches while calculating.
Three days. He needed to recover his body as much as possible within these three days.
The panel now:
[Li Xuan] [Strength: 0.6] [Agility: 0.55] [Constitution: 0.73] [Spirit: 1.4] [Technique: None] [Potential: 0]
His high fever hadn't completely receded, his head still felt heavy, and his leg injury caused stabbing pains with every step he took.
He had to break the fever and treat the injury first; only then could he talk about growing stronger.
He observed the tracks on the snowy ground. Animal prints, droppings, gnaw marks...
"Look there!" One of the accompanying men suddenly whispered low.
Li Xuan looked in the direction he pointed. On a snowy slope twenty paces away, a white shadow flashed past.
A snow fox.
That creature wasn't large, but it was exceptionally agile, and its pelt could be traded for some coin.
More importantly, this was a living creature.
"Should we chase it?" another man asked.
"Chase my ass, the snow fox runs fast and has no meat anyway," the first man spat. "Hurry up and chop wood, we have to get back before dark."
The three men continued working.
But Li Xuan remembered that direction.
At noon, the three men sat under a tree and ate their dry rations.
Li Xuan chewed slowly, his eyes never leaving the snowy slope.
He saw the prints.
Fresh ones, leading from the snow slope deeper into the mountain gully.
"I'm going over there to take a look," he stood up. "Seems there's a dead tree."
The others didn't care what he wanted to do either, just casually tossing out a sentence: "Come back quick."
Dragging his injured leg, Li Xuan followed the footprints deeper in.
The further he went, the denser the trees became, and his heartbeat grew faster.
This wasn't a good idea; running into a wild beast alone meant certain death.
Yet he didn't want to miss out like this, didn't want to remain a refugee forever.
Rounding a huge boulder, he saw it.
The snow fox was thirty paces away, gnawing on the bark of a dwarf tree.
It was entirely snowy white with only a tiny bit of black on the tip of its nose, its ears pricked up in vigilance.
Li Xuan held his breath and slowly squatted down.
He had no ranged weapons, so he could only approach slowly.
He inched forward bit by bit, using the trees for cover.
Twenty paces... fifteen paces... ten paces.
Suddenly the snow fox raised its head, its black pupils staring straight toward him.
Li Xuan froze instantly.
One second... two seconds...
The snow fox lowered its head and continued gnawing the tree bark.
Li Xuan resumed his approach.
Eight paces... six paces... four paces... he had already reached striking distance.
He took a deep breath and lunged forward fiercely!
The snow fox leaped in fright, turning to flee.
Yet Li Xuan was faster... or rather, he anticipated the path.
The direction he lunged was not the snow fox's current position, but the route it was likely to escape along.
His entire body slammed into the snow fox, his hands clamping fiercely onto its neck.
The snow fox struggled frantically, its sharp teeth scratching bloody gasps onto his arm.
Li Xuan gritted his teeth, pinning its body down with his knees as his hands exerted force—
With a slight snapping sound, the snow fox twitched a few times and went still.
Li Xuan collapsed into the snow, panting heavily.
His arm burned with pain, scored by three or four gasps where blood seeped out.
The high fever made his vision swim in waves of darkness, and the burst of exertion just now had nearly exhausted his remaining stamina.
The leg injury also radiated a sharper, piercing pain from the violent movement.
Yet he couldn't care about any of that, looking at the panel at the very first moment.
[Potential: 0.05]
More than the rock rat.
As expected, stronger creatures provided more potential.
Survival was always a living creature's primary choice; everything else had to come after that.
He didn't hesitate to pour all the points into constitution.
[Constitution: 0.78]
A warm, gentle current welled up from the region of his heart, swiftly flowing to all four limbs and the hundred bones.
The muddled, cotton-stuffed dizziness inside his head was rapidly fading away.
Though still somewhat weak, his consciousness was much clearer. The pain from the wounds on his arm remained, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
A moment later—
He swiftly processed the snow fox carcass, hiding it inside his tunic.
Returning to the wood-chopping spot, the other two men had already bundled the firewood.
"Why so long? Did you take a spill?" One of the men saw the injuries on his arm.
"Yeah, slipped."
"Be careful."
Returning to the ruined temple, they handed over the firewood. The quality of the firewood was good, and the tallying burly man gave him an extra glance: "Good wood today."
Li Xuan lowered his head and said nothing.
Zhang the Cripple happened to be walking out of the temple, his gaze sweeping over the refugees waiting in line to turn in their wood.
His sight lingered on Li Xuan for a brief second before he walked up to the tallying burly man and muttered something low.
The burly man nodded. Once Li Xuan finished handing in his wood, he said, "Starting tomorrow, you go to the eastern woods."
That was where Zhang the Cripple personally led people to work; the labor was heavier, but occasionally they got a share of meat broth.
The surrounding refugees all looked over with complicated expressions.
Li Xuan's heart tightened, but his expression remained unreadable: "Understood."
He didn't know whether this meant Zhang the Cripple had taken a fancy to him, or something else entirely.
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