Wang Ran was an ordinary Inner Disciple from Shenmen Academy. During the war on the Northern Frontier several months earlier, he had fought in Shangyang City with the army under Fang Qianyuan's command.
But in a sudden encounter, he had suffered grave injuries, and a deadly poison had invaded his right arm. In the end, the entire arm had lost all vitality, leaving him no choice but to have it amputated to save his life. He had become a cripple.
Although the sect treated disabled disciples like him well enough to ensure that they could live out their remaining years in peace, never wanting for food or clothing, what man with lofty ambitions would willingly watch his former companions rise in glory and forge ahead while he remained forever mediocre and useless?
Who could endure spending an entire lifetime doing only whatever trivial chores they could manage, living as a Laborer, a cripple?
Disciples within the sect often married one another, and their children would usually join the sect in turn to seek their own futures. Once a gap opened between the fathers, their children would also follow different paths in life because of their differing backgrounds and status.
Who would willingly let his descendants be born a rung beneath everyone else?
But now, it was too late for anything!
Now that I've become a cripple, I'd truly have been better off dying on the battlefield, getting it over with...
Wang Ran thought in utter despair. His body, too, seemed like a heap of rusted scrap metal as he haltingly practiced the movements of the Body-Refining Art.
The movements he had long since mastered, an entire routine he could once complete with ease, had become strange and distorted because of his missing right arm. The warm Spirit Essence within him