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Alone, carrying a heart full of resentment and desolation, I was like rootless duckweed adrift.
I wandered aimlessly through the rugged mountain roads and deserted villages of the Silves Kingdom, eventually stopping for a while in Fasinuo Province.
To survive, to earn the resources I needed to cultivate, I had no choice but to take up work I had once disdained: I became a mercenary, struggling to stay alive on missions steeped in bloodshed and scheming; I ventured deep into the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest to hunt soul beasts, each expedition a dance on a knife's edge; and in the clamorous Soul Fighting Arena, I proved my fighting strength again and again with my fists and iron hammer, all for a bloodstained reward.
Yet no matter how many storms of blood I weathered, only when I gripped my cold iron hammer, stood before a glowing furnace, and felt the vibrations and resonance coming through the anvil could my wandering heart find a rare moment of peace.
Thanks to my standing as a "master blacksmith," I finally secured a position at the Great Artisan of Works, a large soul tool workshop in Tianling City, a prosperous place seething with undercurrents.
The generous salary and steady forging work gave my life a temporary footing. I no longer lived unsure whether I would make it through the next day.
Yet beyond Soul King, the path of a soul master's cultivation grew as steep as a sheer cliff.
Without a clan's plentiful resources or rare medicinal herbs to support me, even acquiring high-quality soul rings became fraught with difficulty.
I felt like a mighty beast trapped in a mire. Every struggling step was agonizingly difficult, and my soul power grew at a despairingly slow