Village Recruitment Underway

Pulling his wandering thoughts back, Lin Xiao turned his gaze to Sun Yigao before him. Listening to the chatter all around them, he said:

"Brother Sun, go on home first. I'll come by your house tonight and let you know when and where to gather tomorrow."

Sun Yigao nodded in agreement, then turned and left.

The gossip seemed neither to reach his ears nor to enter his heart.

But as the people around them watched him leave, their chatter did not die down with his departure. Instead, with the person they were talking about gone, their voices grew even more brazen.

An old woman stamped her walking stick on the ground and said angrily:

"Watch your mouths! Listen to what you've been saying right in front of that child! Haven't you got anything better to do all day? Do you have to stick your noses into every little thing in the village? Honestly-oh!"

Just then, three sturdy, bright-eyed boys with sweat covering their faces came running from a distance.

They spread out and, approaching from different directions, each lowered his head and shoved his way into the crowd.

They shouted, "Make way," but charged about with no small amount of force, deliberately picking out younger people to bump into. Before long, they had thrown the whole gossiping circle into disarray.

Quite a few people patted their trodden-on feet or rubbed their bumped waists and shouted a few curses. Then they finally gave up on the spectacle and went home.

The boys who had broken through the crowd ran up to Lin Xiao's table, every one of them full of spirit.

"Brother Xiao! What fun are you having without us?"

"Yeah, yeah! We haven't seen a shadow of you or Fuzi these past few days!"

"Yesterday we even got up bright and early to catch you at your house, but neither of you was there!"

Lin Xiao smiled at the boy who had spoken last.

"Tietou, that 'bright and early' of yours wasn't when the sun was already shining into your room, was it?"

The three boys were equally dark-skinned, the result of spending entire days roaming around Xiushui Village.

But only one of the three was especially sturdy. Though he was only thirteen, his build was as robust as an adult's, and he had an honest, simple face. This was Tietou, whose proper name was Hu Liang.

Of the other two, one was eleven or twelve, with a broad, square face and two thick, wildly growing eyebrows that made his already small, bean-like eyes look even smaller. He was another of Lin Xiao's childhood friends, named Qin Jianghe.

The third boy was the same age as the others, but had a body like a hemp stalk and a bald patch on his head. His name was Liu Yunan, but nobody in the village called him that. Everyone called him Tuzi.

Liu Yunan was the only son of Widow Liu in the village.

But ever since his father had died when he was three, the village had been full of nasty rumors about his mother, causing many of the village children to shun and bully him from an early age.

And when he was little, his paternal grandparents had always spoken ill of his mother to him, saying that sooner or later she would abandon him and his younger sister and run off with another man.

As a result, he had greatly disliked his mother back then and had not been close to her at all.

But he waited and waited, and never saw any sign that his mother intended to run off with anyone.

Liu Yunan's family was very poor.

Yet he and his younger sister had more than enough to eat at every meal, and he had never gone hungry.

Whenever the villagers saw his rosy little face, they would pretend to speak in whispers, though they were really talking right in front of him. They said that his mother was a widow, so how could she possibly raise two children so fair and plump? She must have been up to some shameful business.

Although he had not known what "shameful business" meant back then, little Liu Yunan had known it was nothing good.

So when he grew a little older, he became unwilling to eat at home. He would go out alone and stay out all day, only returning after dark. He would not touch the food his mother had saved for him, going straight to his room to sleep instead.

No one knew how he got by without eating, day after day.

Only Lin Xiao and the others knew.

After Liu Yunan met Lin Xiao, who had just pulled himself together, when he was five, he escaped the days of being bullied and shunned by the village children.

To look after Liu Yunan, who was terribly malnourished and small and skinny at the time, Lin Xiao led Jiang Youfu and the others up the mountains and into the water every day, finding ways to get food.

Because of this, Lin Xiao and the others all developed a habit of foraging in the wild.

No outing was complete without eating their fill.

Even so, although Liu Yunan had grown up, he still looked somewhat malnourished.

As for the little bald patch on Liu Yunan's head, it came from a fight when he was eight. A village child had called his mother a "rotten crotch" right to his face, and in a rage, he had started fighting with the child.

That child had several companions with him at the time, while Liu Yunan was all alone.

By the time Lin Xiao and the others heard about it and rushed over, Liu Yunan had already lost a patch of hair, and bright red blood was streaming down his face.

But Liu Yunan did not seem to feel any pain at all. Looking at the culprit he had beaten to the ground, he was as proud as a victorious rooster.

From then on, he had a new nickname: Tuzi.

But Liu Yunan did not think the nickname was mockery.

He thought the bald patch on his head was just as Brother Xiao had said: a medal!

The arrival of the three immediately pushed aside the crowd that had been gathered around Lin Xiao's table.

Lin Xiao smiled and said to the three of them:

"Do you even know what it is before you call it a good thing?"

Qin Jianghe said:

"Ah! Anything you're doing has to be a good thing, Brother Xiao!"

Tietou nodded.

"Exactly. We can't go wrong following you."

Tuzi immediately said:

"No matter what you're doing, Brother Xiao, count me in first!"

Lin Xiao exchanged a few joking remarks with them, then said:

"All right, I'm heading home too. Help me carry the table and benches, and we'll talk on the way back."

So the four boys hoisted the table and long benches and left the threshing ground, heading for Lin Xiao's house.

Seeing there was no more spectacle to watch, everyone dispersed and went home.

Back home, Lin Xiao put the table and benches in the woodshed.

There was no one home, so the four of them sat down casually on the flat ground beneath the eaves.

Lin Xiao began giving the three of them a general introduction to sects and cultivating immortality.

The eyes of the three village-raised boys shone as they listened.

"Brother Xiao, that wasn't fair of you! Something this wonderful, and you only asked Fuzi, not us!"

"Wasn't I waiting for you? When are you ever as free as Fuzi and me? I had to wait until the sect had at least started to take shape before coming to you, didn't I? Otherwise, if it didn't work out, how would you have so much time to spend on it with the two of us? Don't you have work to do at home?"

The three scratched their heads and chuckled.

After all, they were already growing boys and had taken over many of the chores, big and small, at home.

As usual, Lin Xiao took the three of them through the joining process.

Then three more members appeared on Lin Xiao's disciple list.

He now had six disciples, four short of ten.