<span;>Chapter 1: The Cost of Three Coppers
<span;>The wooden beam in the corner of the house groaned, dropping a small shower of dust onto the dirt floor. Wan Lihan, just seven years old, giggled as he wiped the dirt from his nose.Across the small room, his father smiled warmly. His hands were calloused and pricked with a thousand tiny needle scars from his daily work sewing clothes for the village. He picked up his old hammer, firmly bracing the crumbling wooden pillar and driving a fresh nail into the wood to hold their fragile home together for another day.Lihan’s mother stepped forward, her face beautiful despite her faded, patched robes. She wiped the sweat from her husband's forehead with a soft cloth, her eyes filled with deep, unwavering care for both of them. They were deeply poor, and their dinner table held nothing but thin porridge, but inside these crumbling walls, Lihan felt completely safe.The next afternoon, that safety was completely shattered.The thin wooden door blew inward, splintering into pieces as two rogue cultivators stepped into the house. They wore stained robes, carried rusted swords, and radiated a cold, oppressive energy that made it hard for the mortal family to breathe.Lihan’s father immediately threw himself to the ground, shielding his wife and son behind his back."Great Immortals, please have mercy!" his father pleaded, his voice trembling as he reached into his pocket. With shaking hands, he held out everything they had to their name: "Please... take this tribute. It is all we have."Sitting in his palms were exactly three copper coins.One of the rogue cultivators stared down at the coins, his expression turning into a disgusted sneer. He kicked the father's hand, sending the coppers flying across the dirt floor."Tsk. Just coppers?" the cultivator spat, his voice filled with arrogant disdain. "What a pathetic, worthless poor man."Without a second thought, the cultivator drew his blade. A flash of cold steel cut through the dim room. The father didn't even have time to scream before he was slashed across the chest, collapsing onto the crumbling floor as blood pooled around the scattered copper coins."Husband!" Lihan's mother shrieked, throwing her body over his bleeding form. Tears streamed down her beautiful face as she looked up at the killers. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry we are so poor! Please... please just let us live!"The rogue cultivators didn't care about her tears.
<span;>They only saw her beauty."A waste of a house, but a waste of a face," the second cultivator laughed, gripping her tightly by the hair and dragging her away from her husband's body. She screamed Lihan's name, desperately reaching back, but she was violently pulled out into the raining street.The house fell completely silent, save for the steady groaning of the wooden roof.Seven-year-old Wan Lihan sat frozen in the shadows of the crumbling house, his eyes wide, staring at his father’s lifeless body and the three copper coins covered in blood. In a single minute, the innocence of his childhood was completely burned away, leaving behind a cold, dark void.
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<span;>Little Li Han tried to stop them. He lunged forward, desperately holding onto his mother's hand, pulling with all his small strength. But he got fiercely slapped across the face by the rogue, sending him crashing into the floor. As he tumbled, Li Han saw the iron hammer still sitting in his father's limp hand. Gritting his teeth, his tiny fingers gripped the wooden handle. He took the hammer and tried to fight back, but he was far too little and completely overpowered. The cultivator easily dodged and kicked him directly in the stomach. While his mother shrieked in terror, "Please stop! Don't hurt my son!" everything went black, and Li Han fainted.When he woke up in the morning, the house was deadly quiet. Still weak, he crawled over, trying to wake his father up. He shook him over and over, but his father wouldn't wake up again. Li Han burst into tears, crying a lot as the reality hit him. He ran outside, desperately trying to find his mother, but he couldn't find her anywhere.He returned to the empty house and wept. After two hours of nonstop crying, a sharp hunger clawed at his gut. He saw the porridge food spilled on the ground; it was dirty and mixed with dust, but driven by a fierce, instinctual will to survive, he ate it anyway. Mother will come back, he told himself. He decided to stay and wait for her in the crumbling house, even though the rain outside was incredibly heavy. The water leaked directly inside through a massive hole in the roof, leaving him freezing. Shaking with a bad cold, he hid in the corner of the room, pulling broken pieces of wood over himself to use as a cover. When the dirty floor food ran out, he resorted to eating leaves from the plants outside just to stay alive.After ten long days of waiting in the freezing dark, a foul scent filled the air, and Li Han saw his father’s body getting eaten by insects.The innocence of his childhood died right there.He walked outside and began to dig a grave into the wet earth. He didn't have a shovel, so he clawed at the ground until his little fingers were deeply hurt and blood was flowing freely down his hands. Ignoring the pain, he went back inside, grabbed his father's heavy body, and kept pulling with all his strength. He fell down, gasped for breath, and kept pulling until he finally put him safely into the grave.
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<span;>With bleeding hands, he pushed the dirt back into the hole, burying his father completely.He stood alone in the cold rain, his small body shaking. He reached into his torn pocket, his bloody fingers tightly twisting around the three copper coins. He looked down at the fresh mud, then looked out into the dark, empty road where they had stolen his mother.He didn't know what the future meant. He didn't know how the world worked. He only knew three simple things: His father was dead under the dirt. His mother was gone. And the men who did this had swords.Li Han squeezed the coppers until the metal bit into his raw skin. He didn't cry anymore. He wiped the blood from his face, turned his back on his crumbling home, and stepped out into the rain.He was going to find those men. And he was going to kill them.