Paths‌ ‌Of‌ ‌Life‌ ‌

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Volume‌ ‌2‌ ‌:‌ ‌Path‌ ‌of‌ ‌a‌ ‌Warrior‌ ‌

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Chapter‌ ‌7 ‌:‌ ‌A Sleepless Night

A cool breeze swept through the tribe deep into the night. It clashed with the flames of the grand bonfire hoping to extinguish them. The light from the blaze flickered every now and then but it never went dark. Of course the westerlies also collided with the fragile huts of the tribe. The creaking of the downtrodden doors seemed to spell out their eventual doom. Looking at them one might think that just one more powerful gust of wind would bring them down. And yet just like the resilient flames of the bonfire, no matter how windy waves made their way into the village, not a single door broke down. They just kept creaking away.

This noise went unnoticed by most of the tribe - they were fast asleep after all. But there were some people in the tribe that night - four to be exact- that just could not keep their eyes closed.

The first of the bunch could be found inside Master Zhen’s residence. The infamous loud snores of Master Zhen that were echoing throughout the hut eliminated him from being in the suspect list. That only left the newest addition to the tribe - Zhang Gui as the suspect. He was lying on top of a soft leather mattress with his eyes wide open staring up at the ceiling.

“Is it Master Zhen’s snoring?”

“No”

Living in the same hut for the last 3 weeks, he had already adapted to the unnaturally loud snoring. At that point he was treating it as background white noise. And yet it had already been around four hours since he retired to his bed but sleep had already decided to play hide and seek with him that night.

He had spent the first hour rolling around on the bed hoping to find a comfortable position to doze off in. Left to right, right to left, fetal position, on his back, on his stomach, on his sides - he must have tried every combination he could think of by the end of the hour. The second hour was not any better. He counted from 0 to 1000, from 1000 to 0, he tried counting sheeps, he tried counting goats but imagining thousands of sheeps and goats only made him feel hungry.

He had already given up by the time the third hour came up. He simply stared up at the ceiling and started thinking about everything on his mind.

“ So tomorrow I’ll be going to the forest huh? It's already way past midnight so I guess it's already today..just a few hours left.”

He could feel a trace of restlessness rise up within himself.

“What if I actually find Mount Lao and the knife ? What would happen then ? What if I can't find anything out there? What options would I have left?”

It was only after he was done speculating every possible scenario that the day could go in did he take a break. Then he started laughing silently and rebuked himself.

“ You idiot! Why are you getting so excited and anxious about this? It's almost as if i can't sleep because i get to go on a picnic trip tomorrow. How childish!”

“ That's right. I was always like this. Whenever I had an outing to go to I could never have a good night's sleep the night before. There was that trek in which we walked for hours and I had to give up halfway through. There was that trip abroad for which I went alone and got lost. There was also that stupid off office retreat trip when I drunk till I puked.”

*sigh*

“I can remember so many useless things from my time on Earth… and yet why ? Why can’t I remember their faces? Why can’t I remember how mom and dad looked? Why can't I remember their names? Just why can’t I remember how I died??!”

Once he started thinking about the memories he had lost, there was no going back. He revisited every memory he still had. If he had to use one word to describe his memories from back then it would be - hollow. What he could recall was at best a shell - an empty shell. It felt like all the important parts, all the parts worth remembering were nowhere to be found. Sometimes he felt like he had discovered something new - a new fragment perhaps but then it would slip through his fingers just before he could capture it.

He even went through every second he spent in Diyu, all the way from the moment when he awakened on the bridge of karma to the time he jumped into the Ji Heian’s portal. No matter how many times he thought about it he couldn't figure out where it all went wrong - maybe it was all bound to go wrong from the moment he died.

Ever since that train of thought left its station, it was bound to be a sleepless night.

Not that he was any stranger to sleepless nights, he had been having trouble sleeping ever since he had landed in this world. They would come once or twice every week - the nightmares of hell. On those nights, even closing his eyes for too long would cause memories from the Naraka Hells to flash before his eyes leaving him breathless. If somehow his consciousness could slip off into the realm of dreams, he would live through horrendous nightmares from the time when his soul was deconstructed by the raging inferno over and over again - until he woke up more exhausted than when he slept off.

"Hmm.. it is definitely better to stay awake thinking about life on Earth than to fall asleep and witness nightmares.”

“ I wonder how mom and dad are doing right now? I hope they didn't mourn for too long when I died. But I also hope they didn't move on immediately… hehe I guess that's too selfish of me.”

“Ugh.. how did I die? How the fuck does a 27 year old die?”

He rambled on for a few more hours after that..

It was a restless night for Ao Longwei as well. Seated outside his home next to a small bonfire, he was trying to calm himself down. No matter how much he prepared for the next day, it always felt insufficient. He knew that adequate sleep was one of the three prerequisites of a successful hunt but with how tense his mind was, sleeping was the one thing he could not do. Instead he decided to spend the night polishing his weapons and inspecting the traps he had prepared.

Hundreds of butterflies were running around in his stomach. The excitement of joining the hunting party was almost unbearable. It had been a lifelong dream of his and now that it was so close to fruition - being excited was inevitable.

And yet, at the same time he also felt like insects were crawling all over his skin. This was due to nervousness. At that point in the night, the nervousness was definitely overwhelming the excitement. The wait for the Sun to rise was simply too nerve wracking.The day to come was just far too important for him. He had already failed too many times. Many such nights had come and gone but success was still a sliver away. Now, his last opportunity was staring at him from beyond the forest.

He had done everything he could to make sure that he would succeed. Not sparing any expense, he had spent every penny he had saved over the last year to buy the best quality bait and traps from the Chief. He had even begged Zhang Gui to accompany him to the forest simply based on his presumptuous superstition of him being his lucky star. All his efforts made it abundantly clear just how desperate he was to succeed.

Looking up at the countless stars that filled the night sky, he couldn’t help himself from folding his arms and praying, “ Oi my ill fated star of destiny, just for one day could you hold back the misfortune? Just for a few hours?”

“Now i have truly lost it. Talking to the stars in the middle of the night? If someone sees me , it might start a nasty rumour. Might as well go back inside.”

Walking back into the hut, he sneaked a peek into the room next to his. Staring at the pale middle aged woman who was soundly asleep, he whispered -

“ Ma, don't you worry - I will join the hunting party for sure. I will keep my promise.”

Failure was not an option for him..

The third of the night owls had locked himself up deep inside the study room of the Chief's residence. The glow from the oil lamp illuminated Chief Daquan’s crazed face. He was in a frenzy slashing his quill pen left and right on a paper.

"No that's not good enough.”

“This would not be sufficient.”

“Uhh..Why can’t I figure this out?”

Every now and then he would scratch his head and slam his fists on the table in anger. Then he would crumple up the paper in his hands and throw it away only to start the process all over again with a new paper.

The rustling of pages continued almost endlessly.

Seeing Zhang Gui clear the proficiency test with such ease had unhinged his mind. It had proved Master Zhen’s conjecture - only a noble bloodline could produce such a prodigy. It should have been a cause for celebration and yet somewhere in his mind he was ....irked.

Daquan himself used to be hailed as a genius - a rare intellectual talent born in a tribe full of brute warriors. The previous Chief had favored him immensely, even sending him to the Baron’s castle in Xiang City for further education. Even at the castle where every student was a dragon among men he had stood out from the rest and made a name for himself. The unexpected demise of the previous Chief had resulted in him coming back to the tribe to pay back his debt of gratitude otherwise by now he would have already become the Baron's right hand.

But even he was not confident in learning a new language, especially one as complicated as Taka in mere 3 weeks. It slightly irritated him that another genius had appeared in the tribe - one possibly greater than him. The nonchalant face that the boy had as he solved the test as if to say - ‘ is it supposed to be this easy?’ hurt his pride as the creator of the test. The fact it was Master Zhen and not him ,who discovered that there was something unique about the boy - he hated that.

But what infuriated him the most, was thinking about how someone had abandoned this child in the Everlasting Forest to fend for himself.

“ Just who was it? Who is stupid enough to give up on a treasure?”

“Because of their careless actions his development has already been delayed by quite a few years. Every second was supposed to be vital and yet this child was made to spend so many years wandering the forest.”

“ Fine then I will consider it as a personal challenge. I must create a perfect training plan for the boy. Learning Taka was just the first step… if I could mould him to perfection then it would not be wrong for him to dream about clearing the Imperial Exams.”

“Yes this is how it should be.. Why does he need 8 hours of sleep? 5 is sufficient. Should I restrict lunch, dinner and bathroom breaks as well? No no I can't be too harsh.. A teacher must know when to be soft and when to be tough.”

And so a brand new training regime was made and this time the paper was not crumpled away. A dangerous glint of excitement flashed through Chief Daquan’s eyes as he finalised the contents of the training regime.

“Hahahaha.. The Barons castle will only be a stepping stone for you Zhang Gui.. I will send you all the way up to the Royal Court.”

If someone sane was to witness this scene they would tell Chief Daquan that planning to send someone all the way to the Royal Court just on the basis of them learning a language in 3 weeks was an absurd decision to make. But as fate would have it there were barely any sane people in the Ao Tribe and those that were - were sane enough not to try and correct the Chief and his delusions.

Despite being up the entire night, Chief Daquan greeted dawn feeling far more energetic than he did before. Unfortunately that was not the case for the 4th of the insomniacs. He was the most pitiable of the lot. He did not have nightmares and an overactive mind like Zhang Gui to keep him up, nor was the uncertainty of the day to come eating him up like it was Ao Longwei and he certainly was not a lunatic like Chief Daquan.Bo was simply a victim of circumstances.

Knowing that the day to come was going to be an exhausting one he had hoped to go to sleep earlier than usual. But plans are meant to fail. The failure for his plan came in the form of the loud snores of their host - Master Zhen. The monstrous sounds that could only barely be called snores reverberated throughout the hut leaving Bo perplexed. But it was nothing Bo couldn't handle. The snores had been torturing them for almost a month now - naturally both Bo and Zhang Gui had ways to deal with them. Using his hands to neatly cover his ears Bo was able to mitigate the noise to a reasonable extent.

Just when he thought that he could finally rest in peace, Zhang Gui , who was lying next to him, began his late night gymnastics show. Rolling around on the leather mattress he gave no second thought to how his gymnastics show would affect Bo. As if that was not enough he then started mumbling about counting some sheeps and goats.

Sandwiched between the snoring Master Zhen and the maniacal Zhang Gui, Bo was trapped. He offloaded every curse word he had heard Zhang Gui use for Ao Longwei in the last few days. If Zhang Gui ever found out he would not know whether to be proud or be offended.

As the cracks on the door let in the first rays of sunlight, Bo made a decision, “ Ah fuck it, from now on I will sleep on the Drupe tree. Might as well live like a monkey now - at least they get to sleep peacefully at night.”

The restless night faded away, making way for the uncertain day to begin. The tribe woke up from its slumber and one of the first ones to wake up was Master Zhen. It was a special day for the hunting party he was leading.

Master Zhen made his way into Zhang Gui’s room, “ Wake up boy! How long are you gonna sleep for? Hunters should wake up before the Sun you know.”

Unexpectedly he was greeted by two grouchy faces glaring straight at him with blood-shot eyes.

“Uhh...you guys are already up? You must be excited as well…Your eyes are all red you know. Did you guys perhaps not sleep at all yesterday?”

All he got in response was the stare with ever increasing intensity.

*Cough*

“Was it...was it because of my snoring?”

Looking at the bald giant scratching his cheeks and smiling innocently, Bo felt like strangling something.