"Oh, young hero! Why are you not enjoying our humble banquet, is it not to your liking…?"

"You can drop the young hero thing, just call me Lan. Actually, I want to ask you the same question…"

"Then I won't hold back, Sir Lan, I'm just not too hungry at the moment…"

"No need to add Sir… Whatever I guess… I have a few things I would like to ask you about…"

"No need to hold back, Sir Lan, just ask away!"

"Alright then… How much do you know about the sects' annual recruitment…"

"Ah!"

The old village chief suddenly let out a cry of surprise as an interesting expression appeared on his face...

"Hmm?"

It was the expression of 'I knew this would happen, but that's just too fast' which would normally be hard to read, but I somehow managed to interpret it that way.

"Just what in the world… a few hours ago, you were asking for basic knowledge which I already found odd, now you are asking about something that most normal don't know of…"

"Well, details would be a pain, but since you seem like a trustworthy person, I would say that I just came from a far away place…"

"... That's doesn't make much sense, but it's impolite to question our savior…"

"Thanks! From the way you said it, you seem to be one of the few who know about it though…"

"Well, I would say that you are not completely right about it, the reason I know about it is because I wasn't a normal person a long time ago…"

"Oh?"

"Since it would probably be too dramatic of me to tell you the whole story which isn't the best out there, I will just keep it short…"

A nostalgic look and a bitter smile appeared on the old village chief's face before he opened his mouth once more…

"Me and my wife were both naive back then… We were just simple second stage Earth practitioners who wandered around the domain…"

"During our journey we exhausted the fate of both our lives as we managed to find an earth elemental crystal mine! One that could produce 2nd rank crystals at that, though it wasn't overly big, it was still very valuable…"

"Since we were young, we were too enchanted with the concept of sects, both our parents were elders of the Green Earth sect which deteriorated with time… So on finding the mine, we knew that it was our chance!"

"Our chance to rebuild the sect that fell with the death of my father, who was the last living parent of both me and my wife who already lost her parents when we were 10 years old…"

"Using the token of my father, I went for the annual meeting and obtained the rights to start a sect, since I was a second stage peak practitioner at that time, as strong as my late father…"

"but like I said, we were too naive, we wanted to rebuild the sect as fast as possible so we used the fact that we had obtained a natural crystal mine as the foundation to our sect to get apprentices smoothly, and it did work at the very start…"

"Selling crystals was quite a coin bringer, a few months later, the sect was fully built, with over 100 apprentices to boot, it could also be said that we had successfully put down our roots, it was almost everything me and my wife wished for…"

"But just as if it was the calm before the storm… By the time of the next annual meeting…"

Although he said that he would just say the summary of his past, it seemed like he went into detail a bit more in his nostalgia, but I didn't really mind, as long as I wasn't going to details myself, listening was easy enough…

It was just that… I wasn't that much of a tragedy fan…

'Especially when my life could count as a tragedy story as well…'

"During the assignment of land, as a new sect, we would normally receive a small part of another sect's land, in exchange for resources or through other means, we weren't really greedy for that as we wanted to stay simple, but when it was payment time…"

"The sect that offered us the land took the chance and destroyed the hall sect, seizing the crystal mine as collateral saying that we refused to pay what we owed, even though we already delivered it at an earlier date…"

"At that time, I was in seclusion, trying to breakthrough to the third stage, only to get hit by the news of the new Green Earth sect's destruction and my wife's abrupt death who was trying to protect the sect, causing damage to my elemental vessel and stopping me from breaking through…"

"Being as foolish as I was, blinded by fury, I wanted to ask for justice and exact my revenge, only to get crippled, by the sealing of my elemental vessel, and understand that I wouldn't be able to fight against the giant called the 'Elemental Blade Sect'..."

"Seeing how unfair the world was to me, I wanted to take my own life, only to chance on the two little grandchildren of mine thrown in the wild, which reminded me of my late wife…"

"Witnessing their own family throwing them away and thinking about the children me and my wife never managed to have due to certain problems, I took them in and went ahead to find a place to settle and start over…"

"The rest of the story isn't worth mentioning, me joining the village, and helping them with what was left of my superficial elemental ability, and untimely awakening my recognition ability which helped our village, before taking my position as the village chief…"

"If you asked me what my true regret was, I would say it was not getting my ability earlier to be able to recognize how treacherous the 'Elemental Blade Sect' was so I wouldn't have been deceived by their fake kindness…"

"Oh my, I must have been too much, telling you about a great part of my unsightly past…"

"No worries, my condolences for what you had to suffer in the past, I wouldn't say I don't understand the pain of losing everything as well…"

'After all, It wasn't only once that this has happened to me…'

Losing both parents after my birth, then losing the only support I had alongside my hope of living, I could pretty much relate with this native…

'At least I got a chance to change that…'

"Haha, I guessed as much, this late ability of mine sure works too well, haha…"

"Ahem…"

"Oh right, we have gone too far away from the reason I started this whole story, sorry for that, haha…"

"No need to worry over that, we can talk about it later…"

I wasn't as rude as to urge a man who has just remembered the whole tragedy of his life to get to business…

"No need, no need, in fact this was something I was planning to give you sooner or later…"

The old village chief, or should I say the former sect head, took out a green jade plate as he presented it to me…

"This was the reward I originally talked about during the confrontation…"