****(POV)

Long ago I was but a tiny village kid, one similar to what you would expect of one.

Purposeless, just living my life one day after the other. That kind of life wasn't for me. I didn't mid the toiling from early morning to late at night.

No, what bothered me was the impression I had of not going anywhere in my life. That's when I figured out that I needed a goal. One that would be hard to reach and would keep me busy for a long time.

Couldn't I just enjoy my peaceful everyday life? I could have, but it had this feeling of intense boredom that plagued me.

That's when by a strange string of fate came visitors in our tiny village.

Ones wearing long golden robes with trigram insignia. They looked not only refined but as if driven by something. That detail is the one I noticed instantly. Then I started wondering what exactly gave them purpose, what made them come here too.

They were here to recruit.

I had heard legends of masters taking apprentices from the small remote areas before. Of course, most of it was only legends. There is a reason no one usually comes to these kinds of places. The low population, common ancestry, and lack of education of the populace tend to do testing for potential hard and makes finding a talented individual extremely unlikely.

It was what I was looking for all along. A chance to change my destiny! I obviously went to meet these masters. The answer I was looking for all along in my life. It was right in front of my eyes.

I would join and learn whatever they had to teach. Make something out of myself instead of just existing.

My parents advised me otherwise when they learned the subject of the tests.

They were testing fate. Affinity to divination magic.

Of course, a plain farmer's son like myself wouldn't have any chance. They told me that I should focus on growing the best crops possible, but I didn't want to.

I went there and prepared myself mentally to face anything. Revised my writing, reading, counting, and common knowledge all over again. Something I only learned by chance as the village was home to an old decrepit old man that used to be a small-time peddler.

Every year some of the youngsters would even bet on whether the old man would last another one. I was and am still grateful to that man for showing me kindness, for telling me about a vast world existing outside of my sight.

If I had to guess my sense of not-belonging probably started with this mentor of mine's tales. He would spend the extraordinarily little time he had left in the mortal realm teaching me.

So I studied and prepared as much as humanly possible and faced the evaluation.

Turns out I was overly prepared. More so, I couldn't have ever been prepared for what was to come.

They brought me to a small stool and told me to sit quietly. Then one of them made some hand gestures, used a golden coin, and started predicting my fate.

I had only 2 thoughts in my mind.

The first one curiously thinking about how all of this was possible.

The second wondering if I had what it took.

As I am now adept at divination the answer should be obvious. Or most people would assume.

I failed the test horribly. I had not a single ounce of fate with the Dao of divination. Even worst I was apparently even worst off than a common typical villager.

Not only did that test reveal my inadequacies, but it also revealed that I was bound to die young.

Something about my fate coming to an end precipitously. My first feeling was puzzlement, then outrage, then acceptance. But instead of accepting that I would die and giving up, I decided to accept that I was bound to die and defy my fate anyway.

I could have had simply kept living the small reminder of my life at home, but not my style. It appeared kind of ironic to me how the young me would likely die before my old mentor. So much for betting on him staying alive every time and winning. All pointless if I am dead myself.

They stayed for exactly 13 days. Why 13? Was it because it was an auspicious number? Was there any other particular reason? In the beginning, they were supposed to stay here and travel to the surrounding villages too. That was supposed to take them a while, at least a month. Then why did they leave early?

Was it because they finally found a peerless genius? Was it because they had a sudden revelation? Nothing of the sort. After a while, they truly realized how much of a shithole our place was haha.

Needless to say, they found no one worthy in the area. If anything they resumed their travels with the company of additional bedbugs.

You'd expect fate followers to know better than to pointlessly travel around. Turns out fate is most of the time illusory. Even more so when it concerns something like trying to find talent in the world.

I spoke with a few of them and heard many complain about all the drawbacks to studying such magic. I quickly realized it wasn't anything that amazing. More accurately it might be amazing, but it was way too hard to grasp for it to be easily reachable.

Any sane person would stay far away from that group of lunatics for sure.

So anyway, as they left, I followed them from far away, for weeks.

I stuck right to their trail until we finally reached a tall mountain. On it, various abodes all over the place. Each having a different architectural style from the previous one.

How was I able to observe so many details? Well at that point I was waltzing in their holy ground blending in like I belonged.

How was a young kid like me able to follow these masters of divination so easily? How was I able to invade their domain so easily?

Well, I had a weak presence. Still have actually.

After all, I was nothing more than a typical villager, or so I looked at first glance. Servants tend to get ignored easily and a group that requires a whole mountain to establish itself has many of those.

Not only did I have a weak physical presence, but my fate was also about to end, thus making me pretty much an invisible ghost to the eyes of their magic.

That's when I realized that divination was in no way omniscient. Not even close.

It is this exact moment that would bring me to, years later, try my hand at assassination techniques.

Also at getting kicked out of the sect. That implies that I successfully managed to join it in the first place.

I did spend a long time mastering everything they had to teach me.

It made me the man I am today, it made me one of the most fearsome individuals there is on the top killers' board.

The Unknown Fate Puppeteer. The one that decides the fate of his victims.

But all that was about to change drastically, all because of a seemingly simple job I took in a now burned-to-the-ground mercenary Inn.