What was a long life if not a cruel joke? What point was there in carefully attending to wheat that would soon find itself being ground to pieces in a gristmill? People were no different; they were but fresh grain to be ground down into flour by the merciless millstone called "life."

Laude Tellstar let out a small sigh as he mindlessly twirled a stalk of wheat in his hands. Life was slow but peaceful in Haalo, his beloved little hometown. It was a small village located in the middle of nowhere beside a large mountain range colloquially known as the "Devil's Spine" for the frequent landslides that occurred on them, which had unfortunately led to the death of many traveling merchant companies. It was the main reason why Haalo was rarely visited by outsiders.

On the same hand, it was also the reason why Haalo never experienced the industrialization that most of the empire had undergone. The land around Haalo was still fertile as ever; the air was pure and clean, not yet dirtied by the sulfurous stench of smog that many cities and towns were beginning to produce...

In a way, Haalo was a living snapshot of the previous era — of a simpler time when Spiritual Qi had been abundant and was used for everything.

When winter came around, people used to place spirit stones into furnaces engraved with simplistic rune arrangements, creating long-lasting flames to stave off the winter chill. During hot summers, people would take those same spirit stones and place them into intricate, wooden contraptions made by immortals — spiritual manikins — to create refreshing, cool winds to fight the summer heat.

Spiritual Qi once powered magical lamps, stoves, weapons, tools, and devices — but those days were coming to an end.

Laude raised the straw hat that had been covering his face and gazed at a hill in the distance. From here, the villagers looked like tiny little ants as they tirelessly worked, hauling wood from a nearby forest to build yet another windmill to handle this year's unexpected bountiful harvest.

Now that spirit stones had all but disappeared from the area, the villagers of Haalo could no longer rely on the powered mills that once relied on spirit stones to function. As a result, the village was forced to rely on antiques — watermills and windmills that relied on mother nature, a river adjacent to the village, to work.

The outside world was steadily marching toward the future at a frightening rate but here in Haalo, barely anything had changed since Laude had returned. After wasting an entire year working in Alora, the royal capital of the Janusphere Empire, Laude had quit his job as an Imperial Delegate and had returned to Haalo.

His decision had come as quite a shock to his parents and the villagers of Haalo, to be sure.

They had thought of him as the smartest person in the village's entire history, someone who had taught himself and passed the Imperial examinations at the astonishing age of fourteen.

In fact, it was that incredible feat that had caught the attention of the Imperial House in Alora, who had offered Laude the opportunity to study and work in the royal capital.

Laude's story was somewhat legendary in little old Haalo. After all, it was one where a country bumpkin won the jackpot and got himself hired by the Imperial House. It was a meteoric ascension to fame and power fit for a rural folk tale. So when Laude came back home a year later, it understandably confused a great many people.

How could such a bright, young child have given up an opportunity people would have killed to obtain — a golden future filled with power, wealth, and prestige as an Imperial Delegate?

When Laude thought about how naive, pure-hearted, and ignorant the people of Haalo were, a small malicious smirk formed on his lips.

There was no glory to be had in being an Imperial Delegate. The only payment an Imperial Delegate received was unending misery and frustration. Laude himself preferred the title "Imperial Janitor" rather than Imperial Delegate for those foolish enough to take on the job.

And that was Laude felt his blood begin to boil again. Merely thinking about what he had been forced to deal with during his tenure as an Imperial Delegate made him want to explode.

He had been nothing more than a glorified nanny for some of the most disgusting human beings to have ever been born — cultivators.

Laude trembled in anger as his hands curled up into hardened fists, but he eventually calmed himself down. The last thing he wanted to do was scare the sheep and get yelled at by his uncle, so he let his anger pass over him and laid down on a pile of hay to unwind.

He hated cultivators.

Despised them in a way that could not be conveyed in words.

Laude considered them a scourge upon the world and was delighted that Spiritual Qi was on its way out. The faster Spiritual Qi disappeared from the world, the happier he would be.

Brazen. Amoral. Callous. Tyrannical. Dull. Selfish. Degenerate. Useless...

There was no end to the number of... imaginative descriptors Laude had for people who practiced cultivation. For an entire year, Laude had been nothing more than a handyman for cultivators who had earned the Imperial House's favor.

Whenever they got in trouble with the law, it had been his job to smooth things over with the authorities and make sure their deeds never reached the public eye...

Whenever they wanted something, it had been his job to obtain it for them and deliver it to them, be it expensive liquor and jewelry, exotic toys, beautiful women and men... the list was never-ending.

Whenever they saw something or someone they didn't like, it had been his job to get rid of them and make sure they were never seen again — by any means necessary.

He had essentially been a glorified genie in a bottle as an Imperial Delegate, tasked with pleasing and fulfilling the wishes of the cultivators who resided in Alora.

In the beginning, Laude had been relatively tolerant about what he had to clean up for them, but he eventually reached his limit one night and quit his job on the spot. And to be clear, Laude had kept his eyes closed on a considerable amount of crimes — petty theft, ransom, bribery, public indecency, destruction of property, gambling, blackmail...

But there were certain acts that Laude could neither ignore nor forgive.

Some atrocities were so sickening that not even Laude's wavering moral compass would not permit him to overlook them.

A distorted vision forced itself upon Laude's mind as he began to unwillingly recall the events of that night.

"——hit, loo——at —ess you've made, haha! Look a—— her,— not eve——"

It was the horrible stench — the vivid cinnabar stains across the walls of the alley — and the sharp taste of warm iron on his lips. He could not forget the scene, as much as he wished to.

"He— vant boy, clea— up fo—— we're going to—— lean this sh———— selves..."

A young girl, barely ten years old, sat dumbfoundedly beside the fresh corpse with a blank expression on her face. It seemed as if she had just... broken, unable to process the reality of her new situation.

Laude slapped himself as hard as he could manage and forced the memory down into the recesses of his mind where it belonged. Nothing good would come of remembering that night, neither for him nor the poor, poor child.

He knew that even if he tried to reveal the truth of what transpired that night, it would never be published in any newspaper in the city. All the newspapers worked for the Imperial House, after all.

The Imperial Courts would have never believed him anyway even if he took those accursed cultivators to court. Even if he had assembled the best case to indict those bastards, he would've been labeled a liar and a fraud. In all likelihood, he would have lost his job and gotten himself sent to prison for the grave crime of "falsely accusing noble sages of murder."

There was nothing Laude could've done for that little girl.

So rather than being part of such a broken, unfixable system, Laude quit his job on the spot that night and went back home to Haalo.

"Laude! It's time for lunch! Get your lazy ass up and let's go home!" said a man in a rough tone from afar.

It was Laude's uncle, Francesco, who had called for him — a burly, older man in his mid-forties who had a perpetual scowl on his face. His short, wheat-colored hair and sharp green eyes only added to the man's ferocious visage, such that few people had the guts to anger the big fellow...

Laude included, of course. He was nowhere near as strong, brave, or stupid enough to get on the bad side of a man who had once scared a bear away with... a single glare.

He hurriedly got up from the hay bale that he had been napping and hurried over to Francesco's departing figure, unwilling to get on his bad side any further today.

Of all the people who disapproved of Laude's return, Francesco was one of the people who had been most confrontational about his return back home. Not because he wanted Laude gone from the village or because he hated him, but because he was disappointed in Laude's decision.

Francesco felt that Laude had failed himself more than his family or the village. He thought it was a colossal waste to have someone so intelligent and talented spend the rest of his farming crops.

If anyone in Haalo had what it took to prosper out in the big world, it was the precocious little brat who had once sold stolen apples and persimmons to the kids in the village. When most of the village kids in Haalo had barely learned how to count with their fingers, Laude had already mastered multiplication and division.

The walk back home had been a quiet one until Francesco broke the silence with a simple question.

"Do you feel satisfied being here?" said Francesco.

Laude's expression furrowed in confusion, and he said, "There's no place like home, uncle. Where else would I want to be, if not right here in Haalo?"

"I don't know, but I— We think that maybe you ran away from something," said Francesco, trying to broach the subject with as little subtlety as possible. Clear and blunt was how he operated when it came to talking and dealing with problems.

"All of us just think that being a farmer isn't what you're cut out to be," said Francesco, as if it were a matter of fact. "You're wasting your talents growing crops, and it's worrying your old folks, myself included."

Laude wryly shook his head and did not reply.

They wouldn't understand even if I explained it to them. There's nothing to be had in dealing with the outside world. It's better to be a nobody here in Haalo as a modest farmer than to live in Alora as a shitty handyman...

Francesco sighed and said, "Just what is it that brought you back here in the first place? You have to at least give us a reason. Otherwise, you're just going to keep worrying everybody..."

Laude paused for a moment in contemplation and then replied, "Believe it or not, it was the Heavens themselves that brought me back, uncle."

"The Heavens... brought you back?"

"They sure did," said Laude with a big smile, "I was so disappointed in them that I quit my job and came back here instead."

Francesco frowned deeply and said, "Watch it, brat. You were raised better than that. There's a limit to blasphemy, even for you. Don't test the Heavens, or you'll regret it..."

As a man with deep beliefs about the Heavens above, Francesco was naturally superstitious about the consequences of offending a higher power. It was the same for the villagers of Haalo too, but after what Laude had witnessed in Alora, his faith in the Heavens had all but vanished overnight...

"The Heavens are utterly blind," said Laude, unwillingly to back down from the matter, "Or perhaps, the Heavens might have truly abandoned us like the homeless madmen in the capital kept yelling about. Even the stars have begun to disappear, so why is it so hard to believe the Heavens haven't done the same, too?"

Francesco stopped walking and said, "Listen here, you little shit, if I hear one more wor—"

"Then you'll what? Call the Heavens to punish me?! Fat chance that'll happen, haha!" said Laude before he stretched out his arms and yelled at the sky, "Come and punish me then, you fucking bastards! But if you're going to do it, make sure you get all the other pieces of trash who deserve it, too!!"

A prolonged, uncomfortable silence followed Laude's defiant proclamation as he challenged the Heavens, but in the end... nothing happened. His bold dare reached no one as it traveled toward the sky and beyond.

Laude sneered and said, "Well, where are your righteous and mighty Heavens to judge me, huh? I'll tell you where they are— they're up my fucking as—"

And then, out of the blue — from a seemingly clear sky — a single bolt of lightning fell from the Heavens above and smote Laude exactly where he stood.

It happened so quickly Francesco had not even registered it had happened until he saw Laude's charred, slightly burning body suddenly collapse on the road with a hard thud.

And that was that.

Laude Tellstar had got exactly what he wished for — he had been struck dead by the Heavens for his impertinence.