=Once, I believe. But that was a very long ti ago. Why do you ask?=
=Oh?=
=Don’t we all make choices?=
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’Choose your future...huh.’
As Zhen Xi mulled over the valkyrie’s statent, the wheels in his his head began to turn, as it went back, back to a ti when the future of his family wasn’t so certain.
________________________________________________
The Zhen Clan wasn’t always consider a powerhouse of the frontier as they are considered today.
Once upon a ti, they were just a simple family trying to make a new life on a new continent.
After narrowly escaping several assassination attempts up until now, Zhen Shi and Bai Hua had welcod into the world four of their sons, Zhen Long, Zhen Hou, Zhen Lao, and the youngest at the ti, Zhen Xi.
Their early life in Stone Claw City was rather...tricky, to say the least.
It was bad enough being a foreigner in a foreign land, but to also set up a whole new business and foundation in a frontier town surrounded by a mix of bandits, runaways, explorers and everything in-between?
So would call that sheer lunacy.
Regardless, the Zhen Family would go through multiple ups and downs before making it big, but it was during this economic/emotional roller coaster that Zhen Xi ended up going through a rather small event that would stick with him even to this day, even if he didn’t really rember it all too well...
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"Need...water...," Zhen Xi grumbled to himself as he walked through the house, half asleep and groggily holding a stuffed animal in one of his hands.
As was one of the quirks of toddlerhood, Zhen Xi awoke in the middle of the night due to a bad dream. While he couldn’t rember the details, he just knew it involved getting eaten by a monstrous pastry.
Right now, his brain was telling him to go get a drink of water and then go bother his parents to sleep in their bed for safety.
"Get water...and then...huh?"
As he was about to make his way to the well however, he found that the door to his father’s office was slightly opened, with the the faintest wisps of lantern light coming from the within.
Curious at the sight, Zhen Xi made his way closer to the door, but took care as to not be seen by whover was inside. Much to his surprise, it was both his mother and father working away into the night behind the office door.
The two of them were looking through several stacks of papers as they kept muttering to themselves and each other things that Zhen Xi recognized as being numbers...maybe.
He was working with a three year old’s brain so while he could understand so things, he couldn’t understand everything.
"Shit," Bai Hua cursed as she finished reading through another docunt, "no wonder my family’s bookkeeper always had a sour look on his face. I’d be sour too if I had to go through all of this paperwork day in and day out."
"I t my clan’s treasurer once, he wasn’t sour but he reeked of cheap alcohol," Zhen Shi added as he finished writing one more letter.
"A night cap doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now, but it still wouldn’t make the paperwork go away," Bai Hua grumbled as she looked over another docunt.
As independent business owners, the two of them had to deal with the lovely bureaucracy of contracts and budgeting. While they could attempt to use overwhelming force, the two of them were only Aether Masters. They could bully and browbeat the local district, but anything bigger would just be attracting trouble, which they couldn’t afford to do right now
Besides, it was better for them in the long run to play nice and build a reputation as "good business owners with honorable deanors" and not as blood hungry bandits.
That said, all the paperwork these rchant were putting them through was really making it hard for them not to beco bandits...but they had kids to raise and they needed to make a good example.
Zhen Shi let out a deep sigh as he placed his head down on the table and placed another docunt to a different pile.
A sense of heaviness overca the room as Zhen Shi laid there on the tbale. It wasn’t exactly sadness, nor despair, not even regret. It was just...stress.
"Xiao Hua...did we make the right choice?," Zhen Shi asked while lifting his head up, but still keeping his chin on the table.
"Hmm? You finally regret eloping with after all this ti? I’m hurt," Bai Hua retorted in a sarcastic voice.
"You know I’d never regret that," Zhen Shi talked back as he lifted himself up from the table, "I just an...you sure you want to bank on my knowledge about aether beasts to make a living? Not a lot of people out here chomping at the bit for to be chopping at their beasts."
In response to her husband’s terrible wordplay, Bai Hua flicked a small bit of paper at his head.
"Gah!"
"Choke on your alliteration," Bai Hua chided, "and we’ve been over this darling. I have faith in your abilities."
"Thank you love, but there were more obvious choices to making a living here and-"
"Bah, obvious choices...,"Bai Hua clicked her tongue in disdain, "obvious doesn’t always an better. If we went with the obvious choices in our lives, I would be married to a prince and you’d probably be shacking with so two silver hooker who wouldn’t deserve you."
"I...thanks?"
"My point is," Bai Hua continued, "sotis the most obvious choices in life aren’t the best ones to make. Sotis, you have to make those choices yourself."
"You an create?"
"You know what I an..."
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"You have to create the best choice to make."
That may not have been her exact words, but that is what Zhen Xi rembered hearing at such a young age that it left an impact on him.
Around the ti his brothers were choosing types of beasts to specialize in, he ended up choosing boars because in the deepest parts of his mind, he associated them with those words.
Pigs were known for their tenacity, their ability to eat practically anything and their ability to live wherever they wanted.
It didn’t matter whether it was the freezing cold or burning heat, didn’t matter if they were surrounded by predators or prey, they made their choices with every step they took.
And for most of his life, Zhen Xi lived like that too.
He’d rush first into danger to make a path for his companions.
He’d beco the wall the others needed to buy ti.
Whenever sothing was deed "inevitable", he would make it beco "optional".
But as ti passes and he got older and reached a familiar bottleneck that many cultivators hit in their lifetis, he started to lose that drive.
It was a gradual change, but little by little, Zhen Xi no longer "made" choices, he made choices.
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Zhen Xi stared at the two doors as he stood between them, one made of fire while the other of stone.
[So...what will you choose?,] the valkyrie repeated, [the road of blazing courage? Or solid determination? They’re both obvious paths to a good future.]
Zhen Xi stood there, silent for only a few seconds before retorting.
"But are they a good future for ?"
[Oh?]
Zhen Xi turned towards the towering warrior woman and stared directly into her eyes, a strange intensity in them.
"I don’t know if you’re able to read my mories or sothing, that’s the vibe I’m getting from this place, but you...you should know that I’m not the type to just take a random choice in front of , especially when presented by so mysterious giant woman. You said I’ve stalled...well, I’m done stalling. But I’m not going to go a path you just chose for . I’ll make my own choice."
[Is that so?...good.]
*Rumble*
"Huh?"
The doors that the valkyrie had summoned disappeared soon after Zhen Xi said his piece, and in their place was a new door, one adorned with gem, tal and magma.
But above that, there was an odd feeling to it.
The doors from before, the ones that were summoned, felt alien to Zhen Xi, as if they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place despite appearing to be made from the sa materials as the hall.
This new door however, felt as if it was part of the hall, as if it was a natural developnt, and felt as if...it was a part of him.
’Wait...does that an this place is...’
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=Ooooh, that what you ant.=
=Being a factor to make choices beco available, instead of making a choice between present ones.=
=Did you steal that from a ga?=
=Nice.=
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