It was wet morning in a small village, on the east coast of the Grand Zhao Dynasty. There was nothing extraordinary about this village, if one passed through it they would need to be able to differentiate it from any of the 1000 others in the empire.
"Uncle Lu, UNCLE LU, where are you?" yelled a small boy, probably not over the age of 6.
As he ran around in an excited fashion, he came upon a small lake. Sitting at the corner of the lake was a middle-aged man, holding a small, homemade fishing robe in hand while chewing on a wheat straw.
"Calm your ruckus boy, I'm here." moaned the middle-aged man. "Why ya being so loud, ya know I gotta catch some fish for dinner tonight, so stop that racket."
Uncle Lu had another nickname in the village, black cat Lu. He got the nickname because his luck was so bad that the villagers thought he was probably cursed. He was born into a poor farming family, without even the slightest piece of silver to their name.
Although, his luck ran much worse. When he was 9, his parents died after accidentally offending a noble from a local prefecture, leaving him alone to raise his little sister. As he raised his sister by himself, no one in the village was capable of giving a helping hand. In the coming years he became sweethearts with a village girl, but before they could be married she got a sickness and died days after. He was never the same afterwards.
To make matters even worse, his little sister, the jewel of his eyes, suddenly become pregnant when she was sixteen. No one knows who the father was, some of the aunts in the village said it was a dashing noble, while some elders assumed she was raped. Even the man surnamed Lu himself didn't know what had happened, all he know was that his sister seemed to scream an unknown man's name in her dreams, stained with tears. He would have went looking for the man with his trusty shovel had his sister not made him swear to forget about the situation, by threatening him with her own life.
The child wasn't the end of their problems after his sister got pregnant her suitors disappeared into the wind, but that much the man surnamed Lu didn't mind since there is no way he could afford a dowry. Over time, he came to accept the situation, ready to help his sister, but before he could show his support to his sister, she died during childbirth. Her last wish being for him to take care of her child.
For these reasons alone, any normal man would become a walking corpse, yet the man surnamed Lu still woke up every morning at 4 and worked till 11 at night to fish, in order to feed himself and his nephew.
"I found something weird by the forest Uncle Lu. I think we'll become rich if we get our hands on it, hehe," said the boy in an excited jolt.
"God damn it, what have I told ya about going near the forest…" yelled the man surnamed Lu. "Wait! Did you say make us rich?"
Even though the man surnamed Lu could be said to be virtuous in all manners for not succumbing to life's miseries, he had one weakness. Money.
"Uh-huh, I saw something that looked like gold in a cave, when I was playing little Tao there yesterday," replied the boy excitedly.
"What in the world are ya and that little girl doing near the forest alone, how many bloody times do I have to yell at ya till ya stop going there?" screamed the man surnamed Lu.
"Does that mean we are not going to the cave, the boy said in a hushed tone, on the brink of tears."
"Of course not, where there is money we shall go," said the man surnamed Lu with a smirk, while staring at the sky. Imaging a life full of decadence, he placed his fishing rod on his back, while creepily chuckling as they walk towards the forest.
As the two reached, they heard a scream. A little girl's scream. The boy ran towards the cave, but before he could find out what happened, a hand encroach on his back. He turned back to hold her back.
"Uncle, we need to help her," yelled the boy with tears streaming down his face.
Uncle Lu, clearly disgruntled, pulled the boy. He said, " Did I raise an idiot, there are probably bandits in there. They were probably luring fools like you, who knows what they've done to that girl already. Don't be stupid, let's get out of here!"
"You're a COWARD uncle, you're the worst," the boy in that moment became different from before.
Although he was still submerged with tears, at that moment he had changed. He had lost a piece of his innocence, the uncle who raised him was no longer the large and powerful figure he envisioned. For the first time, he saw the truth, that his uncle was just human. He was no longer the sturdy figure that was always watching his back, but rather a frail man. At that moment he came to a realization that takes normal people decades, but with the sudden gain of clarity, he lost something. He would never continue to have a normal childhood from that day on, he was never going to laugh, while trying to catch a fish with his per hands, or enjoy the sun dawn without a hint of worry. He had taken his first step of maturity towards his understanding of the world around him, but at too young an age.
The boy kicked his uncle and got out of his grasp, he then ran towards the cave. As he reached the cave, he was determined to find a way to save little Tao. He wasn't going to be like his uncle, he was going to be brave.
Once he entered the cave he saw a fearsome figure, engulfed by a blanket of darkness. It was the last thing the boy ever saw.