A day went by and our protagonist is confused. He who boast of knowing life and death itself is now in his most vulnerable moment.
...
In a large room fully composed of a particular weapon, a boy was speechlessly looking at rows of glaives kept in order in a specific-made selves. The room was seemingly endless. There was no any wall indicating its end. There were myriad of weapons kept in showcases. There were also some which were covered in talismans indicating their sealed status. Sword, saber, spear, shield, gauntlet, spikes, needles, dagger...everything were here. There were weapons which looked like they came right out of imagination and there were weapons that looked antique to death.
Then he looked back. An old lady was looking at him. They looked at each other, eye-to-eye. No-one wanted to blink. The boy wanted to defeat his adversary whereas the lady just wanted to annoy the boy.
...
Defeated, the boy asked, "Are you kidding me?".
That old woman seriously replied, "No, choose one."
I looked back to the selves. They were all glaives. But what I know is only one kind of glaive but here, there are more than forty types of glaives. Some even do not look like glaives at all. Again, looking back, I asked, "Why are there so many varieties?"
Aunt Ma frowned and asked, "Don't tell me you don't know about glaives?"
"No."
"Then why did you choose it?"
I speechlessly looked at her. Does she want me to say it? I was only two years old at that time. I chose it because it looked cool.
Aunt Ma signed. "Listen properly. Glaive is a pole-arm weapon that is essentially a saber blade on a long handle. Typically, the blade is around forty-five centimeters or eighteen inches long and the pole is two meters or seven feet long. But as you can see, it just needs to have a pole and a blade. So, it can be made according to the practitioner's demand. It can be made big, small, double-bladed, spear-like, and so on."
Now I understood. It is like customization according to a user's demand. If you don't like the long pole, shorten it and make a saber. If you don't like the blade, remove it and make a staff. If you don't like a curved and long blade, shorten it and make it straight, and you got a spear. You want a blade on both sides of the pole, add one. Damn, these people are lazy as heck. If it was my previous world, every damn types would have different damned name.
...
Then I suddenly realized something. I gained enlightenment about my sufferings.
Fuck, I was made to practice the staff, spear, and saber for contingencies. How irksome. But what can I do? It already happened. But still, this old hag be damned.
Can't she have explained me about it and design a much simpler training plan. Does it not ache her heart seeing a devastatingly absolute cute venerable here bleed daily doing a damn nonsense training? Shouldn't I be living as a young master? Where is my comfort? WHERE???
(A/N: *ahem*...*ahem*...my throat hurts.)
Then I checked through those glaives one by one. Choosing one among them was hard. I wanted a glaive in which I would be able use all my sufferings of my past. After a long while, going from self to self, I found what I was searching for.
A Chinese guandao, with a two-foot one-edged blade and a seven-foot pole with a small straight blade at the back. A tassel was hanging on the spur-like spike on the serrated back of the blade. The pole and the blade were joined by a dragon head. From whichever angle I look at it, it looks perfect. So, I unhesitatingly chose it.
The old lady simply nodded, went outside for a while, came inside but with an additional 'Chibi' version of the glaive I chose. She then handed it to me.
I took the glaive. It was about five-foot-tall, about one foot taller than me.
...
I am now about four-foot tall. It seems that cultivators grow quickly and are much taller. Take Ela for example, she is about six-foot nine-inches tall.
I grabbed the glaive tightly and swung it. The old lady smiled and kindly said, "It looks like you cannot wait to use it. So, let's go to the training ground." At that moment, all my excitement drained quickly. I nodded with a blank expression and followed her to the training field.
'One year. Just one year left. After that my freedom would be returned.'
'No pain, no gain. I will do it. No, I was forced to do it.'
I looked at the bracelet in my right arm. Then I raised my head. With an emotionless face, I mentally cursed the creator of this bracelet.
...
Meanwhile, on the east wing of the outer palace of the stone family, an old man was questioning the creation itself. He is Uncle Ma.
Otherwise, what could he do? He has been sneezing for five years. It started at the banquet and is ongoing till now. He searched high and low for the person who is cursing him, but he found nothing. He even checked all his belongings one-by-one thinking one of them got sentient. But still, he found nothing. He paid for divination but got no answer. Now, he could either question himself or a statue. For a cultivator like him, it is absolutely not comfortable to live around a person who is cursing you wholeheartedly.
But he also cannot leave this place. It was his duty to guard the outer palace. So, he is in dilemma. There are only two things he could do. Either endure it or go to fight with those old fellows. And, he wants to do neither. He could only convince himself by thinking that this is the test of Dao-heart given by heaven. After all, heaven in omniscient and omnipresent. It is absolutely no problem for it to test any random person in boredom.