Martial Elf

The man was suffering from a rare blood condition.

As he gazed at the flickering oil lamps, he felt that his life was coming to an end.

His body, which had started to feel heavy days ago, could no longer properly grip a brush.

Although he had been weak due to his condition, his calligraphy and brushwork were widely regarded as among the finest in the Central Plains. Now, however, he sighed at his inability to even bear the weight of a brush and set it down.

The man, with the eyes of someone whose life was fading, looked down at the book he had been writing and gently caressed its surface.

The book contained illustrations of people dancing, and although not written in a valorous hand, the neatly arranged characters were pleasant to the eye.

The book he had been writing was a martial arts manual that he had penned countless times before.

His family had provided him with various martial arts texts and skilled practitioners from all over the Central Plains, and the man had annotated or deconstructed those texts to recreate unique martial arts specific to his family.

Since he could not go outside, clinging to life like a flickering candle, he had heard rumors that the martial arts he had created were recently gaining prominence throughout the world.

The man was suffering from a rare blood condition.

The meridians in his body were twisted and broken, unable to produce even the smallest amount of energy that could be compared to a grain of rice, which typically formed after years of diligent practice. The pain that occasionally twisted within him felt as though his insides were tangled, and when a sudden pain struck, like a steel stake driven into his heart, he would forget that he was born a man and cry out in agony.

Yet, strangely enough, the twisted and broken energy seemed to inadvertently direct all the flow towards his upper dantian.

It was said that his memory was outstanding.

Not only was his memory sharp enough to retain what he had seen, but he was also adept at analyzing and deciphering not just written text but human actions, rearranging them to yield better results.

Whether as a scholar, merchant, or artist, he had the potential to achieve great success, but what the man chose was that of a martial artist.

It was a singular desire.

The man was suffering from a rare blood condition.

Consequently, from the moment he was born with an unnatural body due to his affliction, he had to live his life as a bystander while his peers frolicked under the bright light of life.

A healthy body, strong vitality, power, and an average human lifespan.

Unlike his reality, where he endured chronic illness with addictive medicinal herbs, in the man’s fantasies, he saw a healthy version of himself soaring the world with the martial arts he had created.

Yet in the end, his dreams never became reality; he could only feel the life within him rapidly draining away.

“I wanted to live.”

The man wished.

“I wanted to be healthy.”

He prayed to the stars shining through his dark window.

“I wanted to live long.”

If only there was a next life,

“I want to live healthily and for a long time, unlike this life.”

The man’s heart—no, the heart of a boy who had yet to reach his coming of age—came to a stop.