I Like Dust, not Flowers

Meanwhile, Hui was singing a sweet little tune as she skipped her way home, having buried the majority of the money, she had gone and bought a bunch of vegetables from the slum area (to avoid them catching sight of her) and was ready to slaughter a chicken at home and celebrate the turn in fortune with the rest of her siblings. The amount she'd gotten today was equivalent to two or three year's worth of meals, as long as she kept her head down and away from town until the small group left and made sure to pawn the golden coins into copper ones, she was set for a while and could focus solely on cultivation. Her meridians and veins were still developing, if she wanted to keep them from closing fully by adulthood, she would need to put in all the effort she could now. 

However, as she came into view of the house, she immediately noticed something was wrong. The door was left open like usual, but around this time, what was usually her five brothers complaining about their hunger, was instead complete silence. She set down the vegetables near the small hut for cooking and immediately headed into their shack. There, she was immediately greeted with a sight she hadn't seen in 3-4 years. 

A man stood inside, next to her mother's side, where she breathed her last, holding her hand, a mocking image to how he'd treated her for the last 15 years. However, her last words still came out: "please, take care of the children for me." before her hand fell from his grip, and her body became completely still. Hui's brothers immediately jumped onto the bed, trying to wake her up, or get her to move. Accepting Chui, who just stood in the corner, unblinking. And Chai, who didn't have much connection with his mom and never bothered to form one, preferring to cater love to Hui, who fed him.

The imposing man stared at her mother's limp form for a while, before turning to them. "You all heard her. I'll take my children back, but only those with my flesh and blood."

Chui didn't respond, Shi cursed, Chuo rejoiced, Ye cried, and Chai couldn't care less and was poking around with the vegetables outside already.

Hui's father walked outside. "Chui, Chuo and Hua, follow me if you wish to join my house, otherwise, we're no longer related."

No longer related? Since when did you care? 

Chui, seeing the good opportunity to have food, nice clothes and a warm bed, immediately joined his side, although he looked back, making sure to remember all the good things about his old home too. Chuo, however, had no such qualms and was ready to make it big with the big people. Hui didn't move.

"Hua?" Called her father, not bothering to look back.

"That's not my name." She responded.

He left with her two older brothers without responding.

Seeing them leave, Hui forced a grin onto her face, facing the other three. "Well, we have three less mouths to feed?"

"Shut up, sis." She saw it, but had no chance to dodge, before a well-aimed punch landed on her jaw, throwing her off her feet and across the hard ground. She looked up to see Shi standing over her. "Just because you feed us, you think you can say anything. What do you know???"

Hui knew he was just grieving over his mother and holding jealousy for his older and younger brothers, so she remained silent, letting him vent and then leave in huff, before she turned to the last two. Shi was right, everyone cared about their mom, and she was playing light on the separation of their family. Shi was always right about interpersonal things.

Her eyes became caring. These two that still stood there were young, at the ages of 8 and 7, and were willing to look up to their younger sister a bit, for providing food and firewood for them, when their older brothers were unwilling. She smiled. "Don't worry, we'll get through this, just like we always have. And there are some immortal's in town today, if they decide to take a look at youths here, maybe they'll find out you're a talent and can follow them to the mountains to become immortals."

However, that didn't happen, even as two more years passed.

In the meantime, Hui was very disappointed. She'd cultivated to the peak of the qi refining realm, but because of how blocked her meridians were, she could go no further, which meant it was basically impossible for anyone to even notice her cultivation, since she didn't have any of the spiritual energy of the heavens, merely that which refines her body to handle it, as she gatherers the heavenly qi to break into qi condensation. She was very frustrated with her progress, but any immortal who saw it would instead have called her a genius for getting so far without any guidance. It was only that she didn't understand very much about cultivation, and didn't know how fast fast was, nor how even to do a correct breathing method. She was just a little smart and had built up her own breathing method and was currently building a unique martial arts that suited her, by memorizing all the ones she'd sped read through in her past life, that she couldn't hardly understand. Luckily, in both lives she had a sharp brain, memorizing and learning things easily.

However, this year, there really were immortals who were coming to look for talents in the township. And after lining up, they soon discovered that Ye had unparalleled ice talent. Which made Shi very upset and Chai very sad, as a person who rarely gave his heart to anyone, he cried all the way home when his older brother left. However, he was still considered useless, due to having weak meridians. Not a month passed since then, when suddenly the three's world was turned upside down again.

And it was without warning too. It was a normal night, and the crickets were chirping peacefully in their regular tune, when out of nowhere, men in black came from every direction, completely taking over the town in moments burning everything, killing the men, raping the women, and then roping up the children and young teens and the most beautiful of the younger women into a group to take back with them.