The forest was no place for a child.
It was wild and cruel — filled with beasts, biting cold, and the ever-present hunger that never truly left his stomach. The nights were long. The days were longer. But Lü Bu had nowhere else to go.
His home was ash. His family, gone.
And yet… he was alive.
That had to mean something.
Each morning, Lü Bu woke beneath the trees with sore muscles and an empty belly. He drank from muddy streams, stole eggs from bird nests, and chewed wild roots just to keep from collapsing.
His clothes were tattered rags. His feet bled from thorns. But still, he stood.
Still, he trained.
He had no teacher. No scrolls. No clan to guide him.
All he had was a memory — the way the soldiers in his village once held their weapons, the stance of a traveling guard as he trained with a spear, the rhythm of a warrior's breath.
That was enough.
He found a thick, straight branch. Stripped the bark. Sharpened the end with a stone.
It wasn't much.
But it became his first spear.
At first, he moved clumsily.
His strikes were wild. His grip was wrong. He lost his balance again and again.
But he didn't stop.
Hour after hour, he practiced the same movements — thrust, sweep, block, thrust — until his arms burned and his vision blurred. He fought trees. He battled the wind. He trained with his own shadow, and every time he fell… he got up again.
System Alert
— Training Detected.
— Weapon Affinity: Spear (Unlocked)
— Skill Acquired: Basic Spear Mastery [Level 1]
— Body Refinement Progress: 9%
The voice of the system rang faintly in his mind — emotionless, but constant.
It did not praise him. It did not pity him.
It simply recorded.
But Lü Bu didn't train for the system.
He trained for the day he would never have to run again.
Days turned into weeks.
He hunted small animals with traps he learned to build through trial and error. He learned the sounds of danger. The smell of predators. The best tree to climb when wolves came too close.
Nature became his teacher. Pain became his textbook.
And little by little, he began to change.
One morning, while swinging the spear in a sharp arc, the wood snapped in two.
Lü Bu froze.
The weapon had become part of him. It was all he had. For a moment, he stared at the two broken pieces… and then something in him shifted.
He picked them both up.
And kept training.
System Notification
— Hidden Trait: Adaptive Combat
— Primitive Dual Wielding Unlocked
— You are forging your own path.
That night, Lü Bu sat beneath the stars, arms sore, stomach empty, spear shafts resting beside him.
He was still weak. Still small. Still far from the man he wanted to become.
But the fire in his chest had not gone out.
It had only grown.
"One day, this wooden spear will become steel."
"And when that day comes… the world will kneel."