Useless

Chapter 3

Wei Ying's arm never fully recovered. Even after Jiang Fengmian had found one of the most renowned healers of the area to come and look at it, his arm was officially crippled forever. But at least the injuries on his body healed quite nicely.

His right arm, the one that no longer had any feeling in it, was still covered in scratches and bite marks from that fateful day. Wei Ying didn't like looking at it for too long as it brought back painful memories. So he opted to just keep it bandaged up so he didn't have to see anything. The scratches on his face also scarred over too. They covered most of the right side of his face, starting from his eyebrow and almost down to his chin. Wei Ying didn't like looking at his face either.

"I look so ugly shijie!" he had cried to his sister. It was a few weeks after he had arrived in Lotus pier and the Jiang clan's head healer had given him the ok to finally take the bandaging off of his face. Needless to say, there was not a positive reaction to the end result. Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng had tried to calm him down all day after the boy had seen his face.

"Nonsense," Yanli had said to him, pulling her brother into her lap. She rocked him back and forth as he cried on her shoulder. Jiang Cheng sat beside his siblings, awkwardly patting Wei Ying's back in reassurance. "My Wei Ying is still so handsome. And I bet all of the cute girls think so too. You know girls love boys with cool scars," Yanli had tried soothing him. The comment had calmed Wei Ying down just a bit, but he was still upset for the rest of the day.

These past few years haven't been the easiest for Wei Ying. Well, some things haven't been easy. Learning how to move around the world with only one functional arm wasn't the hardest thing ever.

Before Wei Ying had come to Lotus pier, he didn't know how to write or how to use a sword so learning how to do those things with his left arm wasn't that bad. Sure, his right arm had been more dominant but he never really used it unless he was stealing food so it wasn't that big of a deal.

The learning process of using a sword was a bit difficult though. The sect's sword style called for swiftness and agility, it was almost flashy in a way, and Wei Ying struggled quite frequently with it. He could grasp the basic concept but it was hard for him to actually put it to use. When your sword style was as unique as that, the main focus was to have balance and Wei Ying found it difficult to do so when he didn't have control of both of his arms.

He could go through the motions just fine on his own but he seemed to fail whenever he was put up against someone.

Wei Ying remembered the time when he was sparring with another disciple and Madam Yu had been there to see him stumble. It was probably one of the worst days of his life (the first obviously being when he was first crippled).

The disciple he was set to fight against was younger than him and a couple of inches shorter than him. Wei Ying had gritted his teeth bitterly as he faced the other disciple. Their instructor had most likely done it on purpose. He bowed stiffly to the other disciple when he was told to, made sure his right arm was secured in its sling, and attacked.

The fight, unfortunately, didn't last very long. Wei Ying had been determined to win, as he always was, but it always seemed that luck was never on his side. He had a good start though. He had matched each thrust evenly and had put in a lot of power behind each attack. His left arm was quite strong as he always used it but this didn't matter in the end. His opponent had shifted to the side in a way that had caused Wei Ying to lose his balance and stumble onto the ground. He could have caught himself if he could use his right arm but because he didn't, he had fallen. Embarrassed, Wei Ying yielded to his opponent.

On the sidelines, Wei Ying could see most of the other disciples laughing at him while others gave him pitying looks, his instructor also was shaking his head in annoyance. What really bothered Wei Ying though was the look on his brother's face. Jiang Cheng had been watching the whole time and was now glaring at him. Wei Ying looked away from him shamefully and was about to get up when he heard a loud yell from the crowd.