Chapter 1: The Qinghe Song Clan

Qinghe County, Wei State, Donghuang Immortal Prefecture.

In the northeast corner of Qinghe County lies a mist-shrouded, ethereal immortal mountain known as Funiu Mountain.

Funiu Mountain stands nearly a thousand zhang tall, covered in lush green grass and trees, resembling a giant green ox crouching amidst the mountain range.

At the summit stand dozens of ethereal pavilions and towers, the dwelling place of the Song family, a Qi-refining immortal cultivation clan in Qinghe County.

The ancestor of the Song family was originally a Foundation Establishment stage cultivator within the "Xiaoyao Sect," a hegemon in the Wei State's cultivation world.

After he passed away, his descendants, facing exclusion within the sect, had no choice but to lead their kin away. They arrived in the relatively remote Qinghe County and occupied Funiu Mountain, which possesses a high-grade spiritual vein, where they have taken root and thrived for nearly two hundred years.

On the western hillside of Funiu Mountain, inside a secluded cave dwelling.

A green-robed youth with a youthful appearance sat upright at a wooden table, looking at a yellowish-brown animal-hide pouch resting upon it.

After a moment, the youth picked up the pouch and slowly untied the small purple cord at its mouth. A metallic "clinking" sound followed as a pile of faintly glowing stones tumbled out.

These stones were multicolored and vibrant, each emitting a dazzling light.

The youth then took two more stones, which also emitted a faint red glow, from his own person and placed them among the others, beginning to count the pile of glowing stones in a low voice.

"Seventy-five in total. Adding the fifteen merit points recorded in the family's Treasury Pavilion, I am exactly ten spirit stones short.

At the current rate of accumulation, in another half a year at the earliest, I should be able to successfully exchange for a Qi Gathering Pill, which will allow me to break through to the middle stage of Qi Refining."

After a quick moment of thought, the calmed youth packed all the spirit stones back into the pouch and carefully hid it inside a wall of the cave.

The green-robed youth is named Song Qingming, seventh in the "Qing" generation, the fourth generation of the Song family.

Ten years ago, he was merely a mortal who was luckily discovered by his clansmen to possess spiritual roots capable of cultivation. He was granted entry into the family's sacred ground, Funiu Mountain, to practice. He just turned twenty this year and is at the third level of Qi Refining.

If an ordinary mortal possesses spiritual roots like him, they can enter the Qi Refining stage after successfully guiding spiritual energy into their body through cultivation, becoming a cultivator.

Qi Refining stage cultivators can wash their marrow and strengthen their physique by inhaling and exhaling the spiritual energy of heaven and earth during their daily practice.

They can also channel the refined spiritual power within their bodies to use various spells. High-level cultivators can even ride the wind and tread on clouds, move mountains and fill seas, and turn decay into magic.

In this cultivation world, ordinary mortals can live at most seventy or eighty years, while Qi Refining stage cultivators can normally live for two cycles of sixty years—one hundred and twenty years—nearly double that of an ordinary mortal.

If one breaks through to a higher cultivation level, their lifespan will increase exponentially. Once they reach ascension and become an immortal, they can be like the legendary immortals, ascending to the immortal realm and living as long as heaven and earth. This is the path of longevity that all cultivators pursue.

The cultivation levels in the human realm are mainly divided into five tiers: "Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, and Spirit Severing."

It is said that there are higher levels beyond Spirit Severing, but the spiritual energy in this realm is relatively thin and cannot support cultivators in reaching higher levels.

Once a cultivator reaches the late stage of Spirit Severing, any further breakthrough is repelled by the interface's power, automatically causing them to ascend to other higher realms. Therefore, the highest cultivation level in this realm is the late stage of Spirit Severing.

The glowing stones in Song Qingming's hands are items that can increase a cultivator's cultivation speed and are the mainstream currency used for transactions between cultivators in this realm.

The "Qi Gathering Pill" he mentioned is a common pill used in the cultivation world to assist early-stage Qi Refining cultivators like him in breaking through to the middle stage.

When a cultivator's internal mana reaches the peak of a level, they encounter a bottleneck when trying to break through to the next. Unless one is a genius with exceptional spiritual roots, this is a problem that cannot be ignored.

Ordinary cultivators can only rely on slow cultivation and absorbing spiritual energy to polish the bottleneck, making it difficult to break through in a short time.

To quickly break through a bottleneck, one must rely on external aids such as pills and spiritual objects.

Although the Qi Gathering Pill is not a rare pill in Qinghe County, it is a first-grade high-tier spiritual pill. In the marketplace, one pill costs at least one hundred spirit stones. Song Qingming has been saving for a long time and is still ten spirit stones short.

For a low-level cultivator like him, there are few ways to earn spirit stones. Between the annual stipend provided by the family and the occasional low-level family task—such as following elders to hunt demonic beasts—he can only save about a dozen spirit stones a year after deducting cultivation expenses.

Song Qingming has also been able to earn a few extra spirit stones by learning a formation technique in the clan over the past few years, helping others draw auxiliary formation diagrams on artifacts and robes, or setting up low-level formations.

Combined with his frugality over the last few years, he has finally almost saved enough.

Although his own cultivation speed is average and he has yet to break through to the middle stage of Qi Refining at twenty, he is fortunate to have been born into a cultivation family. He has been protected by his elders since childhood, and his path of cultivation has been relatively smooth.

Compared to the wandering rogue cultivators, Song Qingming at least has a fixed spiritual vein to practice on since he began, and he has elders to guide him whenever he encounters difficulties.

In Qinghe County, most cultivators are rogue cultivators. Most of them lack fixed spiritual veins and must spend their days rushing about for a pittance of cultivation resources.

Spiritual veins are the foundation of a cultivator's practice. Cultivating on a spiritual vein provides abundant spiritual energy, allowing one to absorb it several times faster than in the outside world, making cultivation twice as effective with half the effort.

A high-grade spiritual vein like Funiu Mountain can easily support more than twenty Qi Refining cultivators of the Song family.

Without a spiritual vein, one must rely on refining spirit stones to compensate for the limited spiritual energy in the wild, which consumes a vast amount of resources.

Song Qingming had tried to force a breakthrough to the middle stage of Qi Refining twice in the past two years, but not only did he fail, the backlash from the failed attempt injured his meridians, and it took several months of recovery to fully heal.

This made him gradually give up and realize he was no cultivation genius.

Now, if Song Qingming wants to break through successfully, he could slowly cultivate and polish the bottleneck, which would naturally take five to ten years.

However, that would consume too much time. Choosing to take pills to assist in a quick breakthrough is the method most cultivators in the cultivation world use.

Although Song Qingming has always been very diligent in his cultivation, he only possesses four spiritual roots—Metal, Wood, Fire, and Earth—which is considered ordinary, low-grade aptitude in the cultivation world.

The types of spiritual roots a cultivator possesses are also graded.

They are generally classified by the number of the five elements—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth—present in the body.

The fewer spiritual roots a cultivator has, the purer the spiritual energy they refine, and the faster their cultivation speed. Conversely, the more spiritual roots a cultivator has, the more cluttered the refined energy, and the slower the cultivation speed.

Cultivators with all five elements, known as "mixed spiritual roots," have the slowest cultivation speed.

Unless such cultivators have a massive supply of resources, it is difficult for them to even reach the late stage of Qi Refining.

Those with four spiritual roots like Song Qingming belong to the "pseudo-spiritual root" category. Their cultivation speed is slightly faster, and with hard work and some resource support from the family, they have a good chance of reaching the late stage of Qi Refining.

Over eighty percent of cultivators in the entire cultivation world are ordinary cultivators with four or five spiritual roots like him.

Under normal circumstances, it is difficult for such cultivators to break through to the next major realm, the Foundation Establishment stage.

However, on the path of cultivation, besides spiritual root aptitude, luck and opportunity are also very important.

Although Song Qingming's spiritual root aptitude is average, he has been diligent since he stepped onto the path of cultivation ten years ago and has never slacked in his practice.

(End of chapter)