Within the borders of Mengliang Kingdom.
The sea of clouds at Cloud Mist Mountain was an immortal-family spectacle renowned throughout Treasure Bottle Continent. Under the sun, it shone not with ordinary gold but with rising Spiritual Energy and dazzling colors, earning it the name "beauty of the heavens" among Qi cultivators. No wonder it had found its way into the bestselling Supplementary Records of the Haoran Nine Provinces. At certain moments, those ever-changing clouds and mists gathered a spark of true spirit and took the forms of past patriarchs. Any Cloud Mist Mountain disciple fortunate enough to meet them could speak with them and seek guidance on the sect's Daoist arts.
Chen Ping'an stood above the sea of clouds, gazing toward the distant capital of Mengliang Kingdom. The flow of an entire nation's fortune lay bare before his eyes.
Inverted Mountain had once had a little wine shop, a fragment of the shattered Yellow Millet Blessed Land. Its meaning was that after drinking fine wine, one might enjoy a yellow-millet dream.
He wondered whether it had any connection to Mengliang Kingdom.
He drew back his gaze and looked toward a low peak whose summit had vanished beneath the sea of clouds.
Cloud Mist Mountain had established sixteen peaks to date. On Green Juniper Peak, its female patriarch Cai Jinjian sat on a cushion beside an incense burner trailing purple smoke. Holding an old bamboo-and-wood ruyi, she was giving her customary lesson. It was nearing its end, so she had begun explaining written characters to the younger disciples. At the moment, she was explaining the character for "fate."
As Cai Jinjian understood it, the character could be broken into "person," "one," and "to knock."
Thus, when a person knocked at the gate, he began cultivating the Dao.
Cultivating the Dao meant