A winding stream curled through an unbroken chain of valleys, painting a ceaseless river across the open plains.
On the sunlit side of those valleys, scattered caves and modest terraced fields dotted the slopes.
Shielded by towering vegetation, the ridges carved into the mountainsides were almost impossible to see.
This was the territory of the Valley People.
The Forest People called them "sinners."
But that was clearly not their own name.
They called themselves "Qiu."
The syllable carried no special meaning. It was simply passed down by their ancestors and had remained in use to this day.
Although the Qiu people living in these valleys did not huddle beneath the same tree in clan units like the forest tribes, they possessed unity no less formidable than theirs.
Clans large and small all called themselves "Qiu people."
Not only did they share the same culture and traditions, they recorded things with the same pictographic script, used the same code of laws and conduct, and elected elders from each clan to form a "Senate" that arbitrated matters great and small.
In practical terms, they had already developed the concept of a "nation" and evolved an organized society.
From this perspective, the forest tribes were still little more than a disorganized rabble.
Though the Qiu people's advantage over the Forest People was not yet obvious, if things continued like this, the former's rise and the latter's decline were almost inevitable.
Of course, that was only under normal circumstances.
If Gaia, a powerful disruptive factor, was taken into account, the futures of the two peoples became difficult to predict.
Besides the distant history between them, there was an even more direct reason why the Forest People called the Qiu people living in the valleys "sinners."
The latter completely lacked the "ability to commune with