At this moment, the only path up the back mountain of Panshi Ridge was a narrow trail. Following it led to the village of Panshi Ridge.
If you went back ten or twenty years—or even decades, centuries, a millennium—the generations of mountain folk from Panshi Ridge had always walked this narrow trail into the mountains to make a living.
As the saying went, those who lived by the mountains ate from the mountains, and those who lived by the water ate from the water.
Beyond this narrow trail lay vast forests and endless mountains, the source of the villagers' livelihood. They had nurtured generations of people from Panshi Ridge.
But over the past twenty years, the rapid changes of the times had swept the mountain folk along with them. They had no choice but to leave the mountains in search of work, and the relatively isolated village had gradually fallen into ruin. Anyone with the means moved away, one household after another.
Most of the time, the village had become little more than a ghost town. Aside from the occasional return visit during holidays, when former residents came back to tend graves and pay respects to their ancestors, almost no one lived there permanently.
Even the Old Jiang Family, determined as they were to stay, had nearly moved out after Old Jiang Yunhe's "passing" and their children had started families of their own. Only the ancestral home and the ancestral hall remained.
The mountain trail had therefore fallen almost into disuse. If Jiang Du's family hadn't returned to their old home in Panshi Ridge a few days ago and cleared and repaired it, the trail would probably have been completely blocked off by now, impossible to pass.
Now, Xie Chun was about five hundred meters to the right of the