"Zhuoqian, did everything go smoothly on your trip?"
As soon as Qian Zhuoqian returned home, she went to the main hall to find her father, Qian Zihang, the current head of the Thousand Family. His features were gentle, and he looked like a kindly father, without a trace of a family head's imposing authority.
Yet this very man had left everyone in the Thousand Family utterly astonished.
Qian Zihang ranked third among his siblings. He was far from the Thousand Family's most gifted member, possessing only mediocre aptitude. Above him was an extraordinarily talented eldest brother, and below him was a fourth sister who had awakened three types of spiritual power as a child. The eldest and youngest shone like brilliant pearls, making the Thousand Family all the more dazzling in the Purple Jade Empire. He, sandwiched between them, was frequently overlooked and utterly unremarkable.
Not one of the Thousand Family's elders had believed he could inherit the family estate. Yet he had done exactly that.
"Father, everything went well. Nothing significant happened." Qian Zhuoqian had traveled to discuss cooperation with the Nangong Household of the Cloud Pavilion. She had met Nangong Yuntian himself, and the terms he offered were extremely tempting. "If there was anything worth mentioning, it would probably be-"
"Family Head, something terrible has happened! Someone has forced their way onto our back mountain. They've already reached the Fourth Peak!"
The Thousand Family Back Mountain had nine interconnected peaks. Each peak formed a small world of its own, and the higher one climbed, the greater the difficulty. It had long been an excellent training ground for the Thousand Family's descendants. Every year, during the training period, the great aristocratic clans and the imperial family would seize the opportunity to slip a few people in to train alongside