A million miles from the Golden Sun Gate's headquarters.
An azure wilderness planet floated silently, like an island in the depths of an ocean.
This nameless place, mostly covered by oceans, with wild forests and mountain ranges common even on land, had floated in the void for hundreds of millions of years.
All this time, few had known that the roots of a spirit peak blessed land lay hidden here-a geomantic treasure ground where primordial energy accumulated and qi channels circulated.
Barren Star, too, harbored life. Ordinary mortals, nonhuman races, and even demons and nature spirits had long since settled here, living lives that could only be called primitive since time immemorial.
That day, before an ancient, dilapidated temple at the foot of Broad Cloud Peak, several bare-chested villagers with skin painted in assorted colors sang and danced around an enormous wild boar nearly ten feet long, seemingly holding a celebratory sacrificial rite.
A lean old man clad in hemp cloth and wearing a feathered crown sat atop a raised platform built of piled stones. He had a rather imposing air as he received the kneeling bows of the people below.
Everyone seemed to take this for granted, and the old man had long since grown accustomed to it.
For among the many tribes of shamanic folk across the surrounding thousands of miles, he was the only shaman to have received the ancestral spirits' blessing and successfully awakened.
Shamans were the transcendent cultivators of this land, possessing wondrous abilities to commune with ghosts and gods, command beasts, and perceive nature. Their cultivation attainments roughly equaled the Foundation Establishment realm of the Spell Dao.
Once a shaman awakened, regardless of his former status, he would become the leader of all the surviving people of the Shaman Tribe, possessing both the authority