The Spirit Realm, Southern Region.
For two hundred years, generation after generation of the Li Household had lived at the foot of Green Ram Mountain, tending three hundred mu of spirit fields beside Falling Moon Lake.
That day, as dawn barely broke and the mist at the mountain's foot had yet to clear, Li Conglong rose from his bed and pushed open the wooden door of his thatched hut. Looking at the hazy gray outline of the distant mountain, he sighed softly. "The Spiritual Qi has thinned by another thirty percent."
He closed his eyes and sensed his surroundings for a moment. The apertures throughout his body drew in and expelled breath with all their might, yet took in only a barely perceptible wisp of Pure Qi.
Green Ram Mountain had never been a mountain of spiritual abundance. The spirit chance in its earth veins was sparse, barely enough to support cultivators' cultivation.
Two hundred years ago, the Li Household's ancestor had fled here as a refugee. Relying on an ancestral cultivation art, the Azure Wood Qi-Nourishing Art, he had put down roots and raised his descendants here. By Li Conglong's generation, the clan numbered more than thirty, but only seven or eight were cultivators.
"Second Brother!"
A clear voice rang out from below. Li Conglong opened his eyes and looked over to see a girl of sixteen or seventeen hurrying up the mountain path with a bamboo basket in her hand. Inside were several steaming flatbreads. "Caiwei, what brings you up here?"
Li Conglong took the basket, pulled a coarse cloth handkerchief from inside his robe, and wrapped the flatbreads before turning to his younger sister.
Li Caiwei smoothed the dew-dampened wisps of hair on her forehead and said softly,
"Mother sent me to bring you something to eat.