Other than Xiao Yao, who had joined only two years ago, the remaining four had known one another for twenty years.
The eldest brother and Second Sister, who had the highest cultivation among them, were cultivation partners. The man was called Fan Ting, the woman Yan Mo, and they had traveled the Central Region together for over forty years.
The two had originally been disciples of sects, but their talent was simply too mediocre. Both their cultivation and their Dao arts had hit bottlenecks, with little hope of further progress, and their sects had gradually abandoned and marginalized them.
Yet, as said before, though the two possessed only average talent and were not particularly powerful, their hearts still burned with hot blood.
Thus, once they saw the road ahead clearly and realized that remaining in their sects would only mean wasting their time as tools, they both chose, without prior discussion, to leave their sects and descend the mountain to make their own way.
Then, through a series of chance encounters, these two righteous cultivators, each bearing their own ideals and convictions, met in the Meng River basin of the southwestern Central Region. Together, they slew an early Essence Condensation Demon Beast that had ravaged the waterways and devoured fishermen, thus forging their bond.
The name Five Heroes of Meng River also arose from this incident.
Among Rogue Cultivators, the unspoken rule had always been to disregard age and rank people solely by cultivation. Thus, with the Essence Condensation Ninth Layer cultivation Xiao Yao displayed, she ranked third among the Five Heroes.
According to what she told the four, she was now over sixty years old and had originally been a disciple of some sect force on the northwestern frontier.
But twenty years ago, when the demonic path army launched