Chapter 1 Qinghe Song Family
Qinghe County, Wei State, Donghuang Xianzhou.
In the northeast corner of Qinghe County, there is a fairy mountain shrouded in clouds and mist, named Funiu Mountain.
Funiu Mountain is nearly a thousand feet high, covered with green grass and trees, like a giant green bull lying among the mountains.
Dozens of pavilions and towers with fairy-like aura stand on the top of the mountain. It is the habitat of the Song family, a family of Qi-refining and immortal cultivation in Qinghe County.
The ancestor of the Song family was originally a cultivator in the foundation-building stage in the Xiaoyao Sect, the dominant sect in the world of immortal cultivation in Wei State.
After he passed away, his descendants were ostracized by the sect and had no choice but to lead their people to leave the sect and come to the more remote Qinghe County. They occupied the top-grade spiritual vein of Funiu Mountain and have taken root and thrived there for nearly two hundred years.
On the west side of Funiu Mountain, in a hidden cave.
A young man in green clothes with a fresh-looking face was sitting at a wooden table, looking at a khaki animal skin bag on the table.
After a while, the boy picked up the bag in front of him and slowly opened the purple rope tied to the bag. Then there was a "ding-dong" sound of metal collision, and a pile of faintly shiny stones rolled out of the bag.
These stones are colorful, all kinds of colorful, and each emits a dazzling light.
The young man then took out two stones that also emitted a faint red light from his body, placed them in the middle of these stones, and began to count the pile of glowing stones in front of him in a low voice.
"There are seventy-five in total, plus the fifteen merit points recorded in the family's treasury, which means there are still ten spirit stones left, no more, no less.
At the current rate of accumulating spirit stones, I should be able to exchange them for a Qi Condensation Pill in half a year at the earliest, which would allow me to break through to the middle stage of Qi Refining."
After some quick thought, the young man calmed down, put all the spirit stones on the table back in place, and carefully hid the bag in a wall inside the cave.
The young man in green is named Song Qingming, and he is the seventh among the fourth generation of cultivators in the Song family with the character "Qing".
Ten years ago, he was just an ordinary man, but luckily his clan discovered that he had spiritual roots that could be used for cultivation. He was able to enter the family's holy land, Funiu Mountain, to practice. This year he just turned twenty years old and has reached the third level of Qi Refining.
If an ordinary mortal has spiritual roots like him, and successfully draws Qi into the body after practicing, he can enter the Qi Refining Stage and become an immortal cultivator, also known as a cultivator.
Practitioners in the Qi Refining Stage can cleanse their marrow and strengthen their physical constitution by absorbing and exhaling the spiritual energy between heaven and earth through daily practice.
They can also use the spiritual power refined in their bodies to perform various spells. High-level cultivators can even ride on the wind and clouds, move mountains and fill the sea, and turn decay into magic.
In this world of immortal cultivation, ordinary mortals can only live to seventy or eighty years old at most, while cultivators in the Qi Refining Stage can normally live for two hundred and twenty years, which is almost twice as long as ordinary mortals.
If one breaks through to a higher level of cultivation, his lifespan will increase exponentially. Once he reaches the stage of becoming an immortal, he will be able to ascend to the immortal world and live as long as the heaven and earth, just like the immortals in the legend. This is also the path to immortality that all cultivators pursue.
The cultivation levels of cultivators in the human world are mainly divided into five levels: "Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Dan Formation, Nascent Soul, and Spirit Transformation".
It is said that there are higher levels above the Divine Transformation cultivators, but the spiritual energy in this realm is relatively thin and cannot support the cultivators in this realm to cultivate to higher levels.
After a cultivator reaches the late stage of the Spirit Transformation Realm, any further breakthrough in cultivation will be repelled by the power of the interface and automatically ascend to other upper interfaces. Therefore, the highest level of cultivation a cultivator in this realm can only reach is the late stage of the Spirit Transformation Realm.
These glowing stones in Song Qingming's hands are items in the world of immortal cultivation that can improve the cultivator's own cultivation speed. They are also the mainstream currency used by cultivators in this world to trade various types of cultivation resources needed for cultivation.
The "Qi Gathering Pill" he just mentioned is an ordinary pill in the world of immortal cultivation that helps cultivators like him in the early stage of Qi Refining to break through to the middle stage of Qi Refining.
Whenever a cultivator cultivates his magic power to the peak state at a certain level and needs to break through to the next level, he will encounter a bottleneck. Unless you are a genius cultivator with outstanding spiritual roots, you don't have to think too much about this problem.
Ordinary cultivators can only rely on slowly practicing and absorbing spiritual energy to overcome bottlenecks, and it is difficult to break through in a short period of time.
If you want to break through the bottleneck quickly, you need to rely on swallowing some elixirs, spiritual objects and other external objects for assistance.
Although the Qi Gathering Pill is not a rare elixir in Qinghe County, it is also a top-grade elixir. One normally costs at least one hundred spirit stones in the market. Song Qingming has been saving for a long time, but he is still short of ten spirit stones.
For a low-level cultivator like him, there are not many ways to earn spirit stones. They rely on the spirit stone salary issued by the family every year, plus the occasional low-level family missions and following the elders in the family to hunt monsters.
After a year, after deducting the expenses for cultivation, one can only save a dozen spirit stones at most.
Song Qingming also relied on the array formation skills he had learned in the clan over the past few years. He usually helped other members of the clan refine magical instruments and robes by drawing some auxiliary array diagrams and arranging some low-level arrays, and earned some extra spirit stones.
Combined with the frugality in recent years, the money is finally almost together.
Although his own cultivation speed was average and he had not yet broken through the middle stage of Qi Refining at the age of twenty, fortunately he was born into a family of immortal cultivators. He had been protected by the elders of the clan since he was a child, and his cultivation had been relatively smooth.
Compared to those wandering cultivators, at least Song Qingming has had a fixed spiritual vein practice since he started practicing, and the elders of the clan are always there to teach him about the confusions in his practice.
In Qinghe County, most of the cultivators are independent cultivators. Most of them do not have fixed spiritual veins for cultivation, and have to run around all day for a little cultivation resources.
Spiritual veins are the foundation of a cultivator's practice. When a cultivator practices on a spiritual vein, the spiritual energy is abundant and the speed at which he absorbs spiritual energy is several times faster than from the outside world, making his practice more effective.
A top-grade spiritual vein like Funiu Mountain can easily provide more than 20 Qi Refining cultivators of the Song family with enough training.
If there is no spiritual vein, and one practices in the wild mountains and wilderness outside, the supply of spiritual energy from heaven and earth is limited. If practitioners want to increase their practice speed, they can only rely on refining spiritual stones to fill the gap, which requires a large amount of practice resources.
In the past two years, Song Qingming had also tried to force a breakthrough to the middle stage of Qi Refining, but not only did he fail to break through, but the backlash caused by the failure of the breakthrough damaged his meridians, and it took him several months to fully recover.
This made him gradually give up and realize that he was not a genius in cultivation.
Now Song Qingming wants to successfully break through his cultivation level and slowly cultivate to overcome the bottleneck. Normally, it will take him five to ten years to successfully break through.
However, this would consume too much time for cultivation, so most cultivators in the world of immortal cultivation would choose to take elixirs to help them break through quickly.
Although Song Qingming has always worked very hard in his cultivation, he is only a cultivator with the four spiritual root attributes of gold, wood, fire and earth, which is just an ordinary low-level spiritual root qualification in the world of immortal cultivation.
The types of spiritual roots in a cultivator's body also vary in level.
Generally, they are divided according to the number of the five elements spiritual roots in the body, from small to large. The spiritual roots have five attributes: gold, wood, water, fire and earth.
The fewer spiritual roots a cultivator has, the purer the spiritual energy he refines during cultivation, and the faster his cultivation speed will be. On the contrary, the more spiritual roots a cultivator has, the more mixed the spiritual energy he refines, and the slower his cultivation speed will be.
The cultivator with mixed spiritual roots, who has all five elements in his body and five kinds of spiritual roots, has the slowest cultivation speed.
Unless this type of cultivator has a large supply of resources, it will be difficult for them to even reach the late stage of Qi Refining.
The four kinds of spiritual roots like Song Qingming's are pseudo spiritual roots. The speed of cultivation will be slightly faster. If he practices harder and his family can provide some resource help, there is a great chance that he can cultivate to the late stage of Qi Refining.
More than 80% of the cultivators in the entire world of immortal cultivation are ordinary cultivators like him with four or five spiritual roots.
Under normal circumstances, it is difficult for cultivators like them to break through to the next major realm, the Foundation Establishment Stage.
However, on the path to becoming an immortal, in addition to spiritual roots and aptitude, luck and opportunity are also very important.
Although Song Qingming's spiritual roots are average, he has been very diligent in the past ten years since he embarked on the path of cultivation and has never slacked off in his practice.