The Great Green Mountain Range stretched for dozens of kilometers, running from Changshan County all the way to neighboring Qingyuan County. Its highest peak was said to reach three or four thousand meters, its summit wreathed in mist and clouds year-round, and the deep mountains held an abundance of resources, with every kind of herb and mountain produce imaginable.
Of course, there were beasts as well. You could often hear the howls of tigers and wild wolves echoing through the dense mountain forests, and fierce wild boars frequently came down the slopes in packs, doing no small damage to the crops of the surrounding villages.
Most of Qingshan Village’s people lived off the mountain. In the slack farming season they went into the mountains together, some to gather herbs, some to hunt, and on a lucky trip a person could earn several hundred coppers.
Shen Yuntan walked up the mountain path, heading straight for the deep mountains as fast as she could.
In the deep mountains, the trees were lush and towered into the clouds, blocking out sunlight year-round. The ground was dark and damp. As she went further in, fog began to rise in the forest, a vast white haze drifting low along the ground as if a thin gauze had been laid over the wilds.
She had survived in the wilderness of the apocalypse more times than she could count. An environment like this wasn’t unfamiliar to her. If anything, it felt oddly like home.
This will do.
She stopped at a wind-sheltered mountain hollow and swept her weak psychic power over the surroundings.
The place was ringed on three sides by steep slopes, with a small flat patch in the middle covered in thick moss. Behind her stood an ancient tree that would take two people to encircle, its branches and leaves blotting out the sky, and around it crowded thick, sturdy trunks whose tops she couldn’t see.
The wood spiritual energy in the air here was especially rich. She had felt it the moment she arrived. Now every pore on her body had opened, and even without silently reciting the cultivation method, they were greedily breathing it in on their own.
Shen Yuntan found a relatively flat stone slab and sat cross-legged, resting her hands naturally on her knees, palms and soles upturned, crown toward the sky. She closed her eyes and focused her mind.
The cultivation method she had silently recited countless times in her past life began to circulate on its own.
The wood spirit root in her body was like a dormant seed, stirring slowly awake under the urging of her will. Sensing abundant nourishment nearby, it quickly gathered its strength and began to absorb.
Now she had to start over from scratch, beginning from the most basic Qi Refining stage.
The spiritual energy of wood is born of all things, hidden in mountains and forests, drifting between heaven and earth.
When she first began cultivating in her past life, she had thought it was just a line from the cultivation method. Only later, as her strength grew, did she truly understand what it meant.
The ancient trees, wild grasses, vines, even the moss around her, every plant and living thing was giving off the spiritual energy of life. These gathered into a dense, fine wood spiritual energy, flowing toward her from every direction like countless invisible threads.
She guided this energy in through her skin, letting it flow slowly along her meridians toward her dantian. Everywhere each strand passed, her meridians warmed slightly, like a dried-up riverbed welcoming nourishing water.
One cycle. Two cycles. Three cycles…
Over and over, a monotonous, dull, yet fulfilling repetition.
Qi Refining, First Stage. Done.
When Shen Yuntan opened her eyes again, she had successfully advanced to the first stage. The sunlight filtering through the gaps in the canopy overhead was no longer harsh, spilling onto the ground like lusterless golden beads.
She exhaled a breath of stale air and sensed the state of her dantian. Her wood spiritual power was several times fuller than before. Though still far from the peak of her past life, at least it was no longer nearly depleted.
Her psychic power recovered more slowly than her spiritual power, but it was steadily rising as well.
She tried extending her psychic power outward. Its range expanded from a two-meter radius to about five meters.
Within five meters, she could clearly sense the position of every tree, the growth of every blade of grass, the crawl of every insect, the fall of every leaf.
Not bad.
Shen Yuntan was satisfied with this speed. She looked around and said with certainty, “The environment here is countless times better than the apocalypse. The wood spiritual power is abundant and pure. I need to speed up my cultivation from here.”
She had only been sitting for a little over two hours. She stood to stretch her limbs. Having sat cross-legged so long, her legs had gone a little numb. As she loosened her muscles and joints, she kept her psychic power extended, searching the five-meter radius for herbs she could pick.
The Great Green Mountain’s vegetation was astonishingly rich, and this place was rarely visited by people, so there were quite a few kinds of herbs.
Once her legs recovered, she immediately picked up the firewood knife and the back basket and swept the area with her psychic power. She “saw” no fewer than ten kinds of herbs. Fleeceflower root, bupleurum, Solomon’s seal, poria, pinellia, and Paris root were all there. Their age wasn’t especially high, but their price was good, and they were all bestsellers in the apothecaries.
She decided to test whether the space had any special uses.
Shen Yuntan placed a small bupleurum plant on the empty ground inside the space. As she had guessed, the space had a planting function. The little bupleurum seemed to have been planted by hand, though outwardly there was no obvious change yet.
There were many kinds of herbs in the mountains. For every herb she laid eyes on, she dug up a few and tossed them into the space to plant, while other mature ones she tossed into her back basket.
After searching nearby for over an hour, the small back basket was full.
Once she finished digging herbs, she headed back the way she came, keeping her psychic power trained on the living creatures nearby the whole way.
In the bushes about thirty paces to the southeast, a plump pheasant was nestled. A thread-fine strand of wood spiritual power rose to her fingertip, and she flicked it out at the edge of her range.
The pheasant gave two calls, then went silent for good.
Passing a spot where the village hunters often set traps, she found traces of several wild hares. She bent and picked up a few small stones from the ground, weighing them in her hand. Then she flicked her right hand. The first stone shot through the air and struck a hare’s head in the bushes with perfect accuracy.
The hare collapsed in the grass before it could even run.
Almost in the same instant, the second stone left her hand. This time the force was a little lighter, striking another hare’s hind leg.
My strength really is weak right now. I almost let a hare get away.
One pheasant, two hares, a full basket of herbs, and the herb seedlings planted in the space. The haul from this trip was already quite impressive.
By the time she emerged from the lush, verdant forest, the orange-red sun had already set in the west, and even from far away, she could see wisps of cooking smoke rising from the roofs of every house in the village.
It was getting late. She quickened her pace and jogged all the way down the mountain toward home.
By the time she reached the village, the sky had darkened. The nearby neighbors had all finished dinner and were gathered together chatting about everyday matters, and the name on their lips was her childhood nickname, Chouya.
Chouya…
There was no mirror here, so Shen Yuntan naturally couldn’t look at her own face, but she had memories of what it looked like.
The features and contours of this face were actually quite attractive, identical to her past life. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were all lovely. She was a striking, exquisite beauty, except that this body had a vine-like bruise of purplish blue running from her right cheek down to her neck.
She reached up and touched the ugly mark, the corner of her cold lips curving. “Grandmother said it was a birthmark. It isn’t. It’s poison.”
Under this feudal imperial system, beauty was no blessing for a woman. Being disfigured by poison like this actually saved her a lot of trouble and indirectly protected her.
The poison needed no antidote. Once her strength broke through the Qi Refining stage, she could easily remove it.
For now, with her strength so weak, wearing an ugly face was safer.
When she got home, the yard was the same shabby yard, but looking around it, her state of mind was completely different from the daytime.
“Starting tomorrow, a new page turns.”