Over a decade later.
In a certain great valley within the Nanhua Mountains, where dense clouds and mist hung year-round, an unexplained gust of wind suddenly swept through, blowing the heavy fog apart in places to form a path roughly a zhang wide, running straight from deep within the mist-covered valley out to the exit beyond. Anyone standing at that exit and looking back into the valley would have seen two figures emerge one after the other.
"Such a tiny, backwater excuse for a cultivation family, and all for a mere Spirit Gathering Pill each month—what's so rare about that! I'm leaving and I'm never coming back!"
The one walking in front was a youth of fifteen or sixteen, tall and rather thin, with features that could just barely be called handsome. He wore a wrinkled, slightly yellowed white robe, and at his waist hung a small pouch that looked to be made from some rare beast's hide. As he walked, he muttered curses under his breath at the group who had driven him out of the valley—quietly, as if afraid of being overheard, so quietly that probably only he himself could make out the words.
Following behind him was a round-faced little girl, sweet-looking and pale-skinned, whose age was given away at a glance by the two small braids at the back of her head, each tied with colorful flowers, and by the childishness still lingering between her brows. She was pouting now, her once bright black eyes gone slightly red, brimming with tears that looked ready to spill over at any moment.
"Brother Wugen, are you really leaving?" The girl trailed slowly behind the youth, finally working up the courage to speak. "Should I go beg the Grand Elder to let you stay? You're so talented at making talismans—the clan really needs you."
"No need, Xin'er. My cultivation wasn't going anywhere staying in the Jian clan anyway. Better to go out and make a name for myself—who knows, maybe I'll stumble onto some peerless spirit herb or technique and make a huge leap forward. Once I've made something of myself, I'll definitely come back. Don't you slack off either, or you'll end up falling behind me." The youth pursed his lips and shot the girl a mocking look.
"Who'd ever fall behind you, you're so annoying!" The girl's pout deepened.
"Go on back now, we're almost at the exit. I'm off!" The youth suddenly broke into a run, dashing out through the mouth of the valley and leaving the girl standing there, stunned. The girl watched his retreating figure for a long while before finally lowering her head with a sigh and turning back into the depths of the mist.
"Brother Wugen, you'd better come back soon."
……
This youth was none other than Andy—or rather, Wugen.
Andy was his name from before. He had once been a young scholar from the Great Tang, in his early twenties, spending his days at a small mountain cottage. One night, struck by how unusually beautiful the night sky looked, he had stepped outside to admire it, only to be inexplicably struck by a shooting-star-like ball of light. That was his last memory. He only recalled a sudden flash of brightness before his eyes, and then nothing at all.
He had no idea how much time had passed—perhaps decades, perhaps it had only been a dream during an afternoon nap, or perhaps several lifetimes had cycled by. When his consciousness finally stirred awake again, he found that he had become a newborn infant. Worse still, he had no idea where he was, and there wasn't a single person around him.
Before Andy had even learned who his "birth parents" were, he had been carried into this great valley in the Nanhua Mountains by a low-level cultivator of the Jian clan named Jian Han, and raised by a cultivation family known as the Nanhua Jian Clan. In the process, Andy gradually picked up the local language, and through constant questioning, slowly came to understand something of this new world.
This place was called the Tianyuan Continent, and it had nothing to do with the land he had once lived on. He only knew that the Tianyuan Continent was an immensely vast place—exactly how vast, no one in the Jian clan knew, nor could anyone even describe it properly. If he had to sum up the continent in one phrase, it would be immense in size, yet sparsely populated—though "sparsely" was relative; the continent was simply so enormous that even with a low population density, the total number of people was staggering.
On this continent, humans could be divided into two kinds: ordinary mortals, and those who possessed spirit roots and could cultivate—known as cultivators. The latter made up an extremely small proportion, less than one in a thousand, and most lived in seclusion within the cultivation world, rarely venturing into the mortal world and almost never involving themselves in mortal wars or power struggles. As a result, the vast majority of mortals had no idea cultivators even existed.
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As for what exactly distinguished a mortal from a cultivator—the spirit root—no one in the Jian clan could give a clear explanation. All anyone could say was that a spirit root was something one was born with; only those who possessed one could sense the spiritual energy present in heaven and earth, draw it into their bodies, and cultivate. According to legend, the highest realm of cultivation could lead to ascension as an immortal, granting boundless power and eternal life.
Mortals without a spirit root could never sense the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, let alone cultivate—and the odds of a mortal's child being born with a spirit root were less than one in ten thousand. But if one parent was a cultivator, the odds rose dramatically; if both parents were cultivators, the chance of their child possessing a spirit root could reach anywhere from one in four to one in two. This was why cultivators tended to marry among themselves, gradually giving rise to cultivation families and sects of every size.
The Nanhua Jian Clan was one such small cultivation family, located in Jinyan Kingdom in the southeastern part of the Tianyuan Continent. Its territory centered on the Nanhua Mountains, which spanned over three thousand li, and it was one of the cultivation powers within Gun Prefecture, one of Jinyan Kingdom's thirteen prefectures.
According to Jian Han, he had been returning to the Nanhua Mountains after completing a clan mission when he passed through a stretch of desolate, rarely traveled wilderness and discovered, to his astonishment, a sleeping infant—one who, as it turned out, possessed a spirit root. Curious, he had searched the surrounding area for half a day, but found no other soul within ten-odd li, so he had simply carried the infant back to the Jian clan.
That infant was Andy. He happened to arrive at the Jian clan at a time when the family was actively searching for infants with spirit roots to bring in fresh blood. And so he was raised within the Jian clan, becoming one of its members—though no one ever bothered to give him a proper name, only the childhood nickname "Wugen." This was because Andy's spirit root carried all five elemental attributes at once—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—a mixed Five-Element Spirit Root, the poorest aptitude of all spirit root types.
Spirit roots were generally categorized into five attributes—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—collectively known as the Five Elements. Most cultivators possessed spirit roots composed of one or more of these five attributes mixed together. Generally speaking, the fewer attributes a spirit root contained, the purer it was, and the more easily its bearer could sense the corresponding spiritual energy of heaven and earth, making absorption and cultivation faster. Spirit roots mixed from four or five attributes were especially difficult to cultivate with, and were known as Mixed Spirit Roots or False Spirit Roots—a category of decidedly poor aptitude.
Spirit roots of a single attribute, by contrast, carried an extraordinarily high natural talent for cultivation, with cultivation speeds far faster than the rest, often allowing their bearers to reach very high realms. These were called Heavenly Spirit Roots—heaven's chosen, as the saying went. But the appearance of a Heavenly Spirit Root was exceedingly rare. Not just in a small clan like the Jian family, but across the more than a thousand cultivation families and sects within Jinyan Kingdom itself, a Heavenly Spirit Root appeared only once every few centuries. And whenever one did appear, it instantly became an object fought over by every cultivation power in reach—possessing a Heavenly Spirit Root cultivator was like reserving a future grandmaster for one's own sect, securing the sect's strength for generations to come. Legend held that over the past several thousand years, every Heavenly Spirit Root cultivator to emerge in Jinyan Kingdom—save for those assassinated young by rivals—had gone on to reach heights ordinary cultivators could scarcely imagine.
Beyond these five elemental spirit roots, there were also certain Mutated Spirit Roots—such as the Lightning Spirit Root, born from the fusion and sublimation of the metal and water attributes, or the Wind Spirit Root, born from the fusion of earth and fire, along with others like the Ice Spirit Root and the Illusion Spirit Root. These were all known as Variant Spirit Roots. Their rate of appearance was somewhat higher than that of Heavenly Spirit Roots. Cultivators who possessed a Variant Spirit Root, while falling somewhat short of those with a Heavenly Spirit Root, were still leagues ahead of ordinary cultivators—especially when paired with techniques specifically suited to their attribute, their strength often far surpassing other cultivators of the same realm.
Although Andy did possess a spirit root, it was of the very worst kind, and the Jian clan had naturally never thought much of him from the start—not even bothering to give him a proper name, simply calling him "Wugen." Among the children of his same cohort, there was one other child with an equally poor Five-Element Spirit Root, younger than Andy by less than a month, whose own nickname was the even less flattering "Little Wugen."
When Andy first learned of his spirit root's nature, he sank into gloom for quite some time—but afterward, he resolved all the more firmly to walk the path of cultivation. He believed that diligence could make up for poor talent; he simply refused to accept that, with the mind of a man in his twenties, he couldn't surpass children barely out of infancy. There was another reason too: he remained convinced that his rebirth as an infant was connected to that shooting-star-like ball of light. Whether or not it had been mere coincidence, he wanted to understand what had truly happened—and find a way back to the Great Tang. If, one day, he could become a legendary cultivator wielding the great supernatural powers said to reshape heaven and earth and cross the boundaries between worlds, perhaps then he would finally find his answer.