At the foot of Mount Funiu lies a small town called Mujiao, home to nearly ten thousand mortals from the Song family. Thanks to the year-round presence of Song cultivators, the town has enjoyed peace for centuries, attracting numerous mortals from nearby families to settle there. A wide street runs through the center, bustling with pedestrians. Both sides of the street are lined with shops, and the sounds of hawkers linger in the air, creating a scene of prosperity and peace.
In the world of immortal cultivation, no matter whether it is a high-ranking sect or a dominant family force, the huge number of mortals are their foundation, and it is they who have been injecting new blood and wisdom into the major forces in the world of immortal cultivation.
Among ten thousand mortals, there will be two or three who are born with spiritual roots and can become cultivators. If they are the descendants of cultivators, the probability of them having spiritual roots is higher than that of the descendants of ordinary mortals.
Ordinary mortals are too weak. In this world of immortal cultivation, where monsters and beasts are rampant, it is difficult for them to survive and reproduce without the protection of cultivators. It is also because of this that the immortal cultivation world attaches more and more importance to mortals. Normally, places with large mortal populations will more or less have cultivators as their protection.
In order to strengthen themselves, the major sects in the world of immortal cultivation would choose to send their less talented disciples to various places under their jurisdiction to manage mortals, so as to breed more disciples with spiritual roots and talents for the sect. Over time, the major immortal cultivation families were born.
There are dozens of immortal cultivation families like the Song family in Qinghe County. They are all affiliated with the Xiaoyao Sect, the overlord of Wei State. Each family has a large number of mortals. The mortals within the Song family's sphere of influence, including Mujiao Town and a dozen nearby villages, have a total of more than 20,000 mortals, most of whom live in Mujiao Town.
Among the major Qi-refining families in Qinghe County, the Song family has a relatively small number of mortals. Several Qi-refining families with a relatively large number of mortals all have more than 100,000 mortals. As for the overlord of Qinghe County, the Huang family, a foundation-building family, the number of mortals directly controlled by them is nearly 500,000.
These mortals who are born with spiritual roots continuously enrich the major immortal cultivation families, and those with outstanding spiritual root talents will be absorbed by the Xiaoyao Sect.
Most of the mortals in Mujiao Town are of the Song family bloodline, and some are refugees from other places. They have gradually integrated into the Song family through intermarriage with local mortals of the Song family.
The family generally does not care about the surnames of mortals, but once they find someone with spiritual roots, they will take him to Funiu Mountain to practice and rename him according to the generation of the Song family cultivators.
Song Qingming was also discovered to have spiritual roots when his family was testing mortals at the age of ten. He was then taken to Funiu Mountain by a cultivator in his family to study and practice. Even though the place where he practiced was not far from home, Song Qingming rarely went home to visit his family.
This time he received the family's garrison mission, and he didn't know when he would have the chance to come back. He went down the mountain early today so that he could have time to go back to his home.
In a mortal residence west of Mujiao Town, there is an ordinary house. Compared with the houses around it, it looks a little newer. The house is surrounded by an earthen wall, forming a simple courtyard, with a small door in the middle of the wall.
Song Qingming stood in front of the half-open wooden door and looked at the familiar courtyard in front of him. On a huge stone platform in the yard, a woman in simple clothes was sitting on it with a green bamboo basket. The woman slowly and orderly separated the golden bamboo shoots in the bamboo basket and hung them on the stone platform to dry.
As if she heard a sound at the door, the woman paused and turned to look at the door.
"You haven't been back for so long. What are you doing standing at the door? Have you gone crazy from practicing Taoism?"
After hearing this, Song Qingming was stunned, smiled foolishly a few times and walked into the yard.
"Mother, is everyone in the family doing well these days?"
"We've built a new house, and your brother and father have moved to the new house in the back. I still can't bear to leave this old stone platform. A few days ago, I dug some new bamboo shoots in the mountains and brought them here to dry. Next time you come back, you can bring some to the mountains to try. You all loved eating this when you were little."
Mother Song arranged the bamboo shoots and came to Song Qingming's side and said, "San'er, when you have time, come home and visit. Although immortals don't eat mortal food, aren't the immortals in the mountains all born from mortals down there? How can the difference be that big?"
Song Qingming's original name when he was a child was Song San. He changed it to Song Qingming after he was taken to Funiu Mountain to practice. However, now, except for his mother, no one calls him by this name.
The family stipulated that all monks under the age of twenty were forbidden to return home at any time except for a few days each year to visit their families. This allowed these young people, who had just arrived on the mountain, to gradually isolate themselves from the mortals below, so that they could quickly acclimate to the tedium of mountain cultivation and not neglect their practice due to their craving for the warmth of family in the secular world.
After Song Qingming embarked on the path of cultivating immortals, he rarely returned home. Now most of his childhood playmates no longer recognized him, and even his family members' attitude towards him had changed greatly.
Every time he returned home, even when eating at the same table, Song Qingming could feel that his father, sister and brother always kept a distance from him that was between mortal and immortal.
His father no longer yells at him for sleeping in, his second sister with a bad temper no longer dares to call him a "bad boy", and even his younger brother who always followed him around to play when they were little now respects him more.
Song's father was originally an ordinary household in Mujiao Town. There had never been anyone with spiritual roots in his family for three generations. He had lived in the town for so many years, and except for the eldest sister who died young, his family had always been ordinary.
Later, Song Qingming was found to have spiritual roots, and his clan gave him a sum of gold and silver. His family's life gradually improved, and now he is considered a wealthy family in Mujiao Town.
After the two chatted for a while, they returned to the newly built mansion. The family of five had lunch together. Under his mother's reluctant gaze, Song Qingming left some silver for the family and then left quietly.
Song Qingming is now away from home and doesn't miss it as much as before. Now, his mother is the only one in the family who still treats him as her own child, not an immortal.
——
Fifty miles east of Mujiao Town, there is a mountain a hundred feet high. It was originally an unnamed place. A hundred years ago, the Song family cultivated a small spiritual vein here and renamed it Lingyuan Mountain.
Lingyuan Mountain is not too far from Funiu Mountain, and it is also the second spiritual vein occupied by the Song family in addition to the top-grade spiritual vein of Funiu Mountain.
About a hundred years ago, when the senior monks of the Song family were hunting monsters here, they accidentally discovered a black iron vein here. After the second-generation clan leader learned about this, he led the monks of the clan to kill several mid-level monsters entrenched on the mountain and occupied the mountain. He also moved some of the mortals in the family here to mine the black iron vein.
Black iron ore is also a common low-level ore in the world of immortal cultivation. It can be used to make some low-level magical weapons. The black iron sword that Song Qingming has used for almost ten years is made of this ore.
After nearly a century of family management, Lingyuan Mountain now has hundreds of mortals residing there. Each year, the family mines approximately eighty spirit stones worth of black iron ore, a key source of income. Consequently, the family attaches great importance to this area, deploying two protective formations and maintaining two cultivators stationed there year-round.
Go to Lingyuan Mountain and garrison there for three years. This was the family mission that Song Qingming received in the Gold Storage Pavilion yesterday.
According to the rules of the Song family, when the family cultivators reach the middle stage of Qi Refining, they are required to complete some family tasks on time. Of course, these tasks also have corresponding rewards.
If you stay in Lingyuan Mountain for one year, the family will give you an extra ten points of merit. Although the spiritual vein of Lingyuan Mountain is not as good and is only a medium-grade spiritual vein, it is still enough to support the cultivation of two Qi Refining cultivators. For Song Qingming, who is now in the middle stage of Qi Refining, it will not have much impact on his cultivation.
It does not affect his cultivation and he can also earn some spirit stones. This task is currently the most suitable family task for him. If he takes on this task, combined with the formations and diagrams he draws on a daily basis, he will be able to exchange it for a mid-grade magic weapon in a year.
In the past, Song Qingming had also gone to Lingyuan Mountain to help transport black iron ore. Most of the cultivators in the clan would be arranged to guard here for a few years when they had just broken through to the middle stage of Qi Refining. This was also to take care of these cultivators who had just broken through to the middle stage of Qi Refining. It was safer and would not delay their cultivation speed too much.
The main task of this task is to guard and supervise the family members here in mining ore. As long as they can hand over enough black iron ore to the family on time every year, it will be fine.
