For ten years, the dew in Qingfeng Village fell day after day onto Ji Ziyue's shoes.
She had thought her life would always be like this: trampling the dirt of the herb garden and trading half a basket of medicinal herbs for three steamed buns. Then she found half of a warm jade pendant among her mother's belongings and heard whispers of clues left behind at the Mountain God Temple. It turned out that the promise of immortality was real, hidden in a damaged copy of the Qingyuan Art.
With no spiritual roots and no fortuitous encounters, she had to hack her own path to immortality with a woodcutter's axe.
While others breathed in spiritual energy to begin cultivating, she could only crouch in the herb garden and slowly learn to regulate her breath by following the plants. While others refined pills beneath a radiant glow, she clutched half a jade pendant and spent all night catching dew by a mountain stream, just to gather a trace of warm strength.
The legends of mountain ghosts, the Blood Fiend Sect's shadow, and the withered bones beneath the cliffs all told her the same thing: if mortals want to survive, they must be even tougher than weeds.
Yet whenever that warmth in her dantian spread, like the hope she carried slipping away, she would remember the words in her mother's letter:
