Building a Cultivation Clan, Starting with a Teahouse

Farming, family clans, a slow burn, and cultivation

In Baiyun Town, in the southern reaches of the Yanlong Empire, the gilded signboard of the Zhao Family Teahouse has hung beneath its eaves for decades. It is both an inn where traveling merchants can rest and the most secretive intelligence hub in the south. The Zhao family, more than thirty people strong, has never split up. They have also adopted over a dozen orphans as disciples. Disguised as serving boys, they weave through the teahouse, spinning storytellers' tales and patrons' idle chatter into an intelligence network spanning every direction.

Young clan leader Zhao Peng is steady and decisive, while old clan leader Zhao Shan is far-sighted and strategic. Together, grandfather and grandson run the teahouse, sifting genuine value from a sea of information and making a name for themselves with intelligence no one else can provide. The village chief of Xishui Village comes calling, hoping to learn the secrets behind the Qingyun Sect's recruitment. A contest over fifty taels of silver lays bare the ruthless rules of the intelligence trade: are the village children's hopes of joining an immortal sect more important, or must the teahouse's decades-old rules never be broken?

Through the curling haze of tea are the warmth of everyday life, surging undercurrents of power, and the struggles of little people caught between immortal sects and the mortal world. Every deal made at the Zhao Family Teahouse is quietly rewriting the fate of the southern reaches.