In Luozhou, northern Wu, fourteen-year-old Shen Qiu lived in a poor mountain village. Hoping to secure enough money for his mother and little sister to live on, he entered the Li family's selection for servants. To his surprise, he was found to have four spiritual roots. Just then, the Li family's second young lady, Li Yan'er, returned to the mountain and needed a young man with spiritual roots to tend the medicinal garden. And so this boy, who had never left the mountains, was casually brought by her into the cultivation sect Tianhua Mountain.
With no illustrious family background or extraordinary talent, all Shen Qiu had was greater patience than others and a clearer understanding of what it cost to stay alive. Yet no one knew that when he was young, he had gone into the mountains with his father and discovered he could absorb the life force of plants. Tender shoots pushing through the soil, ancient trees that stayed green through winter, and spirit herbs hidden in deep valleys could all draw a wisp of spiritual energy to him.
But plants could nourish people, and they could also die because of them. Shen Qiu dared not reveal this ability. He could only hide in the Western Valley medicinal garden, quietly learning about herbs and secretly cultivating under Uncle Wu, a senior whose old injuries still plagued him.
After being humiliated in the Xishan Market, he saw for the first time the hierarchy of the immortal sects. When he won with a single sword strike at the sect's tournament, the scion who had once trampled on him had to look up at him for the first time. In Mount Tiankui, he fought side by side with Xu Wanqing, the most beautiful woman in Wu and the disciple of a Nascent Soul cultivator from Tianmeng Valley, to slay a second-rank blood serpent. They obtained a mysterious precious metal so alluring that even Nascent Soul cultivators would covet it.
But when he returned to the medicinal garden covered in wounds, he discovered that Uncle Wu, who had taught him to identify herbs, passed on cultivation techniques, and saved his life several times, was a hidden agent planted in Tianhua Mountain by the four demonic sects. The source of the plant essence he had cultivated for years was precisely the healing medicine his master had been waiting for.
The kindness was real, and so was the murderous intent.
