The Long River Illuminates the Bones

After his father died, Shen Jiping only wanted to keep the family boat.

But the people who came to seize it also had their eyes on the three mu of barren land in Xiwa, where no crops would grow.

He searched through his father's belongings and found several water ledgers, a jar of river mud, and a hurriedly written note:

"Don't sell the land in Xiwa."

That night, the river mud touched the water, and a stretch of deep stone steps appeared at the bottom of the basin. An old lantern was making its way down the steps beneath the water. The patch on its shade had been sewn by his younger sister.

That was how the Shen family found their first wisp of spiritual energy.

They dug channels, farmed the land, and sent their descendants to seek the Dao, slowly carving out a place for themselves between immortal sects and great clans. Some sailed far away, some stayed behind to guard their home, and some eventually forged their Dao foundations, becoming ancestors in the eyes of later generations.

Yet every sixty years, the spirit river changed course, and the deeper one's cultivation, the more firmly one's Dao foundation took root.

Just as the Shen family finally established themselves by this river...

The river was about to change course.