On the 7th year in the nearby forests began to grow restless, the attacks on Ever Reach Mountain grew from beasts moving out of their territory.
After losing numerous lives, more focus was put on training the younger generation and talents even if it meant putting them into the conflicts to help them grow faster.
Both little grey and brown had trained hard and experienced battle tempering themselves many times leading them to reach 3rd rank of spirit gathering.
From their accomplishments in this part of the world it would be praise worthy, typically human martial schools begin accepting children at the age of 6 to begin learning a cultivation manual, unless the family possesses a manual of their own they would not be able to practice.
Possessing a manual and training at a young age can be helpful towards entering a school but noble and merchant families often have more cultivation resources and better training manuals, martial skills and weapons.
Of course talent and hard work can overcome this in time but the younger years are the best time to train and build a firm foundation, beginning at a later age often the non nobles would suffer losses in competitions to gain resources due to their lower cultivation and connections slowing their cultivation speed and burying their talents.
Is it fair? Of course not but the world rule is the strong rule over the weak and often everyday to climb to the peak of strength requires facing struggles, hardship and life and death situations on a daily basis.
So it can be imagined that 2 low ranked beasts achieved this feat despite their lower ranks within the spirit beast species, perhaps their talents came from their innate attributes like their father and consuming the beasts cores of their kills.
Unlike humans who kill for vanity, possessions, love, lust, hatred, territory, justice or glory… Beasts are quite simple, they possess no wisdom until they reach 1st rank of spirit gathering and after unlocking their spiritual wisdom they are quite straight forward.
So territory issues can happen if invaded by humans or other beasts leading to some of them to attack Ever Reach Mountain, after that it is a simple rule of survival of the fittest.
They died only to have their cultivation in their beast cores consumed helping to promote the growth speed of the new generation of the mountain.
Currently there were 5 promising youngsters gaining popularity, 2 being the deer siblings, 3rd rank at 7 years old.
At 4th rank a 9 year old brown female fox with a white tipped tail who had a fire attributed spirit energy, an 11 year old wind attribute 5th rank male spotted black Panther and a young monkey who was also rank 5 at the age of 9.
As for the others who were younger or below age 25 not many managed to reach such a cultivation realm, some unable to cultivate and others stuck at rank 1-3 for many years making no progress.
Among those who made barely any progress was little white and the little white rabbit, little white made no progress all these years but grew up healthy and well fed while the rabbit experienced many fights with the younger generation around him due to his bad temperament… Leading him to step into the first rank of spirit gathering after finally refining his spirit grass he found himself.
Down the mountain is the desolate forest and beyond a country ruled by the Moonlight royal family having both Snow and Dream noble families acting as their left and right arms.
After the current King was crowned he married 1 daughter of each of the 2 families establishing a close connection throughout the last ten years giving birth to new heirs which started the disputes over who would be the next King.
There are also more than ten other existing noble families, in the past there were more but conflicts happened leading to their destruction leading them to be more cautious and some have difficulty siding between the 2 factions.
Because of this tension was at an all time high within the country, leading to increased entries into the sole martial school.
Youths competing for cultivation resources and training like crazy, more and more students entering into the forest area to search for spirit herbs and fight spirit beasts.
It could be said that a single event can have a huge ripple effects even in far away places.
A Royal family and 2 factions to decide the future of their future ruler leading to increased hunting on spirit beast territory, those stray spirit beast groups fighting amongst themselves and pushing others into the mountain area.
The blood shed in the past 2 years has been a lot, 3 noble families have already been purged in this internal war and causing mass confusion.
Where is the King in all of this mess? He is just sitting on his throne sighing!