In the southern part of Qingzhou Wei Kingdom, Green Bamboo Mountain.
Green Bamboo Mountain is a corner of the Luoyun Mountain Range, which spans thousands of miles.
Besides the Lin Family of Green Bamboo Mountain, there are the Jin Family of Golden Horn Mountain, the Sun Family of Flying Eagle Mountain, the Wu Family of Jiuhua Mountain, and the Luo Family of Baiyun Mountain.
All five major families have Foundation Establishment Cultivators in residence, along with more than twenty smaller Qi Refining families nestled there.
From atop the main peak of Green Bamboo Mountain, it resembles a coiled giant serpent with the head looking like a massive piece of bamboo, a thousand feet tall, standing at the center of Green Bamboo Mountain.
The whole area of Green Bamboo Mountain stretches over a hundred miles, with gorges at the bottom, underground rivers throughout, and diverse landforms. The mountaintop is often shrouded in clouds and mist all year round, resembling a paradise on earth.
Green Bamboo Mountain is covered in thickets of Qingling Bamboo, which are extremely flexible and counted among the first order wood attribute spirit materials.
When Qingling Bamboo is added in the process of Artifact Refining, it can significantly enhance the resilience of a Spiritual Artifact, and it is widely used in refining flying swords, making it a premium Artifact Refining Material.
Green Bamboo Mountain is the ancestral land of the Lin Family, whose legacy has lasted for over eight hundred years.
Its founder was the Patriarch of the Lin Family, Lin Renfeng, who, during his life, was a Mid Stage Golden Core Cultivator. At the age of four hundred, he got injured while treasure hunting and gathering elixirs in the demon territory of Maple Forest Mountain Range.
Gravely injured, he fled back to Qingzhou. Due to injuries in his energy channels, he could no longer make any progress in cultivation after recovering. Dispirited, he established the Lin Family on Green Bamboo Mountain using his life savings.
The Lin Family currently has 175 cultivators. In the six hundred years since the Patriarch's passing, the Lin Family members have slowly grown in number and the family line has passed down over ten generations.
After more than eight hundred years of development, the Lin Family has achieved a certain level of renown in the southern part of Qingzhou Wei Kingdom. Currently, there are two Foundation Establishment Cultivators and over a hundred Qi Refining Cultivators within the family.
Within a courtyard on the mountainside of Green Bamboo Mountain, Lin Tianming was sitting upright on his bed.
In his hand, he held a milky-white stone as he cultivated. The stone, about the size of a toddler's fist, was crystal clear and stunningly beautiful. Spiritual Energy was flowing along his meridians, eventually converging within his dantian.
After meditating for over an hour, the milky-white stone gradually shrank and finally, turned into a wisp of blue smoke and vanished.
A hint of joy flashed in Lin Tianming's eyes as he eagerly used his Divine Sense to check his dantian.
He saw that his dantian had clearly expanded, and he was not far from the Fifth Level of Qi Practice. If he could refine about a dozen more Spirit Stones, he should be able to reach the Fifth Level of Qi Practice.
Lin Tianming couldn't help but sigh with emotion, reflecting that cultivating with Spirit Stones truly sped up the process. A single Low-Grade Spirit Stone was equivalent to several days of his strenuous cultivation.
Lin Tianming, a cultivator of the Lin Family from Green Bamboo Mountain, possessed Dual Spiritual Roots of wood and fire. At sixteen years of age, he was at the Fourth Level of Qi Practice, clad in a green shirt, with handsome features and eyes that occasionally revealed a trace of maturity and wisdom.
Unconsciously, he had been cultivating for several hours.
As evening approached, after using up two Spirit Stones, though he had a pained expression on his face, seeing the increase in Spiritual Power in his dantian and feeling himself getting closer to the Fifth Level of Qi Practice made it worthwhile.
With many cultivators within the Lin Family and limited financial resources, during the early stages of Qi Practice, only one Spirit Stone was distributed monthly. In the middle stages of Qi Practice, three Low-Grade Spirit Stones were given each month. To gain more resources for cultivation, one must contribute to the family by taking on family tasks, earning Spirit Stones or elixirs for cultivation.
After half a day of cultivation, feeling his stomach rumble, he stretched, pushed open the room door, and happened to run into Lin Tianyue coming his way.
Upon seeing Lin Tianming, Lin Tianyue bounced over and, shaking his arm, said,
"Brother, mother sent me to call you for the meal!"
Lin Tianming affectionately stroked Lin Tianyue's hair and chuckled,
"Funny you should mention it, I was just getting hungry!"
"Let's go then. Time for dinner!"
Saying this, he led Lin Tianyue to the main hall.
Lin Tianyue, Lin Tianming's younger sister, dressed in red, bore a certain resemblance to him, and was bound to become a stunning beauty in adulthood.
This year, Lin Tianyue was twelve years old. With Triple Spiritual Roots of metal, wood, and fire, she had been cultivating for two years and was at the First Level of Qi Practice, showing considerable talent within the Lin Family.
In the main hall, Ren Yuxuan was arranging the tableware.
Before Lin Tianming even entered, Ren Yuxuan could hear his voice in the distance.
"Mother, what delicious food are we having today?"
As he spoke, Lin Tianming jogged into the hall and took a seat, grabbing a bowl of food and wolfing it down.
His mother Ren Yuxuan wore a look of sympathy, repeatedly saying,
"Eat slowly, there's plenty more."
Seeing this, Lin Tianyue commented with a look of disgust, "Brother, eat slower. No one's going to snatch it from you."
Lin Tianming chuckled and asked, "When is Dad coming back?"
Hearing this, a look of longing flashed in the eyes of their mother and quickly faded away.
"Your father went to escort a batch of Artifact Refining Materials and some Spiritual Artifacts to our store in Luoyun Market. It will be a few more days before he returns."
"Before he left, he specifically instructed that I should supervise you in your cultivation diligently, so you can strive to break through to the fifth level of Qi Practice sooner and begin undertaking family missions to relieve some of the family's burdens,"
His mother's words filled Lin Tianming with longing.
"Mother, I understand!"
"I will definitely cultivate diligently and contribute to the family as soon as possible. The world is vast, and I have longed to go out and see it for myself."
Ever since Lin Tianming was found to possess dual spiritual roots at the age of ten, the family had placed high hopes on him.
In the past eight hundred years of the Lin Family, only the patriarch Lin Renfeng was born with dual spiritual roots of metal and fire. For the following eight hundred years, the best among the Lin Family had only three spiritual roots, and most family members had either four or five.
In major sects or clans, with abundant resources, it might be possible to reach Core Formation, but the Lin Family, with its shallow foundations, simply couldn't afford that.
After dinner, his mother began to clear the dishes, while Tianming and Tianyue sat in the courtyard, with Tianming instructing Tianyue in the Five Elements Spell.
All of a sudden, Tianming pinched a technique with his fingers, a wax-yellow flame flickering at the tip. He then shouted abruptly:
"Go..."
The flame, originally the size of a thumb, instantly expanded into a fireball several meters in diameter and shot towards the sky with the speed of an arrow.
A loud boom filled the air, and the shockwave from the explosion spread out in all directions.
Tianyue looked at her brother with admiration and said cheerfully:
"I want to be as powerful as brother."
Lin Tianming nodded affirmatively and then meticulously explained the Five Elements Spell once more.
The Fireball Technique, a basic spell, harnesses one's divine sense to control the fire attribute spiritual power within spiritual energy, concentrating it together. The stronger the divine sense, the more single-attribute spiritual power is gathered, and the greater the power and precision of the spell.
The basic spells of the Five Elements can be practiced after introducing Qi into the body, starting from the first level of Qi Refining.
"You must study diligently and practice frequently, and if there's anything you don't understand, ask Seventh Grandpa tomorrow at the Skill Transmission Hall, you got that?"
Lin Tianming instructed.
"Got it, brother, I will definitely work hard. I won't keep you any longer, I'm going to find Tianqin. You can get back to what you were doing."
In the blink of an eye, his sister had run off and disappeared from sight.
Upon returning to the main hall, he saw his mother approaching him, holding a dark green storage bag in her hand.
"Tianming, this is what your father asked me to give you before he went to the market. Your father and I have been saving these for the past two years to speed up your cultivation."
As she said this, she handed the storage bag to Tianming, who blushed with curiosity and asked:
"What is it?"
Ren Yuxuan did not explain but simply said calmly:
"Take a look for yourself."
Lin Tianming accepted the dark green storage bag and examined it with great interest, feeling immensely pleased with himself.
Anxious to see what his father, Lin Xingrong, had left for him that needed a storage bag, he returned to his room.
Pulling out the dark green storage bag, he admired the gold-threaded embroidery of birds and beasts on it; it was extremely attractive, clearly incomparable to his own basic storage pouch.
He imprinted his divine sense onto the storage bag, and after half an hour of refining, he probed inside with his divine sense to check the contents.
It was a First Order Medium Grade storage bag with a space the size of a room, containing thirty-five low-grade spirit stones, a bottle of Lingshen Pills with three bright green, shiny pills inside.
Lin Tianming couldn't help but pick up a Lingshen Pill, examining it with curious delight.
Lingshen Pills, commonly used elixirs by cultivators in the Qi Refining stage, are packed with spiritual energy and far more effective than the energy from spirit stones.
Each Lingshen Pill represented a month's hard cultivation saved, and three Lingshen Pills were worth at least twenty low-grade spirit stones.
He packed away the spirit stones and Lingshen Pills and took out his original storage bag, which was inferior in quality, with only enough space to fit something the size of a table.
Each family member who successfully introduces Qi into the body and enters the first level of Qi Refining to become a cultivator receives a First Order Inferior storage bag, a flying sword, and three low-grade spirit stones.
He previously had five low-grade spirit stones left, so now he had a total of forty low-grade spirit stones and three Lingshen Pills.
With enough resources for the next year or two, fully refining them would undoubtedly make reaching the fifth level of Qi Practice a certainty, and perhaps even the sixth level was within reach.
After arranging his belongings, he lay on the bed. He hadn't had a proper rest due to the high intensity of his meditation and cultivation over the past half month.
It wasn't even half an hour before the room was filled with the sound of his snoring.