Evan stood on a hill, staring calmly at the gate of his former clan. A crowd waited behind him, some eyeing the clan in an unresigned manner, others looking at their spiritual support. Some of the young children shivered at the gnawing cold.
Wind howled in his ears, seemingly deploring his fate. A silvery cloud drifted over the mountains surrounding the compound. The roar of a river could be heard from underneath its frozen surface.
He had reincarnated many years ago. Hailed as a prodigy from his youngest age, Evan had seemingly tread on a path to invincibility. He had gotten married with his childhood sweetheart and had cultivated with a group of friends, forming a considerable power of his own. Yet now, here he was, devoid of any path to move forward, with his energy locus destroyed. His wife was dead and his branch had been kicked out of the clan.
He looked at his progeny that had been entrusted to him. The baby seemed content in his father’s strong arms, too young to understand anything but the warmth of the father’s beating heart. Signaling to the people behind him, he turned around and the procession gradually disappeared in the distance, as the sun gradually set and the stars acted as a guide.
Chapter 1 - Staring at the Stars
Darkness encroached upon the sky as the sun hid its head behind the horizon. Twilight faded, as the moon became the sole supplier of light in the region. A little speck of light gradually lit up the sky, followed by many others, forming an eternal firework. The night was calm and the sky clear.
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Daniel laid down on the roof, one hand trying to reach the river in the night. His clear blue eyes stared at the foreign wonders in amazement. He never got tired of this sight. A gust of wind hit him, moving his hair and his hand, which he subsequently put down.
“Too excited to sleep?”
His father asked as he jumped on roof, landing with a gentle thud. This martial prowess was a result of his training, cultivation, which allowed one to refine oneself. One could do so by appropriating the energy of the world with the martial spirit, a mystery of the soul. This was a world where cultivation was the central aspect of all things, as the cure to old age and military might.
Daniel’s martial spirit would be revealed at the Manifestation Ceremony the next night. He could not wait to know what his spirit was. As the son of arguably the strongest man in the region, Evan King, he could not do too badly, lest he damage his father’s reputation. Although the man himself may not care and all the adults in the township of Ván were friends, family, and subordinates of his father, he could not lose face in front of his friends and the villagers from the villages nearby.
The Ancient Mountains were a fairly unpopulated situated at the eastern extremity of human lands. It, and the integrality of five villages, were ruled by the sole township in the region, Ván. All of the villages had been created recently by pioneers, mostly people fleeing persecution. As such, The Ancient Mountains was a melting pot of diverse groups of people. However, only Ván had cultivators versed in the arts of martial spirit manifestation. As most cultivation clans kept their techniques secret to empower themselves, most people had to hope to manifest one’s own martial spirit through polishing their body and by pressing the barrier through sheer willpower. Ván was thus doing a favor to the people in the region by allowing the children’s martial spirits to awaken.
Faced with Daniel’s silence and palpable excitement tinged with fear, the well-built young man climbed onto the roof, laid down next to his son, and hugged him. Daniel seemed to calm down and calmly drift into sleep. Staring at his son's sleeping face, a fatherly smile crept on the Evan’s face.