Morning in Qinghe Town
The border town of Qinghe was small, unremarkable, and exactly the kind of place someone would hide if they wanted to disappear from the cultivation world.
Nestled between two mountain ranges, surrounded by medicinal herb forests, populated mostly by mortal farmers and low-level Qi Condensation cultivators who'd never amount to anything—it was the definition of backwater.
Perfect for a widow trying to survive.
Madam Lin knelt in the underbrush at the forest's edge, her weathered hands carefully extracting Moongrass roots from the soft earth. The herb was common, barely worth ten copper coins per bundle, but it was all she could gather safely.
Her body protested the position—fifty years of life, combined with the catastrophic loss of her cultivation base years ago, had left her with chronic aches that no mortal medicine could truly cure.
