Qin Calendar: 6005
The morning mist had not yet parted, slightly revealing the outline of a cozy village nestled between two mountainsides. Wooden homes with thatched roofs stood quietly, smoke curling from their chimneys—likely from the preparation of a light breakfast to start the day's work. The sounds of chickens crowing and dogs barking made for a beautiful and serene ambiance.
In one of the more luxurious homes, on the second floor, the sound of panting suddenly arose. It came from the young Yu Xin. He should have been sleeping peacefully on the day of his fifth birthday, but he had had a strange dream in which he lived another life.
In that dream, he was born into an average middle-class family and studied various subjects, though he couldn't quite remember them now. He passed through various institutions and finally got a decent job. Yet he couldn't be happy, for it was still grueling and exhausting work. Finally, after staying up late another night due to a pending assignment, he quickly fell asleep and had another strange dream—this time, living as the young Yu Xin.
He still remembered suddenly feeling a sharp pain in his left chest inside that dream… and then he woke up now, as Yu Xin.
The young boy still couldn't understand if it had been a dream or something else entirely. To call it a dream, he clearly remembered all the confusion, the work, and the social anxiety. To call it something more… yet he didn't even remember his own name in that other life.
Was he dreaming of being someone else, or was he the dream of another?
Little Yu Xin was covered in cold sweat and decided not to think about it anymore.
He quickly jumped out of bed and went downstairs. An enticing aroma greeted him even in the stairwell—sure enough, breakfast was underway.
Upon arriving downstairs, he first saw his mother cooking in the open kitchen. His father was sitting on a couch, reading something that looked like a newspaper from the Listening Wind Pavilion—the foremost news organization in the Great Desolate.
His mother, Liu Hua, immediately broke into a gentle smile upon seeing him.
"Happy fifth birthday,Xin'er," she said. "What present would you like today?"
Little Yu Xin immediately forgot all his worries upon hearing this, beaming as he replied, "Mommy, I want to eat the flower pastries you always make on my birthday."
Little Yu Xin's father, Yu Jin, distracted by this, couldn't help but interject, "And don't forget about the rabbit stew."
Liu Hua's beautiful face immediately turned to him. "Is it Xin's fifth birthday or yours?"
Yu Jin put on a helpless expression. "I'm saying it for him. After all, he's in a growing period. He needs meat to supplement his diet, not to mention he'll start cultivating soon."
Liu Hua wore a subtle expression that seemed to say, Do you believe that yourself? But it was also the truth, so she couldn't argue.
In the Great Desolate, children began cultivation at the age of five, when the spiritual root formed. Before that, they only learned some basic cultivation knowledge, as well as how to read and write. In the cultivation world, it was hard to move an inch without having cultivation.
The Qin Dynasty didn't even recognize people without spiritual roots as citizens. The chances of an average person being born with a spiritual root were very low, but Yu Xin's parents were not worried because Yu Xin was never considered an average person. Liu Hua possessed a low-grade wood-element spiritual root, and Yu Jin had a low-grade metal-element spiritual root. Liu Hua was a first-rank high-grade spiritual planter in Ox Horn Village, and Yu Jin was a first-rank high-grade talisman crafter.
Thus, they basically had no worries about whether he had a spiritual root. They were only concerned about its quality and element.
The quality and element of a spiritual root were extremely important. Quality was divided into low, medium, high, and top grades. It was said that there were spiritual roots above top grade, but such things had nothing to do with Liu Hua and Yu Jin. Low-grade spiritual roots were truly too common and required too many resources, especially in the later stages of cultivation. Most sects and schools did not recruit those with spiritual roots below medium grade, making quality extremely important.
The element of the spiritual root was equally important, as it determined what occupations one could pursue. For example, wood-element cultivators were suited to be spirit planters, healers, or alchemists; fire-element cultivators could be spiritual cooks, artifact refiners, or alchemists.
There were countless cultivation schools and therefore countless professions. There were no absolute laws stating that a cultivator must have a particular spiritual root for a given profession, but most sects did have preferences—an artifact-refining sect, for instance, would prefer a fire spiritual root over others.
And today would be Little Yu Xin's spiritual root assessment.