Generation Names

The sparse raindrops stopped falling in less than half an hour. The crowd of villagers craned their necks, gazing longingly at the sky, only to lower them in disappointment. They clutched the water containers in their hands with white-knuckled grips, terrified that a single stumble or a stray shove from someone nearby would spill what little they had gathered.

Zhou Changhe turned to Zhou Shi. "Let the villagers take the water back to their homes first. Once that is done, have them return to their labor."

"Young Master, you are truly a savior to us all," Zhou Shi said with a fawning chuckle, patting his chest. "Rest assured, I will keep a strict eye on things here. We will definitely finish digging this deep basin today."

Zhou Changhe gave a terse grunt of acknowledgment, then placed his hands behind his back and walked toward the distance.

Although he was not yet twenty years old, he had managed the clan's affairs for seven or eight years. Years of holding authority and living in comfort had given him an imposing aura, commanding respect and instilling fear in the ordinary villagers without him ever needing to raise his voice. Two years ago, his wife, Lady Sun, had given birth to a child. Becoming a father for the first time had tempered Zhou Changhe, making him far more stable and mature.

Zhou Shi bowed and scraped until Zhou Changhe was out of sight, then immediately straightened his spine. He turned to a retainer with a haughty, arrogant expression.

"Go tell those wretches to get back to work immediately. If anyone slacks off or tries to be clever, they can forget about drinking even a single drop of porridge tonight."

"Understood, Manager."

The retainer bowed humbly and withdrew. Yet, the moment he stepped in front of the villagers, his face contorted into a venomous, roaring sneer.

"All of you, get up! The master is full of benevolence and mercy. In this dreadful year of famine, he feeds you out of pity so you won't starve, yet you ungrateful dogs dare to dawdle? You procrastinate over digging a mere canal and water basin! Once this lake is dug, won't you be the ones reaping the benefits in the future? Truly ignorant of what is good for you! Get up now!"

"If you don't move your lazy hides, there will be no porridge for you tonight!"

Hearing that they would lose their porridge, the exhausted, weary crowd began to move with low murmurs. They picked up their hoes and iron picks, resuming their sluggish, rhythmic digging along the dry riverbed.

In the distance, Zhou Ping and Zhou Changhe led their attendants up the mountain, perfectly aware of the commotion behind them.

While Zhou Shi was overbearing and prone to bullying, he was fiercely loyal to the family and an incredibly efficient tool. The clan provided the porridge as an act of benevolence, while Zhou Shi applied the necessary intimidation. Only by balancing kindness with severity could they ensure the mortals remained both grateful and fearful.

This was Zhou Changhe's method of managing subordinates. After all, there were times when the lofty reputation of an Immortal Clan was less effective than the crude enforcement of these estate servants.

Walking half a step behind Zhou Ping, Zhou Changhe asked in a hushed tone, "Uncle, in a few months, it will be time for our family to deliver our tribute of spiritual rice. However, the world outside is in complete chaos. Refugees and bandits overrun the roads; it is simply too dangerous. Should we pay a higher price and request the Immortals' Directorate to send their own cultivators to collect it?"

Zhou Ping walked ahead, his footsteps sounding heavily on the bluestone stairs leading up to Ming Peak. His mind was weighted with concern.

Although their family possessed eight mu of spiritual fields, the spiritual rice they had accumulated over the past few years was meager. After all, the yield of spiritual rice depended heavily on the density of the ambient Spiritual Qi.

The richer the Spiritual Qi, the grander the harvest. In the past, when he served as a spiritual plant farmer in the Azure Cloud Sect, the Spiritual Qi on Azure Cloud Mountain was incredibly dense, making a normal yield of eight hundred jin per mu standard.

However, Baixi Mountain was situated in a barren land lacking spiritual energy. Furthermore, their warding array was only of the first rank, and its ability to gather Spiritual Qi was far inferior to the grand sect-protecting array of Azure Cloud Sect. Consequently, the Zhou family's spiritual fields yielded less than three hundred jin per mu.

From that harvest, they had to reserve grain for their own family's consumption and distribute a portion as rewards to the families of Chen Fusheng and Wang Dashi. At the end of each year, they could only save roughly thirteen hundred jin.

If they used their jade token to summon the Immortals' Directorate to collect the tribute at their doorstep, they would be forced to forfeit an additional four hundred jin of spiritual rice. That was equivalent to a full year's savings from several mu of land-essentially rendering three years of hard labor entirely wasted. How could Zhou Ping not feel the sting of such a loss?

Yet, with war and chaos rampant and the entirety of Nanyang Prefecture swarming with desperate refugees, Zhou Ping could not rest easy letting his own clansmen transport the grain. A Spirit Awakening Realm cultivator stood no chance against a massive tide of thousands of starving refugees, to say nothing of the risk of being ambushed and plundered by other hidden cultivation forces.

As for Zhou Ping delivering it himself, that was entirely out of the question. He was the sole pillar of the Zhou family; he could not afford even the slightest mishap. If he left the mountain, the warding array would have to be managed by Zhou Minghu alone. If a Qi Condensation cultivator chose that moment to assault the mountain, the entire clan would be slaughtered and the family line annihilated.

Even if the probability was microscopic, one had to guard against the malice of others. In all things, one had to prepare for the absolute worst.

What if an enemy force was already secretly monitoring their family?

"Alas," Zhou Ping let out a long, heavy sigh. "When this season's spiritual rice ripens in a few weeks, we will pay the fee and let the Immortals' Directorate collect it directly from the mountain."

Even though delivering the spiritual rice to the prefecture was technically voluntary, how many weak Immortal Clans actually dared to take such a risk? This was especially true for a family like the Zhou clan, which possessed only a single Qi Condensation cultivator. If any accident occurred on the road, it would plunge them into a bottomless abyss of ruin, leaving them with regrets too late to mend.

The Imperial Court truly had these small, vulnerable Immortal Clans cornered. They purposely set the extraction fee at exactly four hundred jin. It wasn't so high that a clan would completely refuse out of sheer despair, but it was painful enough to drain their reserves, ensuring that minor Immortal Clans found it incredibly difficult to accumulate wealth and rise in power.

On the bright side, his parents were now able to eat spiritual rice every single day, and their aging bodies were visibly growing healthier and stronger.

Thinking of this, the knot in Zhou Ping's chest loosened considerably.

Ming Peak was only a hundred zhang high. After walking for just fifteen minutes, the group reached the summit.

All four peaks of the mountain were permanently shrouded in dense clouds and mist. Without proper guidance, even a Spirit Awakening Realm cultivator would lose their bearings within the fog. A few times during the construction of the mountaintop courtyards, certain villagers had wandered off into the mist and suffered immensely before being found. This experience instilled a deep, superstitious terror in all the commoners of Baixi Village, ensuring they never dared to overstep the mountain's boundaries again.

Furthermore, rumors had begun to circulate within the village that residing on Baixi Mountain could prolong one's life. This left older men like the Sun clan's patriarch shaking with excitement, causing them to desperately curry favor with the Zhou family in the hopes that they might one day be permitted to live on the peaks.

Naturally, these rumors had been intentionally leaked by Zhou Changhe. While living in an environment rich in Spiritual Qi did provide substantial benefits to a mortal body, it would, at most, grant them a few extra years of life. However, that did not stop Zhou Changhe from leveraging it to fully bind the hearts of the Baixi Village commoners to the clan.

He had already moved Old Chen and the parents of Wang Dashi up the mountain to live. This served a dual purpose: it firmly secured the loyalty of Chen Fusheng and Wang Dashi, and it provided a living example for the rest of the villagers to see.

Living in comfort and bliss, combined with the subtle, pervasive nourishment of the mountain's Spiritual Qi, had indeed made the elderly parents look remarkably younger. This sight acted as an undeniable stimulus for the older generation of the village. Otherwise, why would the Wang and Sun clans have surrendered their grain reserves so willingly? It was only after seeing the tangible reality of extended life that the Sun patriarch and Wang Feng fought each other to deliver their clans' grain.

Several elegant courtyards sat upon the mountain summit. In an open clearing, a few children were playing merrily, closely watched by attentive maidservants. The moment the children spotted Zhou Ping and Zhou Changhe approaching, they cheered and ran over excitedly.

"Father!"

Zhou Bai happily wrapped his arms around Zhou Ping's leg. He tilted his small head up, his pure, innocent eyes resembling a pristine starry sky, entirely untouched by the malice of the world.

"Father, why did you go down the mountain? Why didn't you take me with you?"

Zhou Ping smiled warmly, lifting Zhou Bai into his arms. He said softly, "Father went down the mountain to call down the rain."

Toward this third son of his, who possessed no cultivation talent whatsoever, Zhou Ping always reserved an extra measure of patience and paternal warmth.

"Call down the rain? What is that?" Zhou Bai asked, tilting his head in confusion.

"Calling down the rain means giving the people at the foot of the mountain a way to survive, so they can live a little better."

Hearing this, Zhou Bai's eyes lit up with sheer adoration. He waved his tiny fists and shouted, "Then I want to call down the rain when I grow up too! That way, Father, Mother, Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncle, and Big Brother will always live well!"

Looking at his son's radiant, joyful face, Zhou Ping could not bring himself to shatter the boy's illusions with the cruel reality of the cultivation world.

Nearby, Zhou Changhe was cradling a child of about one or two years old. The toddler blinked blankly at the surrounding people, babbling unintelligibly at his father. This child was the eldest son of the Zhou family's fourth generation: Zhou Chengqian.

This grand name had been personally bestowed by Zhou Hong, who fervently hoped that his eldest grandson would one day inherit the main branch's estate and carry the family line to greater heights.

As for the character Cheng in the boy's name, it belonged to the strict generation poem Zhou Ping had established for his descendants.

Now that their family had successfully transitioned into an Immortal Clan, as long as no catastrophic disaster befell them, they would inevitably multiply and flourish in the future, eventually resembling the Pingyun Huang Clan with thousands of blood relatives.

When a clan grew too large, it was easy for the hearts of its members to fracture and scatter. To maintain family cohesion, preserve order, and secure an orderly line of inheritance, he had decreed that starting from his grandchildren's generation, all names must follow a designated generation character.

"Cheng Xi Xiu Wen, Jing Yuan Zhan Ting, Chang Sheng Yong An."

These twelve characters were the generation names Zhou Ping had set for the male descendants of the family, with Zhou Chengqian being the very first of the Cheng generation.

Furthermore, Zhou Ping had meticulously established a separate generation poem for the female descendants of the clan:

"Qian Yue Qing Xiu, Jia Zhao Yi Jin, Yu Rui Ying Zhi."

This outlined the naming structure for the next twelve generations of the Zhou family. As for what would happen after those twelve generations passed, Zhou Ping had no idea if he would even be alive to witness it. However, he believed that if he still breathed by then, or if the Zhou family remained a dominant power, future descendants would naturally compose the next lines of the poem.

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