Published: September 9, 2025
Chapter 877: Canglu Tribe
A caravan of more than thirty people was traveling alone across the vast prairie.
There weren’t many vehicles—only seven or eight—but the horse-riding leather-clad riders surrounding them were all young and spirited; a few were merely children of eleven or twelve years old.
At the front of the caravan was an elderly man dressed in splendid attire, riding a yellow steed.
This elder wore a fiery red fox fur hat; his forehead was deeply wrinkled as if carved by a knife, his face slightly purple, and around his waist was a tricolor brocade belt symbolizing his status. This was the mark of the tribe leader.
They were already in the southern part of the Tianlan Prairie. This was a Tuwo people’s group on their way to the Sanctuary to pay tribute.
“Tianlan Prairie” was the Tuwo people's name for the Mulan Prairie because the Tuwo had long revered the legendary "Heavenly Wave Beast" as their tribal guardian deity and had worshipped it for generations, hence the prairie’s name.
Originally, the Tuwo only occupied the southern half of the true Tianlan Prairie, but after a decisive battle thirty years ago in the central prairie that crushed their hereditary enemies, the Mulan people, they took control of the entire grassland. Their power naturally surged, leaving no rivals across the vast prairie.
Of course, the Tuwo tribe was enormous, composed of countless internal clans. Small clans with a few hundred thousand people to massive super-clans with nearly a hundred million, scattered across the prairie. Due to many merits made during the last holy war, several new independent clans had also emerged.
Some of these clans were sizeable, while others were minuscule, with populations of only tens of thousands.
The "Canglu Tribe," where the elder belonged, was such a micro-tribe that had split off from a larger clan. Though it could be called a tribe, its population was only around seventy to eighty thousand.
The elder’s name was Yinglu. In his youth, he was extraordinarily fierce in battle and had, during the holy war, crushed several small Mulan clans in succession and captured many nobles alive, thus earning his current status. But now, wearied by time and years of toil, although only in his early fifties, his body had already shown signs of aging.
It was now noon. Yinglu glanced up at the scorching sun in the sky, then turned to look at the children in the caravan behind him, sighing deeply.
By rule, no matter the tribe’s size, they must host at least one immortal master. Otherwise, if faced with natural disasters, human calamities, or demonic beasts, ordinary mortals were utterly defenseless.
Yet, their newborn micro-tribe couldn’t attract any immortal masters— not even the lowest-ranked ones were willing to settle in such a small tribe.
For immortal masters, it was preferable to join larger, wealthier tribes that could provide ample resources for their cultivation.
Some small tribes might have low-ranked immortal masters only because those masters originally belonged to those tribes or because their own cultivation aptitude was poor, so larger tribes refused to sponsor them, leaving them no choice but to remain.
The Canglu Tribe where Yinglu was from hadn’t had the chance to train their own immortal masters. So over the years, whenever help was needed, they had to hire low-ranked masters from neighboring tribes at great cost. These masters charged exorbitantly; just a few interventions could consume nearly half a year’s income for the entire tribe, making the already poor Canglu Tribe’s situation even worse.
Fortunately, the spiritual awakening day, which came once every twenty years, was finally approaching.
Yinglu, who had long been mindful of this, naturally wouldn’t miss the opportunity. He immediately led several tribe youths who had been tested and found to have spiritual roots to the nearest Tianlan Sanctuary from their tribe.
The Tianlan Sanctuary was originally built to honor the sacred beast of the heavenly waves, but over many years it had evolved into the Sacred Ground for the Tuwo people and became the place specialized in training low-ranked immortal masters of the Tuwo tribe.