Chapter 120: Family Inheritance

After the Song family members returned to Funiu Mountain, the exhausted old patriarch Song Gushan could not care about resting for a moment and hurriedly made arrangements to bury these clansmen who sacrificed outside properly in the cemetery on the mountain. He also personally presided over the funerals of several clansmen who died in battle.

The fourth elder was buried next to the first elder's grave. Nearby, there were several old grave mounds, all of which were Gu-generation cultivators who had already passed away. Song Gushan also specifically asked people to clear out an empty space for him on the other side of the first elder's grave.

Not long after several Song family clansmen were buried, the Huang family sent people over, bringing the pension and some rewards for their conscription this time, totaling over a thousand spirit stones. It was just that everyone felt nothing when seeing these spirit stones. After all, these were all exchanged for the lives of several clansmen who had already died.

The fourth elder who managed the family's Treasury Pavilion was no longer there, so the old patriarch could only temporarily deposit these spirit stones into the Treasury Pavilion, and wait until the successor to the Treasury Pavilion was selected before taking them out for distribution.

After these funeral matters were handled, the old patriarch chose a good day and summoned all the Song family cultivators to the discussion hall, announcing on the spot that he would resign from the position of patriarch he had held for decades from now on, and pass the core power of the family to the new patriarch, the sixth uncle Song Changfeng.

After the sixth uncle Song Changfeng took over as patriarch, he soon redistributed the family's original elder duties and selected several new elders on the spot to help him manage the entire family.

The ninth uncle Song Changxin, who had never liked to manage affairs, took over the position of the original fourth elder and served as the family's Merit Elder, responsible for managing the spiritual objects in the Treasury Pavilion and the exchange of clansmen's merits. This area is relatively leisurely, and there is no need to go down the mountain often, so it is relatively suitable for a bitter cultivator like him who likes to cultivate.

The thirteenth uncle Song Changxiong took over the affairs originally belonging to Song Changfeng and became the family's new Law Enforcement Elder, managing the family's beast-hunting team and the guarding affairs of Funiu Mountain. He had already been very familiar with this aspect. In the past few years, because the sixth uncle had too many things on his body, these things were basically handed over to him to be responsible for.

The fifth aunt Song Changling served as the family's Miscellaneous Affairs Elder, responsible for teaching the young cultivators in the family school on the mountain, as well as managing the family's mortal affairs and the annual spirit-measuring ceremony. She had been guarding Mu Jiao Town for many years and was already very familiar with these things.

Song Qingming's side had no changes. He continued to assist the patriarch in managing some trivial matters within the family, doing some welcoming and sending off, running errands, and the like. It was a bit like the role of the first elder back then. This was also the family's intention to cultivate him to understand the specific situation of various affairs in the clan more.

The original third elder Song Gulan was still responsible for the family's spiritual planting affairs. She originally wanted to retire early like the old patriarch, but there was no suitable person to replace her in this area for the time being. Under Song Gushan's insistence, she agreed to continue to help the clan manage it for a period of time, and wait until the clan found a suitable candidate to replace her.

Now there are nearly thirty cultivators in the Song clan. Except for the old patriarch who is too old to take action, there are five Qi Mount Mount Lianhua late-stage cultivators. The overall strength is much stronger than when Song Qingming first went down the mountain. The many cultivators of the Qing generation have also gradually grown up.

After the topic of succession ended, the elders put forward many of their own ideas and suggestions for the future development of the family.

First is the family's miscellaneous affairs. The thousands of mortals who migrated from the Liu family have injected a lot of fresh blood into the family through continuous intermarriage over the past decade or so. In recent years, the probability of finding spiritual roots among mortals has also been much higher than in the past.

It is just that the number of mortals that Mu Jiao Town can bear has almost reached the upper limit. With the continuous growth of the population, the living space required will also increase exponentially. There is not much land left that can be opened up in Mu Jiao Town. If they want to support more people, the Song family must establish new mortal villages and towns.

Dangers can be seen everywhere in the cultivation world. Mortals without cultivators to look after them are very fragile. Any low-tier beast mixing into a village or town can bring great destruction in a short time. If the Song family wants to establish new villages and towns, they must first find fertile land suitable for mortal farming, then refine a small spiritual vein with spirit stones, set up a protective mountain array, and arrange for cultivators to be stationed for long-term management. These are all indispensable things, and they also require a lot of spirit stone investment.

After discussing, everyone agreed to the matter of building new mortal villages and towns. Patriarch Song Changfeng decided to start tomorrow, find a few mortal guards from Mu Jiao Town, and first look for a territory suitable for building villages and towns near Funiu Mountain.

As for refining spiritual veins, they need to prepare hundreds of spirit stones and refine a spirit-gathering array. This point is not a big problem. The clan can still take out hundreds of spirit stones. With Song Qingming's formation level, a spirit-gathering array can also be completely refined.

The only difficulty is needing a top-grade defensive mountain-protecting great formation. Song Qingming cannot refine this yet. Only the original first elder Song Gubai had this ability. Now he can only send a letter to the second sister Song Qingwan first, letting her and the fourth uncle look at the Qinghe Market to see if there is a suitable top-grade mountain-protecting great formation.

Mountain-protecting great formations are different from the formations Song Qingming refined to carry with him. Such great formations must be set up based on mountain rivers and spiritual veins. They can protect a large area, and their power will be greater. It is just that the market demand for such things is not large. General cultivation families can even use a set for a hundred years after refining it. Whether such a small market as Qinghe Market can buy it in the short term is hard to say. Even if you ask a top-grade formation master to refine a set, it will take at least half a year.

The second thing was proposed by patriarch Song Changfeng, regarding the matter of the family cultivating younger generation cultivators.

In the past, all Song family cultivators could receive some spirit stones for free every year for cultivation before adulthood. This would stop after the age of eighteen. Then you could only rely on completing tasks issued by the family's Treasury Pavilion to earn spirit stones. This included the patriarch, elders, and many other family cultivators.

However, the family treats cultivators with outstanding cultivation talent and better spiritual roots very differently. Back then, Third Brother Song Qingze was given a large amount of cultivation resources directly by the old patriarch and the Great Elder specifically to nurture him because of his outstanding talent, which also drew dissatisfaction from many other cultivators in the clan.

Song Changfeng decided that, in order to treat every family cultivator fairly, this type of system would be temporarily canceled starting today. From now on, all family cultivators would be treated equally. This point also received the approval of most of the elders present.

After deciding on these two main matters, everyone then discussed some other miscellaneous affairs before concluding this brand-new family meeting.

Having just finished participating in this family meeting and about to return to his own cave dwelling, Song Qingming suddenly remembered that there was still an important matter he hadn't had time to handle, so he directly intercepted the patriarch, Song Changfeng, who was about to leave.

"Patriarch, next month I would like to ask for leave from you for a period of time to go to the Xiaoyao Sect to meet an old friend."

(End of chapter)