Gu Yue Village

Spring rain falls on Qing Mao Mountain, and lights from the village run down the slope in a bright band. A magnificent pavilion stands in the middle of the village for the clan ceremony, and from the third floor of the garret the clan head can see half of Gu Yue Village. Fang Yuan names the place on that night as Gu Yue Village five hundred years earlier. ^{ch. 1}

Appearance

In the middle of the village stands a magnificent pavilion. Lights shine from tall buildings, a few thousand in number. From the third floor of the garret the clan head can see half the village. ^{ch. 1} The clan pavilion reaches five storeys and has sharp tilted roofs, with a square before it. ^{ch. 4} Under moonlight the bamboo houses stand in great numbers and look like jade. ^{ch. 17} On a starry night the village is radiantly lit, and the bamboo houses are dark green. ^{ch. 60} The village has four doors and outer walls. Wooden ladders climb the interior side of those walls, and defensive towers stand higher than the walls. ^{ch. 149}

Seat and foundation

To a five-hundred-year demonic path view, Qing Mao Mountain is small and Gu Yue Village feels like a cage. ^{ch. 2} Hundreds of years before the opening, the Gu Yue clan migrated from the central lands to the South Border, settled on Qing Mao Mountain after finding a spirit spring in an underground cave, and that spring became the foundation of the village. ^{ch. 4} Clan history names the first generation clan head as the one who established Gu Yue Village. ^{ch. 7}

Qing Mao Mountain holds three mountain villages. Gu Yue village sits at the mountain waist, with the Xiong family village on the fore mountain and the Bai family village at the back mountain waterfall. Tens of tiny mortal villages at the foot of the mountain fall under those three powers, and the small villages near Gu Yue are under Gu Yue village rule. ^{ch. 65}

Pavilion, academy, and streets

The clan pavilion stands in the middle of the village: five storeys with sharp tilted roofs, heavily guarded, with a square before it and the shrine of Gu Yue ancestor memorial tablets inside. Every generation of clan head has lived there, and major ceremonies and elder councils gather there as the village’s authority center. For the Awakening Ceremony, the academy elder leads the youths into the pavilion and down a stone ladder into the underground cave that holds the spirit spring and the clan’s moon orchid flower sea. ^{ch. 4} Footprint Gu tracking later runs from the family head pavilion into the academy hostel, then to the academy and around, and also reaches the mountain village’s inn. ^{ch. 57}

Bamboo houses stand in great numbers under the moonlight. ^{ch. 17} The village has three taverns selling common rice wine and muddy wine, and green bamboo wine is named the village’s number one wine. ^{ch. 12 ch. 13} Moonlight Gu is a specialty of Gu Yue village. ^{ch. 8}

Walls under wolf tide

Village after freeze