The spatial storm gradually dissolved, leaving a crisp, energy-rich breeze that smelled faintly of rare medicinal herbs and ancient incense.
Adam stepped out of the swirling azure portal, his hood shading his face as he adjusted to the heavy pressure of the local air. He stood on a raised marble pavilion built onto a high cliff, overlooking a sprawling valley that glittered with lights as far as the eye could see.
In the distance, spanning seven mountain ranges and vanishing into the horizon, lay the capital of the Grand Qin Imperial Dynasty: the Imperial City of Heavenly Light, blazing with lanterns and array light even at midnight.
Unlike the rustic, isolated peaks of the Great Void Sect on the Southern Continent, the Imperial Capital was a sprawling metropolis of white jade, spiritual steel, and ancient dragon-vein stone. Floating island palaces hovered above the city, tethered to the ground by massive, glowing array chains. Above it, thousands of flying boats, spirit-beast carriages, and cultivators on flying swords zipped along structured aerial roadways controlled by floating guard towers.
The ambient spirit energy was easily ten times denser than in the Southern Continent. Even ordinary street vendors had reached Qi Condensation, while the armored city guards patrolling the roadways gave off the steady pressure of Foundation Establishment.
Adam took a calm breath and let the rich energy settle into his meridians, where his newly formed, nine-dragon Golden Core absorbed it without a ripple.
’Dense spirit energy, stable spatial laws, and a deep, complex social hierarchy,’ Adam analyzed silently, a faint, cold smile touching his lips beneath his hood. ’An ideal environment for long-term expansion.’
He pulled his gray cloak closer around his shoulders and walked down the marble steps to join a long line of merchants, mercenary bands, and traveling cultivators waiting before the city’s primary entrance, the Dragon-Vein Imperial Gate. The gate never closed, and the line was long even at midnight.
The gate was a monstrous three-hundred-foot archway of dark obsidian, set with thousands of ancient rune plates that scanned every passerby for dark arts and contraband artifacts. On the gate wall hung a massive, ancient bronze bell, the Dragon-Rousing Bell, which had guarded the dynasty’s entrance for three thousand years.
As Adam reached the foot of the gate, a crisp, metallic chime echoed inside his soul.
Ding!
[System Notice: High-Tier Landmark Detected!]
[Location: Dragon-Vein Imperial Gate of the Grand Qin Dynasty!]
[Daily Sign-In available! Would the Host like to Sign In?]
’Sign In,’ Adam commanded.
Ding!
[Sign-In Successful! Landmark Grade: Imperial Capital Grade!]
[Congratulations to the Host! You have received: 1x Heaven-Grade Veiling Cloak!]
[Item Details: Heaven-Grade Veiling Cloak. Conceals the Host’s true cultivation realm, soul signature, and physical presence from all cultivators below the Nascent Soul Realm. Nascent Soul experts may sense a faint distortion.]
Adam’s eyes flickered with satisfaction beneath his hood.
Now that he had reached the Golden Core Realm, he needed to move without drawing premature attention from the Dynasty’s Nascent Soul ancestor clans. He bound the cloak to his soul at once.
In an instant, his suffocating Golden Core pressure folded inward and vanished. To any outside observer, including the scanning array in the Imperial Gate, he looked like an ordinary, impoverished 3rd-Layer Qi Condensation itinerant scholar.
"Next! Show your entry token or pay fifty spirit stones!" a guard commander in silver plate armor barked from the checkpoint booth.
Adam stepped forward, took a modest silk pouch from his sleeve, and dropped fifty low-tier spirit stones onto the wooden desk.
The guard gave him a brief, dismissive glance. Seeing a low-level Qi Condensation cultivator in a plain gray cloak, he didn’t bother asking for identification.
"Go through. Stick to the Outer Commercial District. If you cause trouble in the Inner Noble Ring, the Law Enforcement Division will feed you to the spirit hounds," the guard grunted, tossing a wooden entry pass onto the counter.
Adam picked up the pass and walked through the obsidian archway without a word.
Beyond the gate lay the Outer Commercial District, a dizzying maze of multi-tiered streets, six-story alchemy houses, weapon-forging halls, and bustling auction plazas, as crowded at midnight as at noon.
Every corner was dominated by the banners of the city’s reigning economic powers: the Imperial Alchemy Guild, the Nine-Headed Python Chamber of Commerce, and the Gilded-Crow Chamber of Commerce, whose capital headquarters belonged to Senior Brother Ye’s main clan line.
Adam walked along the main thoroughfare, his sharp eyes recording every detail, price, and market trend on the glowing wooden signboards outside the major shops.
’The economic structure here is far more rigid than in the Southern Continent,’ Adam observed, pausing before a towering four-story building owned by the Imperial Alchemy Guild. ’Low-grade Foundation-Building Pills sell for eight hundred low-tier spirit stones each, four times the price in the Southern Continent. The top three merchant guilds hold a monopoly on raw spirit herbs and furnace rentals, and they inflate pill prices to keep the lower-tier disciples in check.’
A cold light flashed in Adam’s eyes.
A tight monopoly with inflated prices was the easiest target for predatory undercutting. With his Nine-Dragon Flame Furnace producing impurity-free, perfectly pure pills at a fraction of the time and cost, the Imperial Capital’s pill market was a goldmine waiting to be harvested.
"However... a permanent footprint in a city guarded by Nascent Soul ancestors requires legal cover," Adam murmured.
He turned down a narrow, quiet side street of old, dilapidated stone storefronts at the border between the Outer Commercial District and the Slum Ring.
At the end of the street stood a small, two-story wooden shop with a faded, dust-covered sign: Ling’s Antiquities & Scraps.
On the porch sat an old, white-bearded man in a frayed gray robe, listlessly wiping a cracked porcelain teacup with a rag. Beside him, a girl of about fourteen in patched clothes diligently chopped low-grade spirit firewood with a blunt hatchet.
As Adam approached, the old man looked up slowly, his cloudy eyes squinting at the gray-cloaked figure.
"Welcome, young friend," the old man sighed, his voice raspy and listless. "If you’re looking for weapons or high-grade pills, you’ve come to the wrong place. We only sell old scrolls, low-tier spirit metal scraps, and broken array plates."
Adam stopped three steps from the porch and looked up at the faded sign.
"I am not looking for scraps," Adam said smoothly, his quiet voice carrying an underlying weight. "I am looking to purchase this property, its commercial license, and its subterranean lease."
The old man froze, and the rag dropped from his hand. The girl stopped her hatchet mid-swing, staring at Adam in disbelief.
"P-Purchase the shop?" the old man stammered, pulling himself up on his wooden cane. "Young sir... this shop sits on an exhausted spirit vein, and the Iron-Tiger Gang charges fifty spirit stones a month in protection fees. I already owe them two hundred. If I sell, they will—"
Before he could finish, Adam reached into his sleeve.
THUD.
A heavy leather pouch landed on the rickety porch table and split open slightly, revealing fifty gleaming, high-purity mid-tier spirit stones, worth five thousand low-tier stones.
The old man’s breath caught. His knees buckled, and he nearly fell against the doorframe.
"Five thousand spirit stones..." he whispered, his hands shaking as he looked at the pouch. "This... this is enough to buy ten shops in this alley!"
"Five thousand for the deed, the commercial license, and your immediate departure from the Imperial Capital," Adam said calmly. "You have ten breaths to sign over the deed."
At once, the old man scrambled inside, came back with a yellowed parchment deed, stamped his thumb in red ink, and pushed it across the table toward Adam.
"It’s yours! Everything is yours, young noble!" he wept with gratitude, grabbing his granddaughter’s hand and pulling her toward the alley exit. "May the heavens protect you from the Iron-Tiger Gang!"
Adam watched them vanish into the crowded street.
He stepped into the dusty shop, shut the oak doors, and drew the brass bolt.
With a wave of his hand, a ring of Qi swept out from his palm and cleared decades of dust, cobwebs, and rot in less than a second.
Adam walked to the center of the empty floor and looked down at the dark stone tiles. He took out the dark iron plaque he had carried from the Southern Continent, the original emblem, its silver characters reading [VOID-STAR PAVILION].
"Phase One of the Imperial Capital expansion begins now," Adam murmured.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Heavy, aggressive knocks rattled the front door, followed by coarse, arrogant laughter from the street.
"Old Man Ling! Open the damn door!" a brutal voice roared from the alley. "It’s the end of the month! Pay the protection fee, or we break your granddaughter’s legs today!"
Beneath his hood, Adam’s eyes narrowed to slits of ice.