Demon Star Sea, Heavenly Star City.
The largest, oldest, and currently most prosperous cultivator city built by the Human Race within the Demon Star Sea's territory had weathered more than five hundred years, growing ever more majestic and imposing.
Layer upon layer of Defense Formation patterns were inscribed upon its towering walls, flowing with a cold, metallic sheen beneath the sunlight.
Races from all corners of the Qingxuan Realm converged here. Cultivators streamed through the streets, Golden Core and Foundation Establishment auras were everywhere, and from time to time, one could even sense the deliberately concealed, obscure fluctuations of Nascent Soul Cultivators.
Yet beneath this surface prosperity, better-informed cultivators could detect a thread of hidden tension.
The old high spirits of Human Race cultivators—charging forward with sharp ambition, clashing head-on with the Demon Race, and opening new frontiers—had faded considerably.
In their place was an atmosphere of weary complacency.
Within an old-established teahouse in Star Luo Market.
In an elegant third-floor room by the window, Su Bai sat alone beside the window, dressed in an utterly inconspicuous gray Veiled Hat and Robe.
Before him rested a pot of fine spirit tea, its steam curling gently upward.
He had not removed his veiled hat, his face hidden in shadow. Only his sharply defined chin and his long fingers wrapped around the teacup were visible.
"Star Luo Market... Profound Pill Market... they have all become smoke and clouds of the past."
Su Bai's Spiritual Sense quietly spread out, using the teahouse as its center and extending through all of Heavenly Star City, then farther still toward information nodes connected to the Heavenly Star Alliance.
It was an exceedingly delicate perception, as though it had merged into the wind, the light, the cultivators' everyday conversations, and the ripples of thought unconsciously emitted by