Contending for the World with One City

In early spring of the seventh year of Jia Chun.

Ascension City's Patriarch Hall held its second formal council, one that all direct disciples were required to attend. All sword cultivators who had established residences elsewhere or were traveling had returned on time.

Six years had passed since the first portrait-hanging and incense-offering ceremony.

Forty-one chairs currently stood in the main hall of the Patriarch Hall.

Only the two chairs beside the table beneath the hanging portraits remained empty.

The Execution Officer lineage sat to the left, while the Yin Guan and treasury's Quan Fu lineages sat to the right.

There was a faint air of two sides facing each other off.

The head of the Execution Officer lineage, Qi Shou, had only recently entered the Jade Purity Realm.

South of his chair sat two old Nascent Soul sword cultivators. They came respectively from the minor families of Taixiang Street and Jade Tablet Street, former vassal households of the great Chen and Nalan lineages.

The two elders had an ordinary relationship with Qi Shou.

Their souls had both begun to decay, and they had at most a hundred years left to live. Thus, they were more interested in helping Ascension City spread its branches and leaves, willing to impart all their swordsmanship to the younger sword cultivators.

It was much like the officialdom of a mortal dynasty, where elders about to retire were often more upright and unyielding, daring to say and do things they had previously not dared.

Ascension City now wore an entirely new aspect. Sword cultivators practiced swordsmanship without any sect bias. The Yin Guan lineage of the Summer Palace had previously combed through records and organized secret archives, releasing many Dao formulas and Sword Scriptures left behind by Sword Immortals that had once been sealed under