The city beside the Wine Spring Sect teemed with people, even livelier than the Cloud Pattern Dynasty's capital. Most were Lower Five Realms Demon Cultivators who had yet to fully take human form. Apart from those selling and drinking wine, nearly everyone had come from elsewhere to trade in wine or travel. Its taverns and wine shops, large and small, resembled the Sword Qi Great Wall in years past: money in hand, they sought wine; awake, they sat before their cups; drunk, they slept beneath the tables.
The strength of a sect's foundations in the Savage World was plain to see: just count how many "people" it had. The Wine Spring Sect itself was not especially strong, however. Openly or otherwise, it fell far short of Immortal Hairpin City. It had only two Upper Five Realms cultivators: an Immortal Realm Old Sect Master who wanted to hand over his position every day, and a Jade Pú Realm Discipline Patriarch who would rather die than inherit it. Nearly all its other Genealogical Cultivators, men and women alike, were drunkards skilled at brewing and fond of drinking. Truly, they spent their whole lives steeped in wine vats.
Qi Tingji, visiting as a guest, sipped slowly out of habit. Lu Zhi drank heartily from a large bowl until her face was flushed.
Qi Tingji had specifically chosen two fine wines from the Wine Spring Sect that A Liang called everyday drinking wine. He and Lu Zhi each had a pot. Both were good and cheap.
Every time A Liang secretly traveled through the Savage World, he would spend several days carousing at the Wine Spring Sect before he would go back, never leaving sober.
Lu Zhi raised a thumb and wiped the corner of her mouth. "After all those years at the Sword