I also offered a few words of encouragement to the leaders who had newly joined the family, but the next problem soon became glaringly obvious: there were too many people and too little land. Windmist City had truly begun treating every inch of ground as worth its weight in gold. The closer a cave abode was to the seat of power, the more astonishing the required merits became. Even when that old geezer Kong Lian looked at me now, his mouth was stretched into a grin, and he simply could not rein in his smile.
Of course, aside from that old geezer, those who had exchanged for good cave abodes earlier were all acting as if their eyes were perched on top of their heads and their noses pointed at the sky. They probably felt like nouveau riche tycoons who were rich in everything but cashing out, as if a single cave abode could be exchanged for no fewer than eight or ten Kuini Stones divine weapons—yet no one was willing to make the trade.
As for the immortals who had come in later, they were all living in the communal dormitories and desperately taking on missions to earn merits. Whenever they brought up cave abodes, their expressions were generally blank with confusion, as though asking, Where am I, and where am I supposed to be?
This was merely the situation in the inner circle, and it was already so dire. One could imagine how severe the status-based bullying among ordinary disciples had become. It was said that male immortals with good cave abodes had recently enjoyed one romantic encounter after another. Even Kong Lian, who was at the level of a Grand Elder, had changed his attire far beyond the clothing of an ordinary villager from the Kuini Mountain