Qianjiang Road, Dalin Prefecture City.
Over the past thousand years, this city had endured all the vicissitudes the world could offer. At first, the people here had swung back and forth between two extreme ideologies because of True Sun Mountain to the west and the Xia Dynasty's Divine Art.
Later, the Central Province Divine Artifact collapsed, and ambitious warlords sprang up one after another in this tiny place. The people gradually stopped trusting anyone, and they became less resistant to rulers changing hands so frequently. Their original faith had turned into a belief in nothing but tangible profit.
During the Datong Dynasty's three hundred-odd years, people from elsewhere both liked dealing with those from Qianjiang Road and loathed them. Merchants liked them because Qianjiang Road people were straightforward—so long as the profit was sufficient, they would do anything. Others hated them because they cared only for profit. Coupled with the Ritualism promoted by the Datong Dynasty, this made Qianjiang people deeply unpopular.
Take the present, for example. Just days ago, all of Dalin Prefecture City had been trumpeting Linshui Prefecture's strength. Now, every household had replaced its idols with gilded statues of Lord Rongyang. The local great clans had even organized donations for the True Sun Sect disciples who had died in battle. In a single day, they had raised five hundred thousand taels of silver, prompting even the busy Le Xin to spare a moment to receive their representatives.
Outside an ordinary teahouse called Zhibin near the city's Dao Palace garrison, the open-air stalls were packed with Qi practitioners flooding in from every region. Under normal circumstances, people of their status would at least have taken a booth, but now, without Foundation Establishment cultivation, one was not even qualified to glance into a teahouse hall.
Quite a few merchants