Outside the southeastern edge of the Rongguo Immortal Estate lay an unremarkable cluster of small floating islands, hovering about a hundred feet lower than the estate's main islands.
Though these islands were also protected by the grand formation surrounding the Ning and Rong Mansions, they floated at the edge of the main island cluster. Their spiritual energy was thin, and they were relatively small. Compared with the celestial islands where Grandmother Jia, Daiyu, and the others lived—alive with immortal energy, their pavilions and towers artfully arranged—they were like shabby alleys in the mortal world beside heavenly palaces.
Here, the houses crowded together on each island. They were ordinary courtyards of gray tiles and green bricks, with none of the carved beams or painted rafters of grand mansions, and scarcely a spiritual plant or exotic flower to be seen. Every floating island had courtyards with several rows of rooms: some had just twenty or thirty, others as many as fifty or sixty. Most were cramped homes for a dozen or more branch families and relatives of the Jia clan. Even the smallest housed at least seventy or eighty people!
The atmosphere here was much like that of the ordinary marketplaces in the Divine Capital. The Jia Residence had set aside these islands for collateral branches of the clan, as well as married concubine-born sons with little promise and their families. Naturally, they couldn't expect much in the way of accommodations.
After all, the Jia Residence was already a shadow of its former self.
Of course, no matter how poor these places were, they were still floating islands!
Even the people living here—though destitute, though mere collateral relatives of the Jia family, though their entire household might not have a few taels of spirit stones to its name—enjoyed a status and sense