Shenjing was a strange city.
A few years ago, it had still been renowned throughout the world for its antique charm, known as "the city for retirement."
But on that day, the Heavenly Sword seemed not only to have wiped out the descendants of the ancient methods who had lorded it over Shenjing, but also severed the city's history.
The Shenjing of today bore few traces of its former self. Towering buildings stood everywhere, many of their floors constructed with spells. Everyone, regardless of status or cultivation, bustled about with spirited purpose. They were like blood cells within a living body, carrying vitality to the whole flesh.
When ordinary people from elsewhere first arrived, it was difficult for them to understand why Shenjing's residents were so busy. They were all mortals, and there was only so much they could do. Even working at sunrise and resting at sunset left them with ample free time, so how could they be this busy?
The answer was difficult for mortals of an agrarian society to understand. Because the immortal path existed, humanity's elites often embarked upon cultivation and rarely stopped to consider matters of state and livelihood. Thus, for eighty thousand years, ordinary humans had made almost no progress, remaining in a remarkably stable small-scale agrarian economy. Only after the modern Dharma immortal path took control of the Divine Land had this gradually begun to improve, yet the barrier between immortals and mortals created by the "Eternal Class" still remained.
Shenjing was an attempt to break through that barrier. The Immortal Alliance used certain special methods to grant mortals some of the supernatural abilities possessed only by cultivators. Then the city of Shenjing truly came alive. Under a grand social division of labor, every mortal's value was brought to its fullest, and surplus