Looking across all under heaven, only the Jing Kingdom had moved the treasure of a grotto-heaven and made it into a court, allowing the civil and military officials to pay homage at will and the imperial kin to enjoy it forever.
Naturally, the areas foreign officials could visit were limited.
Within the vast Sanqing Xuandu Supreme Palace, aside from the Three Gardens of Heaven and Earth, to which Jing court officials received annual allocations according to rank, the Central Hall and Black Deer Hall were the places most frequently visited by foreign officials paying homage.
The so-called Three Gardens of Heaven and Earth were divided into the Garden of Letters, the Garden of War, and the Garden of Dao. One was a garden for reading and discussing scholarship, where the classics of all under heaven could be studied without taboo. One was a place for practicing Dharma and honing arts, where hunting contests were held and blades often rang. One was a place to still the heart and cultivate the Dao, to look up at the sun and moon, undisturbed by worldly affairs.
To cultivate and meditate within the grotto-heaven ranked second in all under heaven, an allocation for the Three Gardens of Heaven and Earth had always been the most prized "official stipend" of the Jing Kingdom.
The interaction between grotto-heaven treasures and heaven and earth was not limitless, so every grotto-heaven treasure came with restrictions on use. Borrowing a grotto-heaven for cultivation especially required quotas. Only a power with the Jing Kingdom's reserves could afford such extravagance.
The Central Hall was where court assemblies were held, the embodiment of the Jing Kingdom's highest authority. The Black Deer Hall, meanwhile, was the Jing Emperor's study—Ji Fengzhou read there, and also received certain ministers there.
Ordinarily, anyone the Son of