The Legend of the Treasure Land, Returning to the Great Tang

"An eighth-grade blessed land?"

Jiang Yuechu caught the unfamiliar term at once and glanced over.

It was the first time she had heard that lands were divided into grades.

Gong Qiulan saw her confusion but showed no impatience.

She lifted her teacup, moistened her throat, and patiently explained.

"Heaven and earth have spirit, and the earth's veins have energy."

"Vast as this world is, not every inch of land can sustain the cultivation of humans, demons, and monsters. A blessed land has stable earth veins that steadily produce spiritual energy to nourish all things. Since ancient times, great cultivators have divided these lands into nine grades: first is highest, ninth is lowest."

"Remote places like the Eight Hundred Miles of Linked Clouds have thin earth veins. They barely qualify as an eighth-grade blessed land."

"The spiritual energy an eighth-grade blessed land produces can sustain a million living beings at most. If too many more flood in, the earth veins will buckle under the strain. Within a century, the spiritual energy will run dry, and the land will fall out of the nine grades altogether."

Jiang Yuechu listened quietly, then asked, "What happens when it falls out of the nine grades?"

"It stops producing spiritual energy and becomes a dead land."

"To ordinary mortals with no cultivation, it may only mean a difference in lifespan. They can scrape by and reproduce. But living beings raised in dead land receive no nourishment from the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, so this world will not recognize them. The incense offerings they produce are too impure to condense into the Merit we need. To cultivators and demons of the Painting Realm, such land is essentially worthless."

A brief silence settled over the pavilion.

"So that's how it is..."

Understanding dawned in Jiang Yuechu's