Seagull Market was truly a Sea Merchant Guild—or more accurately, a remarkable conception of Madam Hua.
Its design originated a few years prior from the ruins of an ancient major city discovered upon the Eastern Sea, which covered an area of roughly a thousand miles. Such a scale was nothing special in the cultivation world, but upon close inspection, it had actually been cleaved into dozens of broad spaces that were mutually independent yet interconnected through a unique Void Divine Ability. Combined, they yielded a surface area dozens or even hundreds of times greater than the footprint visible outside.
What left people clicking their tongues in wonder above all else was that within the core zone, a massive number of fire-eyes, smelting furnaces, and tools for artifact-forging, talisman-making, and pill-refinement had been left behind. It seemed to be the artisan workshop of some major power from the ancient era. Although the shifting of times meant those era's items might no longer suit the contemporary age, it was still a major discovery no matter how one looked at it.
Not long after the ruins were discovered, the Sea Merchant Guild leveraged its immense financial power to grease the wheels and induce the nearby sects to drop the matter, successfully winning the site at auction. Initially, everyone assumed they intended to unearth the rare treasures within or the profound essence of ancient artifact-forging techniques to further augment their advantages in magical artifact production.
Yet less than two years later, the master plan for Seagull Market spread through several special channels, leading the merchants who had been squeezed to the point of breathlessness by the Sea Merchant Guild to realize with sorrow that they had completely missed Madam Hua's train of thought.
The location of that ancient city ruin was set exceptionally well,