Heavenly Treasure City

Heavenly Treasure City was a massive city.

Its walls were blue-gray, its towers lofty, and guards patrolled atop the walls and around the gates.

At the sight of this, Red Cloud suddenly felt as though he had arrived in ancient times.

Countless formation runes were engraved upon the walls, dispelling that illusion.

The formation carved into the walls was the City-Protecting Formation. Because it frequently endured assaults from Water Beasts, its power was formidable enough to hold off a Taiyi Golden Immortal for a while.

Red Cloud landed on the ground and used Shrinking Earth to an Inch, reaching the gates of Heavenly Treasure City in just a few steps.

Just as he was about to enter, Red Cloud was stopped by a gate guard. Seeing that he was new, the guard immediately demanded an entrance fee.

Red Cloud frowned and glanced at the guard. The guard felt as if the sky had gone dark, while a terrifying chill surged from his heart and every inch of his flesh screamed in terror.

This was a terrifying existence he could not possibly resist.

"A pass? An entrance fee?"

Red Cloud muttered. Without saying anything else, he casually took out a Flame Yang Stone and tossed it to the guard.

The Flame Yang Stone had been a gift from the natives to Red Cloud.

Watching Red Cloud's departing back as he entered the city, the guard let out a heavy breath. His entire body was drenched in sweat.

"That scared me to death. I nearly offended a Golden Immortal senior. Good thing this senior didn't hold it against me."

After that experience, the guard became much more honest. Not everyone had Red Cloud's good temper.

After entering the city, Red Cloud made some inquiries and learned that Heavenly Treasure City did indeed charge an entrance fee: one Flame Yang Stone per entry.

However, Golden Immortals and above were exempt from the fee.

Red Cloud had concealed his aura, so the guard had failed to recognize him. Seeing that he had no pass, the guard had demanded the entrance fee.

Heavenly Treasure City's passes were sold by the year: one-year passes, ten-year passes, hundred-year passes, thousand-year passes, and so on.

With an annual pass, one could enter the city an unlimited number of times within its validity period and remain there for extended periods.

Red Cloud came to a realization. "So that's how it is. No wonder I saw some people wearing identical jade tokens."

Heavenly Treasure City was home to countless races with all sorts of appearances, though most were primarily humanoid.

They used the Primordial Dao Body as their foundation, then incorporated certain racial traits into it. Some had wings on their backs, while others bore tiger heads.

Female cultivators, on the other hand, tended to transform more completely. They either possessed entirely Primordial Dao Bodies or had Primordial Dao Bodies with ears and tails.

Red Cloud spotted a female Fox Clan cultivator with ears atop her head and six tails behind her. Her overall form was primarily a Primordial Dao Body, like a fox-eared cosplay girl.

If those dirty old perverts saw her, they would probably go into heat right in the street. She fit their tastes far too perfectly.

As Red Cloud wandered through Heavenly Treasure City, he discovered that it not only had an Air-Sealing Formation, but also a Spirit-Gathering Array.

A massive Spiritual Vein lay beneath Heavenly Treasure City. The Spirit-Gathering Array combined with the Spiritual Vein made the city's spiritual energy at least three or four times denser than outside.

In a sense, Heavenly Treasure City had become a treasured cultivation ground. Cultivating here yielded twice the results with half the effort, and wandering cultivators would surely be willing to stay in the city.

This brought immense popularity to Heavenly Treasure City. The more popular it became, the higher the rents for its shops and residences. It was truly raking in money every day.

In Red Cloud's view, the lord of Heavenly Treasure City was definitely an expert at development and possessed considerable skill.

As Red Cloud moved through the crowd, shops could be seen everywhere throughout Heavenly Treasure City. Flame Yang Stones served as currency, and all manner of goods were sold: ores, spiritual herbs, magical treasures, medicinal pills, cultivation methods, and nearly everything else imaginable.

But after visiting several shops, Red Cloud found that the goods they sold were all ordinary and basic. Most were useful to Heavenly Immortals, while only a small portion worked for Mysterious Immortals. Items useful to Golden Immortals were virtually nonexistent.

Even when such items did exist, they were store treasures and would never be sold. They were merely displayed to show off the shop's strength.

For medicinal pills, the highest grade available was the Six-Turn Golden Core, which could only meet the needs of Mysterious Immortals and was useless to Golden Immortals.

As for magical treasures, the best were supreme-grade magical artifacts. There was not even a single Lesser-grade Acquired Spiritual Treasure, much less an Innate Spiritual Treasure. Such things would never be put up for sale.

There were two reasons for this: the upper-tier cultivators' blockade against lower-tier cultivators, and the issue of demand.

There was a strict correspondence between cultivation realms and spiritual treasure grades. Only upon reaching a certain cultivation level could one unleash a spiritual treasure's full power.

Without sufficient cultivation, one could not control better magical treasures, and thus had no need for them.

Innate Supreme Treasures and Acquired Supreme Treasures required Primordial Zenith Heaven Golden Immortals and Sages, respectively, to control. Supreme-grade Innate Spiritual Treasures and Supreme-grade Acquired Spiritual Treasures required Hunyuan Golden Immortals and Quasi-Sages, respectively.

Superior-grade Innate Spiritual Treasures and Superior-grade Acquired Spiritual Treasures required Great Luo Golden Immortals to control.

Mid-grade Innate Spiritual Treasures and Mid-grade Acquired Spiritual Treasures required Taiyi Golden Immortals to control.

Lesser-grade Innate Spiritual Treasures and Lesser-grade Acquired Spiritual Treasures required Golden Immortals to control.

For Heavenly Treasure City, the overwhelming majority of cultivators were Heavenly Immortals and Mysterious Immortals. No matter how good the pills or spiritual treasures prepared, there would be no market for them in Heavenly Treasure City.

Red Cloud fell into thought. The weak demand for fine spiritual treasures and medicinal pills ultimately came down to the small number of Golden Immortal cultivators. Without enough people to support the market, sales would naturally remain low.

Golden Immortals differed from Heavenly Immortals and Mysterious Immortals not only in strength, but also in lifespan.

Heavenly Immortals and Mysterious Immortals had limited lifespans.

A Heavenly Immortal lived for 129,600 years, exactly one kalpa. Compared with Heavenly Immortals, Mysterious Immortals had merely advanced in realm; their lifespans remained one kalpa.

Golden Immortals transcended the Three Realms and stood outside the Five Elements, sharing the lifespan of heaven and earth and enduring as long as the sun and moon.

Once you broke through to the Golden Immortal realm, you no longer needed to worry about lifespan. So long as no one killed you, you would not die.

Countless low-level cultivators failed to cross the threshold into the Golden Immortal realm before dying. Their path of advancement was cut off there.

The Primordial World was a rigid pyramid. The great upper clans controlled cultivation methods and cultivation resources, while the vast number of minor clans and wandering cultivators at the bottom lacked better methods and resources. They remained forever stuck outside the Golden Immortal threshold; only by becoming someone's dog could they have a chance to break through.

This social structure was somewhat similar to the ancient society of his previous life. Aristocratic clans and nobles controlled the resources for advancement, while the common people at the bottom were expendable materials for them to exploit.

"Hong Jun's preaching shattered the great clans' monopoly over cultivation methods, laid out a path of advancement, and allowed lower-level cultivators to switch to the Immortal Dao. Then the Immortal Dao flourished!"

This thought arose in Red Cloud's mind.

Before and after Hong Jun's preaching, the Primordial World belonged to two different eras. It was akin to the transition from the aristocratic clan system of his previous life to the imperial examination system—a granting of equal rights in cultivation methods.

In this era of the Three Clans' struggle for dominance, the mainstream path of cultivation was to take one's race as one's Dao: the Dragon Clan's Dragon Dao, the Phoenix Clan's Phoenix Dao, the Qilin Clan's Qilin Dao, and so on.

Taking the Dragon Dao as an example, lower-level cultivators who wished to cultivate had to submit to the Dragon Clan and become their dogs. Once they received dragon blood bestowed by the Dragon Clan, they could switch to the path of Dragon Dao cultivation.

Snakes transforming into dragons and carp transforming into dragons were both forms of Dragon Dao cultivation, as well as the mainstream cultivation method for all scaled creatures. Only a few great clans retained a degree of autonomy.

The Phoenix Clan's Phoenix Dao and the Qilin Clan's Qilin Dao followed the same principle: birds transformed into phoenixes, while beasts transformed into qilin.

The Dragon Species, Phoenix Species, and Qilin Species scattered throughout the Primordial World might include some direct bloodlines of the Three Clans, but most had transformed from other races.