The plains at the valley entrance of the Dragon Emperor Mountains, in central Nine-Dragon Island.
An orderly, unbroken complex of luxurious palaces stood on the plains. Each palace was an independent residence with its own gardens, plazas, artificial hills, clear waters, pavilions, and terraces. Together, they resembled a magnificent, exquisitely crafted resort garden, without a single shabby, single-story dwelling. Countless solemn, imposing iron towers and castles, their surfaces shimmering, stood at key points, making the beautiful, spectacular complex even more harmonious while lending it an air of stern majesty, the weight of years, and a hint of menace.
Viewed from above, all these buildings had been constructed according to the profound principles of the Book of Changes, including the Ten Directions, Nine Palaces, and Eight Trigrams. They seemed clear and straightforward, yet drew the observer into bewilderment like an enormous maze. The whole resembled a vast Eight Trigrams diagram extending outward, with intersecting streets forming a Nine Palaces layout and towers and castles marking out a deadly Ten Directions configuration.
On closer inspection, each building, though seemingly merely luxurious and grand, formed a subtle arrangement of its own. Within limited space, ever-changing scenery had been ingeniously created through compact structures and meticulous layouts. Two buildings mirrored one another, three supported one another at complementary angles, four stood in the four directions, five formed a circuit, and so forth. Every building echoed another, every link locked tightly into the next. The complex had been built primarily by combining Li Jing's military layouts with Guihai Canglan's evolving formations.
Only cultivators could have constructed such an immense, magnificent complex in so little time, with such order and painstaking craftsmanship.
Of the Sky-Supporting Tribe's eight hundred thousand members, over ninety percent were now Path-Entering Realm cultivators. Working together, they could naturally reshape heaven and