Formless City, the ancient city that had stood on this gray-white wasteland for a hundred thousand years, had lately come alive as never before.
Since the Heavenly Abyss Fragment Realm had joined Great Zhou, spiritual energy had poured in and the laws of the realm had been restored. Every day, countless cultivators in the city broke through to new levels.
The streets bustled with traffic, while merchant ships and flying vessels from across Qingzhou nearly filled the sky above Formless City. It had become the hottest place to seek a fortune in the entire Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty.
Yet amid the bustle and prosperity, Chu Bai stood at the highest point of the City Lord's Manor with a slight frown.
"My lord, the cultivators and merchants who have arrived in Formless City recently now number three hundred thousand. The inns and cultivation dwellings are full. An enormous shantytown stretching for dozens of miles has even sprung up beyond the city walls."
Zhang Cheng, Chief Secretary of the Protectorate Prefecture, stood respectfully behind Chu Bai with a thick stack of documents in his arms. "And after surveying the site, the Formation Masters sent by the Qingzhou Merit Office said the Spirit Veins beneath Formless City have been riddled with damage by a hundred thousand years of overextraction and patchwork repairs to its formations. Their energies are hopelessly mixed.
"Expanding the city on that foundation, or setting up a City-Guarding Grand Formation capable of withstanding high-level experts, would be immensely costly. Even then, its foundation would be dangerously unstable."
Chu Bai listened quietly to Zhang Cheng's report, his deep gaze sweeping over the vast city below. It was crowded and chaotic, and even at the height of its prosperity, it carried a whiff of decay.
"Patch upon patch, seam upon seam. That's