The falling snow gradually thinned, revealing blue-gray stone bricks beneath the towering city defenses.
Armored soldiers and cultivators entered the city in orderly succession to rest. The injured took pills as needed or settled into the camps to regulate their breathing.
Those who had lost limbs sought out cultivators who practiced "Yi Wood" or "Ji Earth" to fashion hands and feet for them. Though inferior to regrowing their own limbs, these would serve for the time being.
Those who had reaped spoils beamed with delight, while those who had secured kills went to report their merits to the defending commander. As more people gathered, a small marketplace soon took shape.
They clustered together, calling out prices as they traded Mystic Artifacts, Talismans, and other spoils they had collected, each exchanging what they had for what they lacked.
Not far away, the bodies of fallen cultivators lay in rows beneath white silk shrouds. From time to time, somber-faced fellow disciples or clansmen came to claim them.
Most of the fallen were soldiers and Aristocratic Clan scions whose cultivation was lacking; sect disciples were rare among them. Most had been at Qi Refining, with scarcely any who had built an Immortal Foundation.
Yet that did not mean Foundation Establishment cultivators were any safer. With their low cultivation, Qi Refining cultivators generally left intact corpses when they died. When Foundation Establishment cultivators met violent deaths, however, their true essence ran wild and their Immortal Foundations shattered. Most transformed into various Spirit Treasures, leaving only another splash of splendor for heaven and earth.
Unwilling to be gawked at like a monkey, Jiang Yang concealed himself after entering the city and headed straight for his sect's quarters.
Having produced two True Persons, Rain Xiang Mountain had been allotted an exceptionally imposing hall within the city.