Year 176, third month, third day, eastern Wufu.
In Stargazing City, the largest air harbor bordering the Star Sea, merchants and travelers came and went from every quarter, while flying boats took off and landed in an endless stream.
This was a major commercial hub established by the Immortal Alliance specifically for mastering puppetry through puppet-making. Travel was unrestricted, and people came and went freely, providing fertile soil for exchange and trade between all parties. From this, an atmosphere of freedom and openness had grown.
Rogue cultivators gathered here year-round. With workshops and production yards springing up and plentiful opportunities to earn money, the city enjoyed prosperity far beyond that of the past.
Meanwhile, talk on the streets had shifted toward the latest news from the surrounding provinces and domains. Miners were rising in revolt over in Pian Province, with fighting everywhere; a new, extraordinarily valuable deposit of exotic metal had been discovered to the east; a grandmaster artisan in the west had refined another treasure whose radiance soared into the sky-and so on.
In a teahouse, someone casually mentioned the latest visitors from the Heavenly Palace.
"Have you heard? Another delegation, called the Celestial Seven Wonders Studio, is coming here on a performance tour. They're said to hail from the Puppet Dao's Soundless Heavenly Palace. Every woman among them is peerless in both beauty and talent, an accomplished singer and dancer-a fairy of the highest caliber..."
"Fairies, fairies again. These days, any female cultivator gets called a fairy. What's so unusual about that?"
"You can't put it that way. These ones come from a sky city, after all. Have you heard of the Soundless Heavenly Palace, fellow Daoist? It's a city at the very pinnacle of the Art Dao, absolutely incomparable to those common mortals down on the ground!"