"Is this Lucky Harbor? The outpost the Four Seas Commerce Guild spent a fortune building..."
"Husband, I've heard of this place. The continents reject the money Dao and commerce, yet still have need of them, so they had no choice but to make arrangements like these."
Li Ling and the Ninth Princess walked hand in hand along the city's main street. They found that its few residential buildings had all been built for the many laborers serving the harbor. Though orderly, the place lacked much of the everyday bustle of a Mortal People kingdom.
Instead, the atmosphere of the rough-and-tumble cultivation world grew stronger. All sorts of people came and went along the road, every one of them a cultivator in the qi refining realm.
It was a sight entirely unlike the inland Market Wards.
There were permanent shops along the way, bearing all manner of signs. Magical artifacts and Treasure Robes, blades and swords, dart shuttles, talismans and pills, medicinal ingredients and spiritual objects—everything was available.
"It really is far more prosperous than Beyond-the-World Valley. Compared with this place, that's just a little country market."
"After all, the principal Dao paths cultivated are different. There are more low-level rogue cultivators overseas, but reaching higher levels is actually harder."
As the two talked, they suddenly saw a woman approaching them.
She looked about twenty, dressed in a long, embroidered cloud-brocade jacket that lent her an ethereal, immortal air, with a long silk-gauze skirt embroidered in gold thread below. She was beautiful and walked as though carried by the wind, possessing a shrewd, capable bearing unlike that of female sect cultivators.
The Ninth Princess standing beside Li Ling was a dignified, graceful classical beauty. Her usual attire was elaborate and meticulous, and she walked with exquisite poise. She would never move