Northern Territory of Great Jin, Heavenly Mechanism City.
This city had not been built from ordinary bricks and stone, but against an enormous ring-shaped mountain that seemed to have been formed by the impact of a meteor from beyond the heavens. The entire city was itself a colossal masterpiece of artifact refinement. Countless intricate gears, drive shafts, and rune arrays shimmering with spiritual light operated silently within the walls and beneath the ground, supplying this industrial capital of the cultivation world with endless power and protective barriers. The air carried a distinctive blend of machine oil, metal coolant, and faint spiritual power, utterly unlike the natural atmosphere of the ancient cities of Heavenly South.
Han Li stood outside the towering city gate, gazing up at its massive doors engraved with gears and stellar orbits. He had suppressed his aura and changed into an ordinary gray cloth robe, disguising himself as a Core Formation Stage rogue cultivator. Only his deep eyes, occasionally flashing with a faint, nebulous glimmer like a river of stars, betrayed his unfathomable depths.
Heavenly Mechanism City, home to the headquarters of the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion... it certainly lives up to its reputation, Han Li thought. This was hardly a cultivation market; it was an enormous artifact workshop and intelligence hub rolled into one.
Following the bustling crowd, Han Li passed through the massive gate covered in restrictions. The streets inside were broad and orderly, all paved with bluestone slabs that gleamed with a metallic sheen. Shops lined both sides, but instead of ordinary spirit herbs and pills, they sold all manner of intricate puppets, runic components, spirit-powered weapons, and Great Jin's distinctive "Spirit Stone Cards"-convenient tools for storing and trading spiritual power.
Han Li strolled through the streets, sending out fine threads of spiritual sense to probe