Three and a half years later, on Cangming Island.
The once-barren plain had changed beyond recognition.
A mighty city had risen from the ground.
Its walls stood one hundred and fifty zhang high, covered in defensive formation patterns, with a Third-Tier Cannon-Crossbow Tower every ten li.
Huge Illumination Crystals were embedded in the tower tips. At night, they resembled stars fallen to earth, lighting up more than ten li around them as brightly as day.
The main city gate stood eighty zhang tall. Its two massive doors were built from thousand-year-old ironwood, clad in red copper, a primary material for magic treasures, and carved in relief with images of the Demon Lotus Descends.
Above the gate, the two blood-red characters for "Cangming" swept and soared like dragons and phoenixes, faintly radiating Nascent Soul-level pressure-Ye Wushang had written them himself, each stroke containing a strand of his killing sword intent.
Within the city, the streets were as broad as public squares, wide enough for fifty carriages to race abreast.
The ground was paved with neatly cut azure gang stone slabs, with faint spiritual light flowing through the gaps-the source was the spirit-gathering pipelines laid underground.
This network channeled a portion of the spiritual energy from the several fourth-tier main spirit veins beneath Cangming Island into every corner of the city, according to its tier.
Towers and pavilions crowded the Cultivator District, its shops stretching one after another. Many rogue cultivators and small lineages from across the Gouwu Sea had already moved in, and business flourished.
In the Mortal District, paths formed an orderly grid, and houses stood in neat rows.
Nearly ten million mortal martial artists had built the city here, and would also farm and multiply here, providing the immortal city with its most basic human resources.
Farther away,