Li Yunxian gave a brief explanation and continued chatting with the people from Qìngxīng.
She had already visited all the attractions in Qìngxīng City.
Listening to the others talk about various places of leisure, Li Yunxian spoke up, “Are there any special places here where you can increase your cultivation?”
“Do you need any particular qualifications to go?”
Although she still hadn’t completely digested and stabilized her gains from her last cultivation session at Xuechi, Li Yunxian much preferred training-related activities to simple entertainment.
Hearing this, the others laughed and waved their hands. “No, our Qìngxīng is too ordinary for that. Only the top ten planets in our Xingxi have such blessed lands.”
“In Qìngxīng, the only place that could be said to increase cultivation is the Xuechi, which is built atop the Ling Shi Kuo Mai.”
Li Yunxian was stunned.
Such a huge planet, with spiritual energy so dense it was nothing like Shenzhou, and yet there wasn’t even a single special blessed land?
Shenzhou, even setting aside Tiantong and Pingnan’s man-made artifacts, and even excluding the congenital spiritual treasures of Wenwu, still had the Xianpu at Jifa for students’ use.
On a higher level, from what Li Yunxian had heard, there was also Tianqian Ice Valley and Shenxu.
Other special locations—Shenzhou certainly had them.
Why was it that in Qìngxīng, apart from the abundant spiritual energy, everything else was barren?
Li Yunxian frowned slightly, but said nothing, instead turning her thoughts in another direction.
“Then how about visiting some other cities?” Li Yunxian suggested.
“Other than Xuechi, which is specifically for schooling, the other cities are all the same,” a Qìngxīng local said, waving their hand nonchalantly.
As they listened to Li Yunxian, they thought the place she came from must be rather unusual.
Could she be from one of those hidden sacred lands that often appear in novels?
Though they thought so, they still gave her a practical answer. “Boss, didn’t you visit other cities in ‘All Things’?”
“Besides our current city, Yinhai City, aren’t all the other cities pretty much the same?”
“The star domain has been unified for over ten thousand years now. With all the cultural exchange and integration, there really aren’t any differences anymore.”
“If you want to see unique local customs, each planet does have its own historical museum, which might have some special features.”
Duan Qiu and the others, thinking of their own Shenzhou, felt that this really wasn’t too strange.
In Shenzhou, cities within each province were quite similar, and even neighboring provinces often had cities that were very much alike.
Only after crossing several provinces would the architecture and city layouts really diverge.
Besides, a few centuries ago, Shenzhou itself had been divided into multiple countries, so its period of unification couldn’t compare to the star domain’s ten thousand years.
With such a long process of integration, it was only natural for the cities to become uniform.
Only Li Yunxian was inwardly shocked.
She had always thought the identical cities in ‘All Things’ were just the game devs being lazy.
Copy-paste is so convenient, after all.
But to think it was like this in reality? That couldn’t be right.
It wasn’t as if only one world had a history of over ten thousand years.
The cultivation world had tens of thousands of years too; the only difference was that not everyone had delved into artifact-making to such an extent that they entered the era of technological cultivation.
In Li Yunxian’s understanding, different geomorphologies and environments would naturally give rise to different building styles and ways of living.
No matter how many years passed, rainy regions, arid regions, hot, cold—all would never be exactly the same.
Not to mention that in the interstellar domain, each planet’s cosmic environment was distinct.
For example, Qìngxīng had no moon, only a bright star belt.
Other planets might have two suns, or be in eternal day or night.
How could everything possibly be the same?
But these were not topics Li Yunxian intended to discuss with people who clearly hadn’t thought much about them.
Everyone was here to have fun with her, not to hold a study seminar.
“Isn’t it because I haven’t been yet?” Li Yunxian laughed. “And since there’s nothing else that sounds interesting…”
Since Li Yunxian insisted, the others had no objections and immediately complied. “Then shall we go to Baixi, or Wuya, or Zhu Mi and Jie Kang?”
Before Li Yunxian could speak, Duan Qiu, upon hearing the four names, was the first to exclaim in shock.
“You only have four cities here??”
The people from Qìngxīng didn’t quite get why Duan Qiu was so surprised, but corrected him, “Six, actually. There’s also Xuechi and the Zhongxin Cheng we’re in now.”
“Six cities is enough—each city can hold over a hundred million people.”
“There’s really no need for more,” said the Qìngxīng native with a tone of utter certainty.
Duan Qiu and the others thought it over and realized there was nothing wrong with this reasoning.
***
Over these past days, Duan Qiu and the others had been touring Zhongxin Cheng with Li Yunxian, and it really was astonishingly large.
Just wandering and sightseeing around took them four or five days, and they still hadn’t finished.
Shenzhou had many cities, but none could hold this many people.
Some small cities only had a few hundred thousand.
Like Jincheng, where Li Yunxian had previously lived.
Only the largest capital city could hold nearly a hundred million.
Li Yunxian thought it over and guessed why there were only six large cities on the whole planet.
“Pooling your strength—this makes it easier to defend against the monster disasters, right?” Li Yunxian said.
The others from Qìngxīng had never thought about this, but Chu Qianqian nodded in agreement, “Yeah, I read in my clan’s records that Qìngxīng used to have a lot of smaller cities.”
“Over time, only these few big cities were left.”
“Zhongxin Cheng has expanded several times just to accommodate all the people.”
Li Yunxian’s thoughts stirred. She asked Chu Qianqian, “Your clan has records? How long ago were the smaller cities wiped out?”
Chu Qianqian hadn’t expected Li Yunxian to care about this and thought for a moment before answering, “It was… about eight thousand years ago.”
Everyone was shocked.
“President, your Chu family’s history goes back that far?!”
Chu Qianqian laughed dryly. “Not really. Our clan’s genealogy is less than a thousand years old. It’s just that our ancestors liked archaeology, so we have a lot of old documents.”
“At the time, our family wanted us juniors to seem like we were from an old aristocratic clan, so they made us learn all these things to put on airs.”
Chu Qianqian was completely unconcerned, and her candidness about her family’s pretensions drew a round of laughter from everyone.
Seeing their happy faces, Li Yunxian smiled along as well.
She didn’t mention that if what Chu Qianqian said was true… then these so-called monster disasters only started appearing eight thousand years ago.
This further proved that the so-called monster disasters were entirely man-made.
Li Yunxian figured that, since Chu Qianqian said many Tribulation Crossing powerhouses had investigated this, it was likely those cultivators had come to this conclusion as well.
In an interstellar society with a history of over ten thousand years, even cultivators at Nascent Soul would only have about a thousand years of Chong Tong.
Above that, reaching the level of Shen, one would no longer be troubled by Chong Tong, but that didn’t mean they were immortal—they’d start facing their own karmic retributions.
If karma wasn’t resolved, a Jie Du would come every five hundred years. If they didn’t ascend, they still couldn’t live forever.
In eight thousand years, the entire population would have turned over more than once, aside from those who had reached the Tribulation Crossing stage.
Now, the abnormal events of eight thousand years ago were just regarded as everyday occurrences, familiar to everyone, with only a few barely-remembered records left in the archives that cultivators rarely cared about.
Li Yunxian let out a soft sigh in her heart.
The others chattered for a while before returning to the previous question.
They asked Li Yunxian, “Boss, which city do you want to go to?”
Li Yunxian thought for a moment. “Baixi sounds pretty fun…” She hadn’t finished the sentence when she felt the ground beneath her feet shift.
Immediately after, she heard a ‘dong—’ as a bell rang above her.
Li Yunxian looked up to see the clock atop the city center tower shaking.
They had all experienced this before in ‘All Things.’
It was the signal for an incoming disaster, alerting everyone to enter emergency combat readiness!
It had only been a year since the last beast tide disaster—how could another disaster be coming so soon?!
The people of Qìngxīng froze for a moment, then quickly went on alert.
Many hurriedly activated their communicators to check the official disaster notifications.
But when they saw the empty notification board, everyone from Qìngxīng thought they were seeing things.
Li Yunxian, meanwhile, raised her head, gazing past the central tower toward the distance.
She sensed some spatial distortion in that direction.
In an instant, the Xiayun Sword was in her hand. Li Yunxian turned to Duan Qiu and the others, “Let’s go—they’re fighting at the Dengxiantai.”
With that, her figure vanished from everyone’s sight.
Duan Qiu and the others reacted swiftly, weapons in hand in a blink, and without another word, rushed toward Dengxiantai.
Only the local Qìngxīng guides remained standing there dumbfounded, unable to process what was happening.
“Dengxiantai? Who would dare attack Dengxiantai directly?!” someone murmured in disbelief.
Dengxiantai was the meeting place for all the powerful figures from every city.
To step onto Dengxiantai, you had to be at least at the Divine Separation stage.
Even when disasters struck, if the monsters wanted to “capture the king first,” they’d go for the government commanders—not Dengxiantai.
To attack Dengxiantai was walking into a trap.
Everyone exited the notification board on their communicators and went straight to the local news.
The top headline read, unmistakably:
Dengxiantai has exploded!!
The people of Qìngxīng rubbed their eyes, making sure they weren’t mistaken.
It really was Dengxiantai.
They all looked at each other, confusion and bewilderment in their eyes.
First of all, how had Li Yunxian, from such a distance, known that Dengxiantai was where the trouble was?
Second… wasn’t Li Yunxian just at Foundation Establishment? How had she vanished instantly, before anyone else could react?
Only Sheng Yu, after a brief moment of confusion, accepted it immediately.
She was the one who had been astonished by Li Yunxian’s swordsmanship when she was just at the second level of Qi Training, and had wanted to take her as her master.
With sword skills like that, whatever Li Yunxian did, it was all reasonable in Sheng Yu’s mind.
Sheng Yu drew her own sword with a flourish and ran excitedly toward Dengxiantai.
“I’m going to help Boss!”
And by the time Sheng Yu said that, Li Yunxian had already arrived at the foot of Dengxiantai.
Before her was a field of torn space, and all around, flickering fox tails.