Arriving at the city lord’s manor of Star Battle City, Ye Qingxuan stated his business and met with no obstruction whatsoever. He was smoothly granted an audience with the steward in charge of shop leasing and sales within the city.
However, he soon came out looking disappointed.
As it turned out, all the shops in Star Battle City had long been snapped up by the major powers and powerful cultivators. Given the city’s current explosive popularity, no one was willing to lease or sell their shops in the near future.
This was precisely why so many cultivators had built their own structures outside the city and set up all those temporary shops.
The higher-ups of Star Battle City had adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward these temporary shops outside the city walls. But that didn’t mean there were no restrictions on them.
Temporary shop operators still had to register with the city lord’s manor, sign a contract, and only then could they choose a site and open for business.
The main clause of the contract was that the goods sold in these temporary shops could not be priced lower than the market rates inside Star Battle City.
At the same price, the cultivators residing in Star Battle City would naturally prefer to shop at the stores within the city.
This way, the interests of the shops inside Star Battle City were protected.
After all, the owners of those inner-city shops had paid no small price to acquire them in the first place.
With this restriction in place, the temporary shops outside the city actually made hardly any spirit stones at all. Aside from a few restless cultivators who occasionally wandered over to browse, there was basically no foot traffic.
The reason these temporary shop cultivators refused to leave was that once Star Battle City expanded again, they—as existing temporary operators—would have priority rights to lease or purchase the newly added shops under equal conditions.
And that priority qualification, whether used for themselves or transferred to others, could bring considerable profit.
In the previous rounds of Star Battle City’s expansion, quite a few low-level cultivators had gained substantial resources thanks to their initial temporary shops.
Back then, shop slots in Star Battle City were exceptionally scarce—truly a case of “one shop hard to come by.”
The timing of Star Battle City’s expansions was determined by the number of settled cultivators and the volume of foot traffic. So, as for when the next expansion would happen, even the cultivators running these temporary shops couldn’t say for sure.
Ye Qingxuan felt a wave of helplessness, but for now, there wasn’t much he could do. He also signed a contract at the city lord’s manor, picked out a plot of land, and prepared to set up a temporary shop first.
After leaving Star Battle City, Ye Qingxuan arrived at the flat piece of land he had chosen.
This plot was about ten li or so from the city proper.
It wasn’t that Ye Qingxuan didn’t want a spot closer in—it was simply that temporary shops were required to maintain a certain distance from one another, and the closer spots had already been taken by others.
If Star Battle City hadn’t gone through several expansions, making the surrounding area large enough, he might not even have been able to secure a spot within ten li.
Once he reached his chosen plot, Ye Qingxuan didn’t rush to start building the temporary shop.
He planned to craft a spiritual artifact–level palace himself, and within that palace, arrange several formations as emergency measures.
After all, the temporary shop was outside Star Battle City. Although it would still enjoy the city’s protection, Ye Qingxuan felt it was better to err on the side of caution.
Even though this was only an avatar, it was still best to avoid any trouble if possible.
Moreover, since temporary shops naturally had low foot traffic, if Ye Qingxuan wanted to attract customers, he would have to put extra thought into the shop itself in the early stages.
Using a spiritual artifact–level palace as a temporary shop was uncommon even among the many temporary shops around Star Battle City.
If he was lucky, this might just draw in a batch of customers and give him a source for acquiring Qingmo Clan corpses and cultivation essence.
Ye Qingxuan waited quietly on the spot for three days.
Three days later, his main body—still far away within the Xuantian Sect—had finished refining the spiritual artifact–level palace and inscribed several formations onto it.
After his avatar found a safe spot, the main body sent the palace through the realm gate for the avatar to retrieve.
It was called a palace, but really, it was just a modest two-story shop with an overall antique and understated look.
Once the shop was set up, Ye Qingxuan gave his temporary establishment a name: The Mysterious Shop.
And this avatar of his would be the Mysterious Shop’s Mysterious Merchant.
After the temporary shop was up and running, this avatar of Ye Qingxuan stopped moving around casually.
He settled into a quiet life inside The Mysterious Shop, waiting for his first customer to walk through the door.
Then, Ye Qingxuan transferred his main consciousness over to the other avatar.
His other avatar was currently roaming around inside Star Battle City, gathering information about the lower realms.
Some of the more common information about the lower realms was hardly a secret within Star Battle City.
Out on the streets or in the taverns, cultivators often chatted about what was happening in the lower realms. So over the past few days, Ye Qingxuan had already gained a general understanding of the situation down there.
First, there were the nine small thousand worlds that had previously fallen to the Dìxuán Realm.
Because the Dìxuán Realm had begun a counter-invasion into the various demon domains under the Qingmo Realm’s control, the Qingmo Realm was forced to pull a large number of personnel into those domains to fend off the Dìxuán Realm’s powerhouses.
As a result, the allied Dìxuán forces that had gone to rescue the nine small thousand worlds were under much less pressure.
Now, of those nine small thousand worlds, the territory held by the Dìxuán Realm had expanded from a small city of less than ten li in circumference to a major city spanning a thousand li.
They had firmly established a foothold in all nine fallen small thousand worlds.
To achieve this, the Dìxuán allied forces had lost many great cultivators at the Spirit Transformation stage during the expansion.
It was only after they had expanded to a thousand li in radius and laid down layer upon layer of grand formations, making their cities impregnable, that the allied forces finally halted their advance.
With secure city strongholds in place, many cultivators above the Golden Core stage began venturing into the nine fallen small thousand worlds to take risks.
Following the plans laid out earlier by the Dìxuán Realm’s high command, these people, upon entering the fallen nine worlds, began searching for demonified spiritual veins. They would destroy them, extract the polluted source of the spiritual veins, and bring them back to the Dìxuán Realm to exchange for supplies.
At the same time, these cultivators also planted many Purifying Spirit Trees in the lower realms.
Although the spiritual energy converted by the Purifying Spirit Trees from demonic qi would be instantly wiped out by the demonic qi, both demonic qi and spiritual energy were energies of the same tier. Eradicating spiritual energy also consumed a portion of the demonic qi.
These losses of demonic qi might seem insignificant at first glance, but over time—as long as the Purifying Spirit Trees were not destroyed—the demonic qi would gradually be eliminated.
So the Qingmo Clan had no choice but to start sending people to patrol the fallen nine worlds, and even the demon domains, to clear out these Purifying Spirit Trees.
After decades of this back-and-forth, the energy levels of the nine fallen worlds had already dropped slightly.
If this continued, sooner or later, these nine worlds would fall from the status of small thousand worlds. Supernatural energies would recede, and elemental rules and the Great Dao laws would sink into dormancy.
And it wasn’t just these nine worlds. The other small thousand worlds attached to the Dìxuán Realm, as well as the demon domains under the Qingmo Realm’s control, were also gradually declining amid the war.
The two main realms were roughly on par, so naturally, their methods weren’t much different either.
The losses and wounds suffered by the demon domains under the Qingmo Realm were just as severe as the damage inflicted on the Dìxuán Realm’s attached small thousand worlds.
Ye Qingxuan’s mind churned as he pieced together all the lower-realm intelligence he had gathered.
He possessed the legacy of an Earth Immortal, which contained a vast and rich body of knowledge, so his perspective naturally far exceeded that of ordinary people.
This war between the two realms might appear to have inflicted varying degrees of damage on all the worlds involved, but that wasn’t quite the whole picture.
Among all the worlds, only the two main worlds themselves—the Dìxuán Realm and the Qingmo Realm—had not been weakened by this war. On the contrary, they were gradually flourishing and beginning to rise.
Attached worlds, after all, were only attached worlds. Although they shared a certain degree of essential connection with their main worlds, their essence did not fully belong to the main worlds.
If an attached world were destroyed, the main world would suffer a certain degree of trauma.
But if an attached world’s tier dropped and it could no longer resist the main world’s gravitational pull, it would be devoured by the main world and become part of it.
Perhaps this, too, was one of the schemes of the Dìxuán Realm’s higher-ups?
The Dìxuán Realm had already lingered at the peak of the medium thousand world level for quite some time.
If the Dìxuán Realm could be the first to advance to the Great Thousand World level, not only would the Qingmo Realm—their formidable enemy—become completely harmless, but everyone within the Dìxuán Realm would also reap immense benefits.
At that time, even the people in the attached worlds that merged into the Dìxuán Realm would benefit together—perhaps even rise in a single bound.
They would go directly from the cultivation environment of a small thousand world to that of a Great Thousand World.
Of course, that premise was that the people in those attached worlds could survive this war until the day the Dìxuán Realm successfully advanced.
For now, all of this was merely Ye Qingxuan’s speculation.
He couldn’t yet fully fathom the thoughts of the Dìxuán Realm’s higher-ups.
But as long as it didn’t affect his main body, his main body could remain safely behind the scenes and grow steadily.
