Dongzhou, Qingdi City.

Qingdi City is one of the largest cities in Dongzhou. It is located at the junction of Lishui River and Taijiang River, with dense shipping and developed trade. With this unique geographical location, Qingdi City has gradually grown from a small village to a leading city in Dongzhou.

Miao Feng, the Lord of Qingdi City, is also a well-known and powerful cultivator. It is said that his realm has reached the Taiqing realm, and he is only one step away from the Jiedu realm. He also has many powerful cultivators working for him. With his own powerful cultivation and the heritage of Qingdi City, Miao Feng has secured his position as the Lord of Qingdi City, and has deterred all parties from offending him easily.

Every big city has a strong person in charge, which is a subtle consensus of the entire Upper Domain. This is not out of respect for the strong, but a compromise that must be made for survival. In the eyes of powerful cultivators, mortals are just ants, and their life and death are insignificant, so powerful cultivators often destroy a city at will, and this is true for both the righteous and the evil.

The righteous were fine, at least they had to come up with an excuse to wipe out an entire city, so as not to tarnish their reputation. However, the evil ones acted entirely based on their own likes and dislikes, and in many cases they would even destroy a city simply because the name of the city offended them.

Facing powerful monks, mortals without the ability to practice can only leave it to fate. After all, they have no strength to resist, and no one can stand up for them. The only thing they can do is to seek a powerful backer as much as possible to seek a stable life. Because of this, many cities with powerful monks have become the first choice for mortals to live.

But it is not so easy to live in a big city. Big cities also mean heavy taxes. Especially in a big city like Qingdi City with a population of one million, every household in the city has to pay almost two-thirds of their annual income as taxes. However, although the taxes are heavy, life is basically guaranteed, so people will not freeze to death or be killed at will.

What's more, the cultivation of monks requires a lot of resources and money, and the taxes they provide can also meet the cultivation needs of the monks who shelter them. It can be regarded as a symbiotic relationship in which both sides benefit from it.

This is the unique social model of this world.

There is no concept of country in this world. Instead, scattered city alliances are formed with cities as the basic structure. The relationship between these city alliances is based on interests, usually relying on marriage and resource exchange as the connection between cities. But there are no eternal friends, only eternal interests. Therefore, these city alliances are actually quite fragile, and sometimes they will even go their separate ways just because of some minor conflicts of interest.

The reason why a country has not been established in this world is not because no one has thought about doing so, but the characteristics of this world have destined the birth of a country to be extremely difficult.

Due to the existence of cultivation, the gap between individual strengths has been infinitely widened, which has led to the impossibility of establishing an army composed mainly of mortals. After all, a cultivator in the Tribulation Crossing Stage can destroy a million-strong army with a casual wave of his palm.

As for establishing an army composed of monks, this is also somewhat unrealistic. Because monks need to absorb spiritual energy for cultivation, and spiritual energy is mostly nurtured in mountains. If spiritual stones are used to support the army, the consumption is too huge, which leads to the fact that the military support for each city is usually only a small team of monks, and it is difficult to establish a real army.

The range of the force protection of the small team of monks is limited to the surrounding area, and it is difficult to radiate a large area. Even if the monk army is formed with the foundation of the city alliance, it can only be more than enough to protect itself, but not enough to advance, let alone guarantee the security of a country.

Without an army, it would be difficult for a country to take shape. Without a country, it would be difficult for mortals to have basic survival guarantees. Therefore, the mortals in this world are really like ants, and can only survive in the cracks between various forces. It's okay for those who can find a big city as a backer, but for mortals who don't even have a backer, there is no telling how many of them will be slaughtered by monks like cattle and sheep every day.

Someone may ask at this time, aren’t there some particularly lucky mortals who can gain powerful strength through practice and in turn protect their own tribe?

The reality is that there are such people, but they are very few.

Many mortals who started from humble beginnings, when they first embarked on the path of cultivation, also made great aspirations to protect their tribes with their own strength. Many of them did indeed obtain opportunities that defied heaven and eventually achieved great things. However, after reaching the top, most of these people forgot their original intentions and instead, like other cultivators, regarded mortals as ants. Because in the process of their growth, countless realities told them that in this world, the strong are respected.

As long as you are strong enough, you can do whatever you want.

As long as you are strong enough, you can look down on everyone.

As long as you are strong enough, you can get whatever you want from anyone.

As long as you are strong enough, you can ignore all the justice in this world.

So their goal is to become stronger and stronger. In order to become stronger, they even dare to trample on the dignity and life and death of all mortals.

When faced with powerful cultivators, the only thing mortals can do is to survive.

Because they don't deserve dignity in front of the monks.

This situation has been going on for thousands or tens of thousands of years, and it may continue to be like this and will never change.

——————————

Let us turn our attention back to Qingdi City.

As the largest city within a thousand miles, Qingdi City has tens of thousands of people entering every day, many of whom are cultivators. Today, a team of 15 cultivators entered the city.

These fifteen people are the two groups of disciples who left Taiwei Mountain and Lu Qingyuan.

The disciples of the second group were surprised but also very welcoming to Lu Qingyuan's joining. After all, in the entire Taiwei Sect, Feng Shao had the highest level of cultivation among their generation of disciples, followed by Ye Chen and Lu Qingyuan. After Lu Qingyuan's breakthrough and Feng Shao's departure, Lu Qingyuan had become the leader of this generation of disciples.

How could they not be happy to have someone like this join them?

Lu Qingyuan soon learned that the two groups of disciples also planned to find Feng Shao after leaving the sect. However, in the vast territory of Dongzhou, it is not easy to find a person. So after some discussion, they decided to go to Qingdi City to get information. After all, as one of the largest cities in Dongzhou, its sources of information are also very broad.

Since they were all monks, the city gate guards, who always liked to extort money from people entering the city, consciously ignored them.

After entering the city, everyone first found an inn to settle down temporarily, and then began to discuss where to go to get news.

Their first option was Linglong Pavilion in Qingdi City.

As a large city in Dongzhou, Qingdi City has attracted many large chambers of commerce, and so has Linglong Pavilion. Moreover, the scale of Linglong Pavilion here is much larger than that of Liyang City, and even the shopkeeper is at the level of Transformation, which is a whole realm higher than the shopkeeper of Liyang City. The status of a shopkeeper of this realm in Yunjian Pavilion will naturally not be low.

However, after asking, Lu Qingyuan and others were very disappointed, because even Yunjian Pavilion had no news about Feng Shao.

However, when the shopkeeper of Linglong Pavilion learned that they were people coming down from Taiwei Mountain, he warmly entertained them and gave them some suggestions, such as publishing a missing person notice through Linglong Pavilion, or going to other chambers of commerce to inquire about the news. All large chambers of commerce have several branches, so intelligence is also one of the goods they sell. As for publishing a missing person notice, it is also one of the ways for large chambers of commerce to make money.

But after asking about the price of posting a missing person notice, everyone couldn't help but be shocked. They could afford the price, but after paying the price, they were almost out of money.

And posting a missing person notice does not guarantee that the person will be found.

In desperation, they had to settle for the next best thing and decided to try their luck with other chambers of commerce first.

Then, everyone dispersed at the entrance of Linglong Pavilion and headed to the large chambers of commerce in the city. As Lu Qingyuan was the strongest, she acted alone.

Lu Qingyuan went straight to Tianbao Pavilion in the south of the city. As soon as she entered the door, she went straight to the point and sought intelligence consultation.

It was just a pity that although Taiwei Sect was well-known within the hundreds of miles around Taiwei Mountain, it had little influence outside of this area. As for Feng Shao, the Holy Son of Taiwei Sect, many people had only heard of him but had never seen him, so they had never paid attention to Feng Shao's whereabouts, and naturally had no relevant information.

Lu Qingyuan was very disappointed with this result. But she didn't plan to give up. She decided to go directly to the headquarters of Yunjian Pavilion if nothing else worked. Yunjian Pavilion must be paying some attention to Feng Shao's whereabouts.

But while she was lost in thought, she didn't notice that in Tianbao Pavilion, there was a young man in luxurious clothes looking at her with a playful smile on his face.

When Lu Qingyuan was about to leave, the young man suddenly came forward and said to her with a smile: "Miss, you said you were looking for Feng Shao, the Holy Son of Taiwei Sect?"

Lu Qingyuan was startled and couldn't help asking, "Sir, do you know the whereabouts of my Senior Brother Feng?"

The young man took out a folding fan from somewhere, opened it with a wave of his hand, and fanned himself in a pretentious manner while saying with a smile: "I am a humble person, but I once had some friendship with the Holy Son Feng Shao. And it just so happens that Feng Shao is now a guest in my house. I wonder if the young lady is..."

Lu Qingyuan didn't expect to hear the news about Feng Shao here. She was overjoyed and said quickly, "I am the junior sister of Senior Brother Feng Shao, and I am also from Taiwei Mountain. If you can take me to meet Senior Brother Feng Shao, I will be very grateful!"

The young man smiled and said, "Sure, sure. It's just a piece of cake."

Lu Qingyuan was so delighted that she didn't notice that in the young man's eyes, there was a hint of a smile of success.

Sure enough, this kind of naive little girl is easiest to fool!