Chapter 46: Flowing Cloud Immortal City, Carefree Sundry Store

Another full twenty years had passed since the death of Zimo.

Two decades of time were enough for an infant to grow into an adult, and also enough for the wounds in Jiang Yiyi's heart to slowly heal under the companionship and enlightenment of her Father and Jiang Xiaobai, eventually forming a resilient scar. She buried her longing for Zimo deep within her heart, transforming it into the driving force for her journey forward.

The father and his two daughters traveled together along the way, witnessing great mountains, vast rivers, and prosperous capital cities. Using the scenery, local customs, and traditions along their path, Jiang Xiuyuan gave Jiang Yiyi a vivid lesson in "sociology" and "geography." Finally, they reached the destination of their journey—Flowing Cloud Immortal City.

Flowing Cloud Immortal City sat atop a massive floating mountain range in the heart of the Eastern Region. Hundreds of peaks of varying sizes were suspended in a sea of clouds by an invisible grand array, connected to one another by rainbow bridges and flying boats. Shrouded in immortal mist, towering pavilions and jade palaces loomed vaguely in the distance, resembling a heavenly palace from myth when viewed from afar.

This was the most famous gathering place for rogue cultivators in the entire Eastern Region and even the surrounding several territories.

So-called rogue cultivators were those practitioners who belonged to no sects, possessed no affiliations, and had no one to lean on. They might have accidentally obtained fragmented cultivation manuals, survived the destruction of their families, or grown weary of the constraints imposed by orthodox sects as free-spirited individuals. Like dandelion seeds, they drifted into every corner of the cultivation world, and Flowing Cloud Immortal City served as their most vital habitat and trading center.

A complex mix of good and bad people gathered here, making the place brimming with opportunities while also fraught with danger. You might unearth a leftover fragment of an ancient magical treasure at an inconspicuous roadside stall, or you could be killed for your possessions just outside the city gates, leaving not even a skeleton behind, simply because you glanced one second too long at someone else's storage bag.

Here, the law of the jungle was at its most pure, yet the resilience of grassroots vitality was also at its strongest. Every day, countless cultivators harboring dreams poured into this place, and countless disappointed souls departed desolately, or remained here forever.

Jiang Xiuyuan chose this location precisely so that Jiang Yiyi and Jiang Xiaobai could witness with their own eyes how the most ordinary, bottom-tier cultivators—those who formed the bedrock of this world, far beyond the grand narratives of nations and the rise and fall of sects—struggled to survive, laughed, and wept.

They chose not to enter the spiritually rich, prosperous, and bustling central areas of the immortal city. Instead, after paying the basic entry fee, they headed straight for the "Lower Three Districts," situated at the very edge of the immortal city and characterized by the utmost chaos.

The floating mountains here were the smallest, and spiritual energy was the thinnest. The buildings were mostly crude stone houses and wooden sheds hastily erected by the cultivators themselves using mountain rocks and timber, leaning crookedly and interlocking like jagged teeth. The narrow, damp streets smelled of a mixed cocktail of acrid burnt inferior elixirs, beast waste, and the lingering scent of blood that never seemed to wash off the cultivators.

The residents here were all rogue cultivators from the very bottom rungs of the immortal city. With low cultivation realms and meager fortunes, they rushed about busily day after day for a single piece of low-grade spirit stone or a single grain of valley-suppressing pill capable of filling an empty stomach.

Deep within an alley named "Mud Bottle Alley" in the Lower Three Districts, Jiang Xiuyuan used a few low-grade spirit stones to lease a deserted shop front.

The shop was exceedingly small, spanning less than twenty square meters with a shop in the front and a courtyard in the back. The front part was less of a shop and more like an oversized wall cupboard. Jiang Xiuyuan personally polished a wooden counter and erected a few crude shelves behind it, and with that, the business was officially open.

He gave the shop a name, brushed it in the most ordinary ink upon an old wooden board, and hung it above the lintel: "Worries-Relieving Sundry Shop."

Jiang Xiaobai expressed profound incomprehension and disdain toward this. In her view, given her father's wealth accumulated through centuries of alchemy, buying up the entire Flowing Cloud Immortal City was well within the realm of possibility; why bother holing up in such a "slum" to run this kind of "fly-speck bistro"?

Jiang Xiuyuan merely smiled and offered no explanation.

The business of the sundry shop, exactly as Jiang Xiaobai had anticipated, was desolate to the extreme.

This was because the items sold in the shop were simply far too "basic."

On the shelves, only three things were displayed: the most ordinary tier-one Qi-Recovery Pill, whose weak medicinal efficacy could barely replenish the exhausted spiritual energy of cultivators in the early Qi-Condensation realm; the cheapest Valley-Suppression Pill, which kept one from feeling hungry for three days after consumption, but possessed a texture as coarse as chewing sand; and the lowest-grade illumination talismans, which emitted only a dim, yellowish glow upon activation, barely illuminating a radius of three feet.

These items were absolute necessities for rogue cultivators, yet any elixir and talisman shop of modest scale sold them, and of superior quality at that. The sole advantage of Jiang Xiuyuan's sundry shop was its pricing.

His Qi-Recovery Pills were ten percent cheaper than market value; buy ten Valley-Suppression Pills and get one free; for illumination talismans, three were sold for the price of two.

He cheated neither the young nor the old, and prices were strictly non-negotiable.

Jiang Yiyi and Jiang Xiaobai became the two "assistants" of the sundry shop. Their daily work consisted of sitting behind the counter, reading books, cultivating, and occasionally collecting money and handing over goods when customers patronized the store.

Initially, the visitors were all destitute rogue cultivators who were so genuinely tight on funds that they had to split a single copper coin in half.

A one-armed blade-wielder whose face was weathered by the elements and who bore the scars of wind and frost would always come to purchase ten Valley-Suppression Pills and three Qi-Recovery Pills before venturing out of the city to undertake the most perilous "scavenger" missions (clearing out fierce beast carcasses). He never spoke a word; he would simply and silently lay down the spirit stones, take the elixirs, and then execute a solemn, cupped-fist salute toward Jiang Yiyi with his single arm.

A young female cultivator accompanied by a frail daughter of seven or eight would come every day to buy a single illumination talisman. Her daughter seemed naturally afraid of the dark, and only beneath the dim, yellowish halo of the illumination talisman would she reveal a reassuring smile. The female cultivator would meticulously fold that talisman each time, placing it safely in the pocket closest to her daughter's heart.

There was also a bearded, heavily wine-scented old talisman master whose talisman-making business was grim and left him dirt poor, yet every evening he would purchase a Qi-Recovery Pill on credit, claiming it was to "replenish the mental energy consumed while drawing talismans." However, Jiang Yiyi caught him several times secretly feeding that exact pill to the equally emaciated, stray spirit cat crouching at the mouth of the alley.

These people constituted the initial patrons of the sundry shop. They were the most inconspicuous motes of dust in Flowing Cloud Immortal City, and their sorrows and joys went entirely unnoticed by the world.

Yet through these repeated transactions, Jiang Yiyi read vivid stories about "survival" from their numb, resilient, or helpless gazes.

She began to understand the intention behind her father bringing her here.

All living beings suffered, but even within the deepest afflictions, there was always a glimmer of human brilliance flickering through. It was the one-armed blade-wielder's reverence for life and death, the young mother's tender love for her daughter, and the down-and-out talisman master's compassion for fragile life.