Unsheathed

When summer arrived...

Only Shi Rou was looking after business in the two shops on Dragon Riding Alley.

Pei Qian had already left the private school, and this was something that Zhu Lian had agreed to. As such, Shi Rou didn't say anything about it.

After Pei Qian left school, Zhou Mili naturally followed her to Downtrodden Mountain as well.

The two shops immediately went from lively and bustling to quiet and lonely, causing Shi Rou to feel slightly unaccustomed.

Wei Bo was frequently paying secret visits to Downtrodden Mountain during recent times, and Zheng Dafeng would often leave the extravagant residence that he had built for himself at the foot of the mountain as well, heading over to visit Zhu Lian.

The Lotus Flower Blessed Land had been split into four, with Downtrodden Mountain obtaining one of the resulting blessed lands.

This was naturally a good outcome, but there were also troubles that accompanied it. That was, a blessed land needed to "eat money" if it were to maintain a stable heaven and earth — it needed to absorb an exorbitant amount of immortal coins.

This was especially the case if a low-level blessed land with piddling amounts of spiritual energy were to be elevated into a medium-level blessed land that could allow the people inside to cultivate. The people maintaining the blessed land would need to continually feed it immortal coins to achieve this goal. To put it simply, a blessed land was like a bottomless abyss for immortal coins.

However, if a blessed land were maintained properly — like the Cloud Cave Blessed Land owned by the Jiang Clan of the Parasol Leaf Continent's Jade Tablet Sect — the upside was also very evident. A blessed land would voraciously engulf immortal coins in the beginning, but after evolving into a high-level blessed land and achieving relative stability, deities would start to appear and assist in stabilizing the spiritual energy of the blessed land. At the same time, cultivation forces would also appear and start to gather spiritual energy. Not only had the Cloud Cave Blessed Land not bankrupted the Jiang Clan, but it was even providing a huge amount of lasting wealth and repaying the Jiang Clan's huge investment.

The local cultivators in the blessed land, as well as the various types of natural treasures birthed and nurtured by the spiritual energy in the blessed land, were all sources of wealth.

Wei Bo, Zhu Lian, and Zheng Dafeng had been discussing these matters recently, trying to work out how they should manage this blessed land that they were temporarily calling the Lotus Root Blessed Land. As for the actual name, they naturally needed to wait until Chen Ping'an returned before settling on something.