Chapter 248: Life 73, Age 47, Martial Grandmaster Peak
When GuiMing had first started building apartments into Mount Jiang, I had instructed him to only build them along the outside edge of the mountain. Even if it meant the mountain wouldn’t be able to house as many people as otherwise, I didn’t want the people in my clan to feel trapped and claustrophobic. I wanted each of them to have a view of the outside world.
This was nice and all, but it left us with a bit of a problem. If we weren’t going to build apartments within the mountain’s interior, what were we going to use it for? Was it just going to be wasted space?
When GuiMing was building out the original five floors for the inner elders, the leadership council, the answer they came up with was about what I had expected. They turned the interior of the mountain into a series of cultivation and crafting rooms. This gave their most valued followers places to work and study without needing to deal with the overcrowded public areas atop the plateau.
Later, when the outer elders were designing their floors, the group on the lower floors, the Third Ring, followed in the inner elders’ footsteps. Not only did this help alleviate the congestion above, but it also allowed their disciples convenient access to important facilities.
However, the outer elders on the higher floors, the Second Ring, came up with a different plan entirely, one that I hadn’t quite expected.
They had GuiMing turn the entire interior area under their control, all five floors of it, into a single, massive atrium. They created a massive cave with only four evenly-spaced reinforced stone pillars left behind to support the rest of the mountain above.
This area didn’t look like a cave, though.
The elders contracted the formation specialists and illusionists who were working on designing a sky of my storage space to make the place look like it was sitting at the top of the mountain. The effect of these prototype illusions was rather weak, and it wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking that they were actually outside, but they were enough to give the cave a somewhat ethereal feeling, especially when they added streaks of reds and pinks into the mix.
Unlike the other two groups, these elders had chosen not to create a place for work and study. Instead, they designed this cavern to be what they felt the mountain needed most, a place to relax.