The carriage soon came to a stop at a fork in the road. Both sides of the road had two wooden signboards. The one on the left had the words 'eagle's wings' on them and the one on the left had the word 'eagle's eye'.
The carriage was driven to the left side with the sign 'eagle's wings'.
The Glowing respite valley land was separated into two zones. The side with the name 'eagle's wings' was the zone assigned to all employees of the Order while the side with the name 'eagle's eye' was assigned to the family members of the Order employees and the students of the Institute.
All who got accepted into the Order as students would be allowed to bring their families into the Glowing respite valley should they wish to do so. Since the Order mostly accepts students who come from unranked families or little to no background to speak of, they are allowed to relocate with their clans or families when they get accepted into the Order.
This was what happened to Yang Qing. When he got accepted he was given the option to invite the Yang clan to the Order with him. They were a small unranked clan with less than two hundred members with the highest cultivator being only at the foundation stage. Similar cases were seen with other students who opted to migrate with their entire clan. It was also a safer option since the Order had no shortage of enemies or those who would use underhanded means to have their way.
The Order thus decided to create a separate zone within the valley to house the clans and the students before they graduated from the institute. The eagle's eye zone also catered to those who had no families too as there were plenty of orphans and runaways who came to the doors of the Order for a fresh start or a chance at changing their lives.
Once the students graduated they would then move to the 'eagle's wing'. They were allowed to bring their spouses, children, parents, or immediate guardians if they wished to. But the invite was only extended to immediate family while the rest could only remain in the 'eagle's eye' zone.
In terms of general standards both zones were almost similar in regard to size and qi density. So more often than not most family members opted to remain in the 'eagle's eye' zone with the rest of the clan members as they let their children move to the other zone and there were also cases though few, where the students chose to remain after graduating. Though those cases were far and few between.
In Yang Qing's case, he had made the offer to his parents, grandparents, and two siblings to come with him but they opted to stay with the rest of the Yang clan members as Yang Qing moved on alone.
…
The carriage went on for a few minutes before it stopped at another junction which had four different roads with three signs with the name; blue valley, gold valley, and black valley as for the fourth road, it had no sign attached to it. However, a few mountain peaks could be seen in the distance on that road. Those mountain peaks were surrounded by a dense purple mist fog which made them seem ethereal as there were glittering stars within that fog.
"One day will come when I too will have my own peak," Yang Qing said with unconcealed envy as pushed aside the carriage curtains to admire those mountain peaks. Yi Jie seemed to be mirroring his emotions as he clenched his fists with unconcealed desire shining in his eyes as he stared at those mountains.
"Yi Jie don't you think the Order is a little too stingy? We are cultivators and as cultivators shouldn't we all have a peak to ourselves instead of them being given to a select few? How could they give us a few farmlands and call that our abode and the nerve of them to tell me to go repossess an island on the Millions treasure ocean if I want a peak so much," Yang Qing angrily said.
Yi Jie could only roll his eyes at this statement. Yes, he agreed with Yang Qing on some level that they should have peaks. They spent countless days and nights as kids discussing how they would fly on swords and majestic cranes as they went to their abodes on some mountain peak somewhere. But when they graduated all they got was a piece of flat land that had the bare standardized minimum. If they wanted to make improvements to the place they would have to do it on their own and the costs they bore from the improvements would also be borne by them. The only good thing was they permanently owned that land even when they got promoted in ranks and could move to better places.
He still remembered how his expectations were ruthlessly smashed when he saw their 'peak abodes'. The soul-crushing disappointment became the impetus he needed to improve his wine-making skills while in Yang Qing's case, well he did some things that landed him with a year's salary worth of fines and giving free labor for six months to the mining division.
But he disagreed with Yang Qing's regard for their abodes as farmlands as any rank 2 sect would gladly migrate their whole sect to that farmland if given a chance while giving Yang Qing a beating for his pompous young master's foul mouth.
Yi Jie decided to calmly ignore Yang Qing's rumblings of his tortured stint in the mines and the hellish year he survived with no spirit stones and he had to freeload at his parents for the year.
The carriage took the route with the name blue valley. It was the location that housed those who were in the core formation realm while the gold valley housed those in the palace stage, the black valley was for those in the domain stage as for the mountain peaks they were for those who had reached the soul formation realm.
Yang Qing whose promotion wasn't official yet still had his abode in the blue valley.
"Will you be moving to the gold valley after your ceremony?" Yi Jie asked once he heard Yang Qing go silent to wet his dry throat from the incessant complaining.
"After all the effort I put to spruce the Dream cloud abode into what it is today from the lousy shack it was before, NO WAY!!," Yang Qing loudly roared seemingly getting more agitated and riled up the more he thought about it.
"I'll take resource compensation equivalent to the abode they will give me in the gold valley. I'll use those resources to further improve the Dream cloud. The Order isn't tricking me with their scheme of giving me another bottomless hole to pour my minuscule resources in so it can be livable," Yang Qing snottily said as he went silent once more. But one could hear him repeatedly click his tongue over and over.
Yi Jie didn't say anything once he heard Yang Qing's reply as his decision wasn't all that strange. He too had planned to go the same route when he broke through to the palace realm and got promoted. Most of the Order employees opted to stick with the first abode they had. Majorly it was because they had poured countless resources and man-hours into improving those abodes making it difficult for them to just switch up and move. The other was a healthy dose of fear of how bare the next abode they got would potentially be and them starting from scratch to improve the place.
Because of this, the gold valley had the least number of people settling there. In fact, the place was mostly occupied by spirit beasts due to how low the cultivator numbers were despite the Order having a high number of palace stage members. It was only when one became a domain expert would they consider moving to the black valley as the abodes there were fully customized with no expense spared on the Order's dime.
…
The blue valley though it was named so, there was nothing blue in there. Other than the road the carriage was on and the trees by the side, everything else was covered by a hazy mirage to the left and the right of the road. The only thing that could be seen were small wooden planks with names on them every 100 meters on both sides of the road. They had weird names on them like; the silky spider abode, multitudinous mansions abode, the flawless beating ferry abode, the balanced desert abode, and so on.
The carriage proceeded forth for almost a mile before it stopped in front of a wooden plank on the left with the name 'Dream cloud abode'.
Yi Jie took out what looked like a small palm-sized wooden nest covered in white wool which he then pointed at the mirage next to the Dream cloud abode sign. The mirage shimmered as it parted letting the carriage through, and revealing the background behind it.
There was no longer a paved white moonstone road but a dark brown dirt pathway surrounded by a forest that was enormous, dense, and blooming. The trees that mostly composed this forest were fruit trees for example; ice dragon fruit trees, scorching apple trees, star radiant peach trees, rainbow mulberry trees, and the like all of which had thick stems, luscious leaves and for some odd reason not a single ripe and barely ripe fruit on them.
Sunlight gently cascaded down the leaves with a cacophony of bird noises and insect sounds echoing around. The dragon horses which ignored the grasses on the road over hurriedly started gobbling up the wild overgrowing grass next to the dirt road with greedy drooling looks. How could they not when the grass was dawning summer grass, a sky-rank herb known to be the nectar of grasses which had been soaking up the qi that was double in density compared to the outside of the mirage.
"Home at last," Yang Qing ruefully sighed as the mirage closed behind them with the carriage slowly moving along as the two dragon horses greedily swallowed everything along their path.
