Welcome to the Neighborhood

As a loud piercing sound fills his ears, a man opens his eyes and rises from bed. Taking a moment to clear his head, he gets up, dresses himself, and walks out of his tent. As he makes his way over to mobile kitchen to order breakfast when he heard, "Zhao Ling, you old bastard, how much longer are you going to milk this project."

Zhao Ling looked over at the source to see a man a few years younger walking towards him and retorted, "That's Foreman Zhao to you, Zhu Mengyao, and what are doing here instead of Sun and Moon City?"

"I believe I should be referred to as Foreman Zhu then by your reasoning", Yao laughed, "Boss Wu asked me to stop by to observe and report the progress here."

As Foreman Zhu looked around and admired the scenery, he focused on certain buildings and landmarks, a water fountain with dragon and phoenix sculptures was in the middle of an open square, a variety of buildings of different sizes, a hotel built overseeing the lake, and various other structures.

"What are these buildings called again?", Zhu inquired.

"That one there will be the Cultivation pavilion, this one here is a market, the far one by the lake is called a resort, this one is a cinema", Ling answered, "a restaurant is over there, there is a bunch of hotels, and the huge one is a shopping center or mall."

Zhu looked for a few more seconds before commenting, "When Boss Wei and Wu first gave us these assignments, I thought I got lucky getting the assignment for Sun and Moon City. Now that I look around here, I'm a little jealous, most of the buildings look really interesting to work on."

Ling smiled, "They certainly were troublesome, but now that the work is done, it's nice to look back at it. Over the last year of building, this experience has me ready to take the architect class-1 certification test."

"You plan on taking the exam as well? I wish you luck then because I'll definitely easily pass it", Zhu heckled Ling, "but you're right, so much has changed over the last year. Boss Wei took two more trips to the south and came back with over three thousand more citizens. All the residents from the first two waves are all Body Perfecting stage cultivators now and I heard that a few will be Qi Gathering stage soon."

"I heard that as well, in fact, I heard that Boss Wei will break through to Foundation Establishment stage soon", Ling added, "I also heard once you break through, you will get tested and have a shot at studying one of the four cultivation professions."

"You aren't happy with construction Ling?", Zhu suspiciously asked.

"It's good work, but if it turns out that I have real talent in artifact refining or alchemy, I'll want to try it", Ling replied, "The artifacts that Boss Wei has made over time, the tablets, refrigerators, stoves, and others are amazing. I want to create something like that but if it doesn't happen, I can always count on this job."

Reminded of his original purpose, Zhu took out a crystal artifact that fit in his hand and pointed it at the varies buildings. The artifact made a noise as he touched it and he would point it at a new target.

"I have to agree, this Qiphone has changed my life, not only can I quickly take pictures or chat with everyone. I love playing chess or landlord in my space time, and I'm pretty high on the rankings ladder", Zhu laughed, "I got what I came for, it looks like you will be finished soon, what you do after?"

"What else? Cultivate and take the next construction job until I break through", Ling answered, "Good Luck on your endeavors."

Zhu nodded at Ling as left and Ling returned to his work as he gathered his workers together.

Wei Huoran had return from the Nanying continent last night and currently laying in bed. 'I thought the higher your realm was the less sleep you are required each day', he said to himself.

'If you acted the same as a normal Qi Gathering cultivator, you would be able to be awake for longer. Unfortunately, everyday you are cultivating, practicing in simulation space, teaching others, and producing artifacts, talismans, formations, and pills. Even though you have more Qi than your peers, you still do way too much, it's no wonder your tired everyday', Quanliyuan explained.

'You aren't wrong, but it's something I have to do if we are going to ready for our first visitors in the next three years', Huoran mentioned, 'Honestly, the tablet has a speech option, you don't have to speak in my head.'

Quanliyan was silent for a moment and then said, 'I've been doing it this way for hundreds of thousands of years, there's no need to change for now.'

'I guess, but I will probably need it when others that come here request to talk to my 'senior' some day', Huoran said.

He finally rose from bed and went towards the floors under his cave. An artifact was mounted on wall in room which led down and a door covered the entrance. The artifact was a series of lights on the seven floors. Each floor had lights that seemed to represent the presence of people on that floors. They were label BF1-7 and each had a label, BF1 - Talismans, BF2 - Array Formations, BF3 - Alchemy Laboratory, BF4 - Dryer Rooms, BF5 - Storage, BF6 - Artifact Refinement, and BF7 - Tailors and Weavers. Huoran had moved his bathroom from BF1 some time again and built a new room in his cave for this purpose. Most of the lights were on BF4 and BF7 as he was the only one who could use the other floors for now.

Leaving his cave, he arrived at Sun and Moon City after a few minutes. Greeting citizens as he passed by, he observed the houses arranged similar to a suburb, tall towers, shops, parks, schools, city offices, and more. Though roads were in place, there were no vehicles or bikes traveling on them. It was on his list, but currently wasn't a high priority as he has three main projects in the works, and was close to finishing them. He thought about his projects and he walked around, the first was creating essentially a virtual reality pod, the second was creating space like a secret realm to use for farming, and the third was a testing device that could test and record a person's meridians path. This would become a cultivator's fingerprint, used for identification and customizing the perfect cultivation for each person. He would need to accomplish the first and third soon, as many of the residents were very close to breaking into the Qi Gathering stage and he would need to start recruiting cultivators for professions. For now he simply strolled around to calm his mind as he saw all the new arrivals nervously going to their appointments, children playing, and law enforcement patrols walking around. He decided to rest for today, because tomorrow would be another meeting and more work to get done.