Jared and Gwendolyn headed south, crossing desolate ice plains and trekking over frozen wastelands until the road to Cloudhaven City finally came into view.

After five days in the air, a jagged outline of stone and steel rose on the horizon.

Cloudhaven City.

The city had once been devastated by war, but now it had recovered roughly seventy to eighty percent of its former vitality. The walls had been reinforced, and the number of cultivators patrolling them had doubled. Caravans and wandering cultivators streamed through the gates without pause. It still wasn’t thriving, but it was no longer a place of ruin.

“So this is Cloudhaven City?” Gwendolyn raised a brow as she looked at it in the distance. “It’s bigger than I expected.”

“One of the top ten cities in the Fourteenth Firmament. Of course it’s not small,” Jared said. “But compared to your Celestial Palace, it still doesn’t come close.”

Gwendolyn let out a soft laugh. “The Celestial Palace only has me in it. What kind of grand place is that? Your Cloudhaven City is different. There are at least three hundred cultivators just on wall patrol alone.”