Ling Tian City

Ling Tian City is the independent city built from the ruins of Heart's Dream and the return of two isolated native peoples. Ling Chen obtains the irreplaceable City Creation Token, but entrusts it and the project to Yun Meng Xin. She supplies the study, diplomacy, financing, and civic direction that unite the Fairy and Dwarf clans without transferring ownership of their homeland to a human ruler. The city's name acknowledges Ling Tian's enabling role and protective strength; its actual administration remains centered on Yun Meng Xin. (Chapters 373–405 and 516)

The city becomes more than a player guild headquarters. It is the Fairies' route out of a diminishing sealed realm, the Dwarves' escape from deprivation, Heart's Dream's answer to destruction by the Yan Huang Alliance, and a commercial alternative to the Forgotten City. Its survival depends on several kinds of power working together: native magic and craft, player finance and organization, guild armies, exceptional individual fighters, and eventually an alliance with the Underworld. The result is a polity that neither the dominant player alliance nor the Forgotten Empire can reduce to a subordinate institution. (Chapters 397–405, 537–629, and 660–701)

Structure and operating principles

Civic leadership and shared ownership

Yun Meng Xin is the city's governing center. Before construction she spends ten days studying the Forgotten Continent's history, researches the legal position of the Fairy territory, secures confidential financing from Li Xiao Xue, and negotiates separately with the Fairy and Dwarf communities. She initially offers the city lordship to Ling Tian, but he declines; after opening, she takes the title Lady of Ling Tian City because the work requires a resident administrator rather than a symbolic champion. (Chapters 397–405 and 616–620)

Her authority does not erase the rights of the founding native communities. The Fairies remain owners of their traditional territory and retain authority over their internal affairs. The Dwarves build and manufacture as partners with a home of their own, rather than as a captive labor force. Yun Meng Xin's proposal succeeds because it gives both peoples access to the outside world while limiting their dependence on an outside sovereign: visitors come to a city situated on Fairy land, and commerce turns the clans' abilities into strength without requiring them to abandon their identities. (Chapters 398–405)

Ling Tian is the namesake, benefactor, and most feared shield, not the routine ruler. He provides the City Creation Token, maps, rare materials, contacts between the clans, and decisive military intervention. He repeatedly treats attacks on the city as attacks on his family, but leaves planning, negotiation, commercial rules, and ordinary government to Yun Meng Xin and Li Xiao Xue. Their division of labor is essential: Ling Tian can make invasion catastrophically expensive, while the city's legitimacy and daily life cannot be sustained by deterrence alone. (Chapters 373–405, 578–629, and 660–701)

Fairy and Dwarf foundations

The Fairy Clan contributes land, nature magic, medicine, long-lived guardians, and a population returning from self-imposed isolation. Chief Greenwood speaks for the clan in external negotiations and directs Fairy power during crises, while elders and Granny Witherwood retain influence over major internal decisions. The Fairies' aversion to conflict shapes the city's ideals but does not prevent defensive violence when their new home is attacked. Their nature energy creates barriers and supports exceptional guardians such as the Mountain Giant. (Chapters 398–402, 545–546, 620–627, and 660–686)

The Dwarf Clan supplies the construction capacity that makes the city possible. Under Dilo, thirty thousand Dwarves relocate through a spatial route prepared near the Fairy Forest. They bring ancestral craft, accelerate construction on a scale unavailable to ordinary players, and later create equipment and city defenses. During the first siege, Dilo wants to fight but follows Yun Meng Xin's order to keep building; the decision allows the walls and civic systems to be completed while allied forces buy time outside. (Chapters 401–405 and 545–602)

The two clans therefore hold complementary positions rather than merging into one population. The Fairies provide territory, nature power, medicines, and guardianship; the Dwarves provide engineering, equipment, and physical urban development. Their reunion through ancestral relics and shared need gives Ling Tian City a native foundation that no player guild could reproduce by spending money alone. (Chapters 401–405 and 602–620)

Human administration, commerce, and alliances

Heart's Dream is the city's human nucleus. Its first guild headquarters is destroyed, but its surviving members turn their separate talents toward the later city: Yun Meng Xin leads, Ling Tian supplies singular opportunities and protection, Xiao Qi and Su'Er defend it with elemental and formation power, and Mu Bing Yao protects its principals. Heart's Dream does not simply reappear under its old sign. Its personal trust and resistance to coercion become the civic culture of a much larger institution. (Chapters 338–360, 397–405, and 545–601)

Li Xiao Xue is the central financial and strategic partner. She supplies the enormous capital the secret construction requires, brings Snow Moon Loulan into the defense, helps devise battlefield formations, and advises Yun Meng Xin during negotiations with imperial authority. Her participation makes the city commercially credible while preserving Yun Meng Xin's office rather than replacing it with Li-family ownership. Yun Feng and Xiao Qiu Feng later manage recruitment and applications, linking the city's growth to the Disillusion and Battle alliances. (Chapters 397–398, 545–601, and 616–624)

The city's goods and services are strategic assets. Dwarven equipment, Fairy medicine, crystals, transport access, and other scarce offerings generate more than one trillion gold during the first fifteen hours after opening. Yun Meng Xin treats the revenue as civic capacity, not a personal prize, and immediately plans expansion when demand exceeds the original design. Access can also be restricted. Guilds that attacked the unfinished city face exclusion until they accept compensation, tribute, and limited service, converting military defeat into enforceable commercial obligations. (Chapters 616–629)

Defense without a single army

Ling Tian City's armed strength is a coalition. Fairy defenders and guardians protect their land; Dwarves continue essential construction and operate equipment; Heart's Dream supplies leaders and specialists; the Battle Alliance, Disillusion Alliance, Snow Moon Loulan, and Skyfall Dynasty mobilize player forces; independent experts guard approaches; and Ling Tian supplies overwhelming intervention when present. No single one of these forces is sufficient during the founding siege. The city's defensive principle is to combine endurance, terrain, formations, and reinforcement until its decisive protectors can act. (Chapters 532–601)

This arrangement has limits. The first defense is almost lost before Ling Tian returns. During the Forgotten Empire's later invasion, Mysterious God-grade specialists neutralize Chief Greenwood and the Mountain Giant, conventional defenders are overwhelmed, and nineteen Fairies die even though the city survives. Its security therefore rests on alliances and deterrence, not invulnerability. The arrival of Underworld troops and weapons such as the Underworld God Cannon raises that deterrence, but also binds the city's fate more closely to Ling Tian's personal relationships. (Chapters 660–701)

History

Heart's Dream and the city that did not yet exist

Yun Meng Xin founds Heart's Dream as the practical instrument of a wager for her freedom. Her family has promised her to Long Tian Yun, and she accepts an unfair condition: within two years she must build wealth and fame comparable to the Yun family's century-old financial group without its support. The tiny guild has little money or established force. Ling Chen joins because Yun Feng's experimental medicine saved Shui Ruo, yet obligation becomes respect as he sees Meng Xin train, lead, and refuse inherited power as a measure of worth. (Chapters 4–6 and 114–222)

Yan Huang destroys Heart's Dream's guild sign after Shui Ruo's death and Ling Tian's disappearance. Yun Meng Xin stops Xiao Qi from dying in a futile defense and watches the headquarters fall, preserving the people while losing the institution. She then gives up the Phantasmal Bladedancer combat profession and begins working with Li Xiao Xue on land, finance, and development. The shift is the beginning of Ling Tian City: the destroyed guild is not rebuilt by trying to outfight Yan Huang on its own terms, but by creating a place with an economy, territory, and native allies that the old guild system cannot easily absorb. (Chapters 338–360)

Token, territory, and the clan compact

Ling Tian discovers the hidden Dwarves, acquires the City Creation Token, and sends Yun Meng Xin the token, map, materials, and information about both clans. Meng Xin studies before acting. In the Fairy Realm she removes her veil, hears the elders' fear of corruption, and argues that permanent isolation is already destroying the clan. She grounds the proposal in the Fairies' continuing ownership of their forest and offers a city that brings human visitors to them without placing their people under a human state. (Chapters 373–400)

She and Greenwood then travel to the Dwarves with ancestral objects entrusted by Ling Tian. The reunion supplies emotional proof and practical opportunity: Fairy land and resources can support the Dwarves, while Dwarf craft can turn a protected forest into a viable public city. Yun Meng Xin arranges the spatial formation that relocates thirty thousand Dwarves, secures Li Xiao Xue's capital, and establishes a division in which the Dwarves build while she supplies materials, external planning, and finance. (Chapters 401–405)

Construction remains secret because the City Creation Token makes the unfinished settlement an irresistible target. Winter of That Year and Hundred Miles of Ice discover it by accident, but become northern guards rather than sellers of the information. Meng Xin names the project Ling Tian City and keeps work moving until hostile scouts arrive. The name is both gratitude and strategy: Ling Tian's reputation deters enemies, while the city represents the future his resources gave the clans and Heart's Dream a chance to build. (Chapters 435–478, 516, and 532–545)

The founding siege

Long Tian Yun publicizes the token and draws numerous guilds toward the unfinished city. Yun Meng Xin faces the first scouts alone, declares the territory hers, and uses the short warning interval to organize the only defensible route. Fairies grow a long northern vine wall; Dwarves are ordered to finish the city; Li Xiao Xue coordinates finance and formations; and Yun Feng calls for aid. Meng Xin refuses to abandon the project because it is already the Fairies' return, the Dwarves' home, and Heart's Dream's future—not merely a token that can be replaced. (Chapters 537–547)

The defense reunites allies who had separated after Heart's Dream's fall. Xiao Qi and Su'Er return with powers suited to large formations, Mu Bing Yao guards the leaders, and Yun Feng brings the Disillusion Alliance. Xiao Qiu Feng commits the entire Battle Alliance after seeing Xiao Qi defend the city, accepts the likely destruction of his own organization, and later withdraws it from Yan Huang permanently. Snow Moon Loulan and the Skyfall forces add further troops, while the Fairy barriers and independent guards delay the coalition's approach. (Chapters 548–578)

The defenders suffer repeated collapse and revival. Xuanyuan Dia Wu turns the Sword Emperor's blades against her former side but exhausts her real mind; player armies die and return; Fairy and Dwarf work continues under pressure; and the attack reaches the point where conventional resistance is almost spent. Ling Tian's return changes the scale of the battle. Reunited with Xi Ling, he tears through the attacking armies and lets the Dwarves complete the city. The victory belongs to the coalition that held before he arrived as much as to the force that ended the siege. (Chapters 555–601)

Opening and the struggle for sovereignty

Ling Tian City opens under Yun Meng Xin and immediately draws commerce away from the Forgotten City. Dwarf goods, Fairy medicines, crystals, profession services, and the novelty of a new independent center create enormous revenue. The city also formalizes its alliances: Battle Alliance relocates and handles recruitment with Yun Feng, former attackers negotiate punitive restoration of access, and native guardians receive acknowledged civic roles. Meng Xin's original marriage wager has effectively been surpassed, but she continues because the city has become a responsibility to residents rather than proof offered to her family. (Chapters 616–629)

The Forgotten Emperor treats this success as disobedience. He argues that otherworlders remain his subjects and that the city lacks lawful approval; Meng Xin answers from her research into local rules and land rights. Commercial pressure then becomes military coercion. One hundred thousand imperial soldiers advance behind fabricated charges, and Meng Xin and Li Xiao Xue initially negotiate because a direct war would devastate the city. Meng Xin uses the offered day to evacuate vulnerable residents, close facilities, and mobilize defenders, but rejects submission once the army makes clear that control rather than law is the objective. (Chapters 623–625 and 660–672)

The defense fails at the gates when imperial experts neutralize the city's strongest native guardians. Yun Meng Xin collapses as soldiers begin destroying the city, and nineteen Fairies die. An unexplained intervention removes key defenders from immediate destruction; Ling Tian then returns with Underworld forces, annihilates most of the invading army, pursues the Emperor, and burns much of the old capital. The retaliation secures sovereignty and terrifies further conventional challengers, but it exceeds a narrow defense. Ling Tian City's independence is therefore founded through principled coalition and disproportionate punitive violence alike. (Chapters 674–701)

A lasting world power

Later crises shift away from ordinary city politics, but Ling Tian City remains the institutional home against which larger threats are measured. Ling Tian uses Shura power to protect the city and continent during the demonic crisis. Its leaders and allied clans survive the Godchild catastrophe and Earth's reversed destruction, while the city itself continues in the Mystic Moon world. The final account states that Yun Meng Xin still leads it with the Fairy Clan, Dwarf Clan, Yun Feng, and other principal defenders. Their combined decisions can affect the state of the entire world. (Chapters 783–850)

Ling Tian's later divine status does not dissolve the city into a personal realm. He lives with his household and can physically travel to the Mystic Moon planet, while Yun Meng Xin remains the civic leader. This distinction preserves the structure established at the beginning: singular power protects the city, but the city endures through administration, production, community, and a compact among peoples whose futures are no longer dependent on isolation or inherited authority. (Chapters 846–850)

Founding communities and leadership

Economy and capabilities

Ling Tian City's economy is not separate from its sovereignty. Dwarf manufacture and Fairy medicines produce goods the Forgotten capital cannot duplicate, while crystals, transport, and player services create a reason for residents and visitors to recognize the new city regardless of imperial declarations. The first-day revenue demonstrates extraordinary demand, but the larger significance is dependence reversed: rather than asking the Forgotten City for permission and services, players and native populations can obtain them through a polity whose leaders are directly accountable to its founding communities. (Chapters 616–629)

Its military capabilities are likewise distributed. Fairy nature magic can shape terrain and create barriers; Dwarf craft can build defenses and weapons; Su'Er's formations and Xiao Qi's elemental force can alter mass battles; guild armies supply numbers and discipline; elite individuals protect leaders and break command points; and Ling Tian or Underworld forces provide overwhelming escalation. The structure is powerful precisely because it does not ask every component to perform the same task. Its weakness is coordination under surprise and the possibility that an enemy will isolate the exceptional guardians on whom the layers depend. (Chapters 545–601 and 660–701)

Relationships with major powers

Yan Huang Alliance

Yan Huang is the city's founding external enemy. It destroys Heart's Dream, attempts to seize the City Creation Token, and mobilizes other guilds against the unfinished settlement. The failed siege damages its authority by showing that inherited scale and public prestige can be defeated by a coalition built around a specific home. Battle Alliance's withdrawal and the later subordination of attacking guilds further move player power away from Yan Huang's monopoly. (Chapters 338–356 and 537–629)

Forgotten Empire

The Forgotten Empire first attempts legal superiority, then military annexation. Ling Tian City's independent services directly weaken the capital, making the conflict economic before it becomes territorial. The imperial invasion and Ling Tian's retaliatory destruction end any practical claim that the city can be governed as an ordinary subject settlement. Later, the Forgotten Emperor's exaltation of Ling Tian during the demonic crisis illustrates the reversal: the old capital must recognize the protector associated with the city it tried to destroy. (Chapters 623–701 and 785–796)

Underworld

The Underworld alliance arises through Ling Tian's relationship with Leng'Er and the Underworld King. It supplies forces and the Underworld God Cannon during the imperial war, giving Ling Tian City access to power beyond surface states and player guilds. The relationship is personal and dynastic rather than evidence that the Underworld becomes a municipal branch; it is an external alliance mobilized through the city's principal defender. (Chapters 656–701)

Legacy

Ling Tian City is the durable answer to several failed institutions. Heart's Dream's destroyed sign becomes the human core of a real city. The Fairy Realm's isolation becomes protected participation in the world. The Dwarves' hidden deprivation becomes public craft and a homeland. Player guilds that once measured strength through inherited membership and capital confront a coalition capable of producing its own economy, terrain, equipment, and legitimacy. (Chapters 338–405 and 616–629)

Its deepest legacy belongs to Yun Meng Xin. She begins by trying to prove that she can earn freedom from a marriage arranged for family profit. She ends as the leader of a power whose choices affect the Mystic Moon world, supported by people and clans that chose the relationship rather than inheriting it. Ling Tian gives the city its name and makes its enemies fear it; Meng Xin and the founding communities give that name an institution capable of surviving his absences. (Chapters 4, 397–405, 616–620, and 846–850)