South of the healing safe halls, the sky broadened into a flawless dome of turquoise.
The Tranquil Ripple drifted at an easy pace across the southern plains, riding a heat current that smelled of sun-baked silt, crushed clover, and fruit nectar. Below the cedar boat sides, the landscape transformed from rolling foothills into a boundless expanse of emerald vines stretching toward the horizon like an unbroken carpet of living jade.
This was the Thousand-Li Spirit Melon Basin.
Hundreds of years ago, during the chaotic middle era of the Golden Sun Empire, this basin had been an arid salt flat known as the Bitter Wastes. Arrogant training cartels had dammed the highland tributaries to feed private potion-made gardens, starving the lowlands of water and condemning mortal tenant farmers to seasonal famines. If a starving farmer dare pluck a single wild bitter gourd from the dust, sect guards would shatter his spirit veins without mercy.
Now, nourished by the Primordial Genesis Rain that Lin Xiao had scattered after consuming the Void Broodmother, the earth had healed into dark, loam-rich soil. Deep groundwater surged through underground arteries, feeding millions of linked vines bearing huge, emerald-striped Jade-Sugar Melons. Each melon was the size of a water barrel, glistening with morning water drops beneath the summer sun.
