The Dongyu Kingdom in Tiannan was one of the very few nations in the Tiannan cultivation world that did not belong to any of the four great powers.
This was not because the kingdom was too small or too poor in resources to have attracted the attention of those great powers.
On the contrary, both its territory and its abundance of cultivation resources were more than enough to place it among the top ten in all of Tiannan.
The reason no power had been able to control it to this day was entirely due to Dongyu's geographical position.
Apart from being too far from the Nine Nations Alliance to have any connection with it, the kingdom was simultaneously bordered by countries belonging to the other three great powers, effectively wedged dead in the middle.
Meanwhile, the cultivation sects within the kingdom were numerous and mixed due to certain historical reasons. There were both orthodox and demonic sects, as well as various small independent factions that fell outside those two labels. Most importantly, none of the local Dongyu cultivation sects was powerful enough to dominate the others and become the decisive force — none could represent Dongyu as a whole and tip the scales toward any particular power.
As a result, none of the three great powers wanted to give up the kingdom, and they naturally fought both openly and covertly over it. Yet no resolution ever came. In the end, they could only vaguely agree that none of the three would interfere in the kingdom's affairs, allowing Dongyu to become a neutral nation.
Of course, many of the local sects had long since pledged allegiance to either the orthodox or demonic factions, or to the Heavenly Dao Alliance, thereby gaining covert support from the three great powers. This had allowed Dongyu to barely maintain a balance for over a hundred years. Many cultivators regarded it as neutral ground and flocked there to settle down, making the kingdom extraordinarily prosperous for a time.
In Chang Prefecture, in the northern part of Dongyu, there was a basin that occupied nearly two-thirds of the prefecture's area. Most of this basin was covered by exceptionally dense forests. At its center stretched a vast mountain range extending for a million li, known locally as the "Wanling Mountain Range."
Whether the range truly had ten thousand ridges, no one had ever bothered to verify. But the range was so vast that all manner of spirit beasts and rare spirit herbs were naturally abundant. However, except during certain periods that came only once every few decades, even cultivators did not dare venture here lightly to gather herbs or capture spirit beasts.
The reason was entirely because the Wanling Mountain Range bore another name known to every cultivator in Tiannan — a fearsome name: "the Land of the Fallen Demon."
Somewhere in a hidden corner of the mountain range lay the secret valley known as "Fallen Demon Valley," said to be the most dangerous place in all of Tiannan.
This secret valley had existed since the primordial era. Throughout that time, who knew how many mighty cultivators had entered it seeking treasure — yet after countless millennia, it remained tightly shrouded in a veil of mystery and bloodshed, still making all who beheld it turn back in dread to this day.
Of course, the fearsome reputation of Fallen Demon Valley alone could not have stopped cultivators from exploiting the mountain range. But perhaps due to the valley's influence, the Wanling Mountain Range had at some point become sealed year-round behind multicolored miasma.
This miasma was not only lethally poisonous — contact meant instant death — but was also incredibly dense, almost like a grand restriction, so thick that one could not see one's hand in front of one's face. Once a person ventured deep into it, they would lose all sense of direction and become hopelessly lost.
Under such conditions, even if a cultivator could survive the miasma unharmed, gathering spirit herbs or capturing spirit beasts was out of the question. They could only gaze longingly at the treasure mountain from afar, or perhaps do a bit of work in a few small spots along the outermost edge where the miasma was thinnest.
However, roughly every fifty years, the miasma over the mountain range would dissipate once. This was also the period when the spatial rifts inside Fallen Demon Valley were at their fewest and most stable. During this brief window of about a year, treasure hunters from across Tiannan would seize the opportunity to enter the mountains in search of treasure.
Of course, with the mountains being so vast, even with the abundance of spirit herbs and spirit beasts, only a small fraction of cultivators actually found anything worth noting. But even so, every time this period arrived, thousands of cultivators of various ranks would still converge here.
Moreover, near the mountain range, certain merchants backed by clan powers would, within a very short time, set up several marketplaces of varying sizes to purchase spirit herbs and spirit beasts from cultivators who had made finds — and these markets would flourish for a time.
That year, the miasma over the Wanling Mountains began to thin, and it was clear that its complete dissipation was only a few months away.
Immediately, large numbers of cultivators flooded into Chang Prefecture — far more than in any previous cycle. Moreover, over half of them were outsiders from other kingdoms, and high-level cultivators appeared among them with notable frequency.
This startled the local cultivation sects and clans. They hastily ordered their disciples not to leave the sect grounds without good reason and dispatched people to investigate the cause.
The intelligence they received left these local cultivation powers utterly dumbfounded.
…
On an unnamed small mountain at the border of Chang Prefecture, a pair of cultivators — one male, one female, both at the Core Formation stage — stood side by side at the peak.
The man wore a deep blue long robe and looked to be around thirty, with refined and scholarly features. The woman was dressed in an elegant palace gown — though her figure was quite voluptuous, her appearance was rather ordinary, with nothing particularly striking about it.
Though the pair appeared calm on the surface, the way they kept raising their heads to look into the distance and the trace of anxiety barely hidden in their eyes betrayed their true state of mind.
After a short while, a flash of silver light appeared in the distance, followed by a streak of silver radiance hurtling toward them from far away. From its trajectory, it was heading straight for the small mountain.