This, to varying degrees, reflected a certain problem: the longer the Wanyuan Island powerhouses continued to hole up, the more solid a wall had formed between them and the outside world. They no longer carried the same sense of responsibility that the ancient powerhouses had once held.
If it had been those ancient powerhouses—the ones willing to fight to the death to defend their homeland—they would never have abandoned their original lands just because they had found a quiet pocket of peace.
"Perhaps in that ancient war, the vast majority of the ancient powerhouses perished in battle. All that survived were the opportunists from the very start?" Jiang Chen mused to himself.
On the battlefield—especially in an ancient war of racial extermination—those who survived were either impossibly lucky or supremely crafty opportunists.
As the saying went: let your fellow Daoist die before you.
In the martial world, there was no shortage of such slippery characters. They lived by a single principle: under no circumstances were they to sacrifice themselves.
Even for the sake of justice, it was someone else who would do the dying. They hid—they would play the fool, they would play the dead—anything to avoid standing and fighting bravely to the end like real men.
Everyone and everything was expendable—except themselves.
Of course, not every survivor was like that—but among those who had endured such a devastating ancient war, there were certainly quite a few who were.
Throughout the journey, Jiang Chen had been turning
After leaving the Endless Caverns, their current heading brought them toward the territory that had once belonged to the Marquis Jianghan estate. Long ago, in a spiritual plot within the Marquis's domain, the spirit medicines planted there had ripened overnight. These strange occurrences had left a deep impression on Jiang Chen.
Even back then, Jiang Chen had sensed that it was an omen of great calamity.
Over all these years, he had wanted to go and see for himself how far those portents had progressed.
The Marquis Jianghan territory looked nothing like it once had. Because it had once been Jiang Chen's homeland, it had been visited—and ravaged—by all manner of factions more than any other place.
Both the Immortal Heaven Capital and the Nine Sun Heaven Sect had dispatched countless powerhouses here, turning every last inch of the land inside out.
However, all the family members who had once been by Jiang Chen's side had already left the Marquis Jianghan estate. The ones who remained were merely members of the extended branch family, with no real emotional connection to him.
By now, even those branch-family Jiangs had departed for good.
This stretch of territory had become a leaderless forbidden zone. Not even the King of the Eastern Kingdom dared send anyone to govern it.
The reason was simple—this place had been claimed by countless rogue cultivators. It had become a haven for their activities and a staging ground for their expeditions into the Wasteland.
Indeed, the former Marquis Jianghan territory and Jianghan City were now far more bustling than before and had expanded considerably in scale.
The original manor had been commandeered as well. Though it still looked the same as before, the people living inside had absolutely nothing to do with the Jiang family anymore.
Jiang Chen held little sentiment toward the Marquis Jianghan estate, but seeing it occupied by outsiders still left a sour taste in his mouth.
If his father were to return here and see the place where he had once risen to glory being trampled upon like this, he would surely be very unhappy.
Jiang Chen wanted nothing more than to drive every last one of them out, but he managed to suppress the impulse.
For now, everything had to take a back seat to the bigger picture—until he obtained the Soul-Calming Wood, any plan was nothing more than empty talk.
Just as in the Tiangui Kingdom, there were rogue cultivators coming and going from all directions, and from time to time, the figures of sect powerhouses could even be spotted among them.
The modest Marquis Jianghan territory was, at this moment, teeming with people and abuzz with activity.
"What exactly is going on here?" Jiang Chen felt that when things were this far out of the ordinary, something was definitely amiss.
Inside a tavern, Jiang Chen and Huang'er sat in a corner, sipping wine and listening to the idle chatter of rogue cultivators from various regions.
"I heard the seal will break in just a few days. The Wasteland's mist will dissipate for the most part. At last, we human cultivators can enter that great treasury of the Wasteland!"
"Brother, don't be so optimistic. The Wasteland has been sealed off from human territory since ancient times—a seal stretching thousands of miles. Now that it's breaking, there's no telling what kind of disaster might follow."
"Don't be such an alarmist. The Wasteland has nurtured countless heaven-sent treasures since ancient times. Even if there are some risks, true riches are found where danger lies."
"Let's hope so."
Similar conversations—Jiang Chen and Huang'er had been sitting there for barely a quarter of an hour, yet they had already heard variations of the same exchange many times over. Wasteland. Seal. Mist and miasma...
These keywords put both Jiang Chen and Huang'er on high alert.
The Eastern Kingdom shared a border with the Dark Moon Kingdom.
Both of these nations bordered the Wasteland. To put it plainly, in many people's eyes, these two countries were nothing more than the fringe of the Wasteland.
Because of this, these two nations had always been marginalized and excluded by the other members of the Sixteen Kingdoms Alliance.
And the Sixteen Kingdoms Alliance, in turn, was marginalized within the Myriad Domain, similarly shunned by the other major powers.
It all came down to one thing: their proximity to the Wasteland.
In the human domain, to be close to the Wasteland meant carrying latent danger.