With the Great Snow Mountain Holy Land breached and two Deity Transformation Heavenly Monarchs of the Ice Phoenix Clan slain in battle, the war in the Western Desert was declared over.
Northern Plains Tushan Central Court had achieved a complete victory!
The work ahead would mainly focus on clearing out the remnants of the cannibalistic Demon Race in the Western Desert, punishing criminal humans and demons, establishing grassroots governance, and taxation.
At present, the most important task in the Western Desert was naturally restoring its population.
After thousands of years under Demon Race rule, compounded by the recent defeat of the Demon Race, which had slaughtered Western Desert human slaves in a frenzy to vent its rage, the Western Desert's human population had fallen below one million—less than one-thousandth of its peak. They could be said to be on the brink of extinction.
Even mortals were like this; naturally, so were the cultivators born from their ranks.
Across the entire Western Desert, it was hard to say whether there were even a thousand cultivators above Foundation Establishment. The Western Desert's Human Immortal Civilization had basically ceased to exist.
Without outside influence, it would take at least hundreds of thousands more years of decline and rebirth, with the wisdom, blood, and bones of countless heavenly prodigies and outstanding figures piling up, before they could slowly recreate the current Immortal Civilization.
And that was under favorable circumstances. With slightly worse luck, the race could very well be wiped out entirely.
This was the greatest difference between humans and other races. Bloodlines were fundamentally nothing; everything depended on acquired civilization.
The height of Immortal Civilization directly determined the strength of the local human race.
Without civilization, humans were weaker even than the weakest Pig Demon Clan—vermin among vermin, unfit even to be slaves.