Northern Domain, Far Western Lands.
Compared to the prosperity of the other regions in the Northern Domain, these Far Western Lands were desolate beyond measure.
As far as the eye could see, the earth resembled withered skeletons drained of all life. Cracked yellow soil stretched to the horizon, and only an occasional tuft of yellowed wild grass struggled out from the fissures before the chilly wind snapped its waist.
Lonely peaks jutted up from the vast land like the fangs of Giant Beasts. Their mountainsides were pitch-black, without a blade of grass.
Occasional Beast Roars drifted from deep within those Lonely Peaks, shrill and distant. Rather than lending this land even a trace of life, they made it seem ever more lonely and desolate, as though it had been forgotten by the entire world.
Between heaven and earth here, a hazy aura seemed to hang at all times.
That aura chilled one to the bone. It was unlike ordinary cold, but a deeper, more sinister chill, as if it had seeped up from the depths beneath Nine Nether.
With every breath, that aura burrowed into one's lungs and viscera, making the blood throughout one's body seem ready to freeze. Even the spiritual energy permeating heaven and earth carried an eerie yin quality, flowing with a trace of heart-palpitating dark gray.
Cultivators with slightly weaker cultivation would feel frozen to the core merely by standing here, and had to circulate their spiritual energy to protect themselves just to barely withstand it.
And in the deepest reaches of these Far Western Lands lay an even more terrifying sight.
From farther away, one could faintly hear countless sounds of slaughter, wails, and clashing weapons. Mixed together, they sounded like echoes of a battlefield carried over from another Space-Time.
Yet when one focused and