"The Northern Domain? Dragon Battle Palace?" Xia Xuan paused, then a faint sneer curled his lips.
His smile held undisguised contempt and indifference, the same instinctive superiority a scion of a princely house might feel upon hearing someone mention a country squire from some remote backwater.
"They really don't know their place," Xia Xuan scoffed under his breath, his tone airy, as though commenting on something utterly insignificant.
The Northern Domain was merely a remote corner of the Sky Luo Continent. The continent was vast beyond measure, divided into five regions: east, west, south, north, and central. The Central Region was the most prosperous, teeming with powerful cultivators and sects. The Eastern Region and Southern Region followed close behind, each with its own overlords. The Western Region was somewhat inferior, but still barely qualified as a major power center. Only the Northern Domain, situated at the continent's northern tip, suffered from scarce resources and a concentration of spirit qi far below that of the other four regions.
Moreover, the Northern Domain was plagued by constant strife. Factions large and small fought one another relentlessly, and the flames of war never died down. No hegemon comparable to their Great Xia Imperial Dynasty had ever emerged there.
As for Dragon Battle Palace, it was even less renowned. Across the Sky Luo Continent as a whole, it could at most be considered a second- or third-rate faction. The gulf between it and his Great Xia Imperial Dynasty was as vast as that between heaven and earth.
Yet when he had seen that young fellow treat him so dismissively yesterday, without the slightest trace of reverence in his eyes, he had assumed the man had some formidable background—perhaps a direct disciple of some reclusive Ancient Clan. As it turned out, he was merely from