The Earth Knight who had accompanied Bai Suxian to Torch Dragon Territory last year had already left when Bai Suxian and Zhang Tie returned to You Province this time, heading back to the Southern Frontier. However, the people Bai Suxian had brought remained in Torch Dragon Territory. Some stayed on Gathering Immortals Peak, becoming Bai Suxian's attendants and awaiting her commands. Others established manor after manor, workshops of every kind, and farms amid the hills and basins beneath the Mysterious Heaven Eighteen Peaks, forming the first spontaneously developed settlement within Iron Dragon Sect. Among them were many skilled craftsmen, and these people became the first batch to attach themselves to Iron Dragon Sect.
Any sect in Great Xia, beyond its masters, disciples, and elders, also had a large number of producers and service providers dependent upon it. Sects such as Taiyi Mystical Sect and Celestial Mechanism Sect could produce almost anything, and there was scarcely any field they had not entered. The sects of Great Xia were super-sized armed interest groups bound together by economic interests, secret inheritances, and even blood ties. A sect master or school master was the head of such a super-sized armed interest group.
Such groups possessed tremendous vitality upon the land of Great Xia, standing firm through thousands of years. During the technological age before the Great Cataclysm, their existence and influence had waned for a time due to various factors, yet their flame had never gone out. After the Great Cataclysm, however, Great Xia's sect organizations once more entered a period of flourishing growth.
The region occupied by Iron Dragon Sect's Mysterious Heaven Eighteen Peaks spanned more than ten thousand square kilometers. Beyond the peaks themselves, the land below contained vast basins, hills, and slopes, with abundant water sources. Zhang Tie's goal was to