The Sect Black Post sent to Zhang Tie by the three major sects set the location of the appointed battle above the Nether Sea in the Ten-Thousand-Mile Gobi west of Great Xia. The appointed time was the Hour of the Monkey on January 29th, Black Iron Calendar Year 907...
As its name implied, the Ten-Thousand-Mile Gobi was a land of desert and desolation. It lay in western Great Xia—more precisely, north of Military Province and west of Sui Prefecture, within the vast uninhabited region beyond the Yin Mountains. Administratively, this place belonged to Wasteland Province within the Liao'an Protectorate of Great Xia. Since it was simply too barren, with almost nothing but sand, this Wasteland Province in the Ten-Thousand-Mile Gobi had acquired a name perfectly suited to its nature—Sand Prefecture.
The Nether Sea within the Ten-Thousand-Mile Gobi was not actually a sea, but an enormous basin spanning a million square kilometers amid the Gobi desert. Long, long ago, the Nether Sea had been a vast inland lake, echoing the Yin Mountains from afar. At least before the Great Cataclysm, that inland lake had indeed existed. Yet after the Great Cataclysm, for reasons unknown, the enormous inner lake vanished overnight, leaving behind only a bare basin sunken into the earth. Even now, apart from the occasional shells found in the basin's sands and the traces of water erosion left in certain weathered areas, not a single drop of water could be seen in the Nether Sea.
The overnight disappearance of the Nether Sea gave rise to countless bizarre and terrifying legends. Coupled with the desolate heat of the Ten-Thousand-Mile Gobi, this region had become a true no-man's-land of Great Xia, the most barren of all its wasteland provinces. Even during the previous two Holy Wars, when Military Province had become a