The twenty-second day of the second month, Great Xuan Calendar, year 379.
Zhang Yu stood on the broad platform, gazing into the distance. On the western horizon, half of an enormous pale-white moon nearly filled that side of the sky.
The sight made him keenly aware that he was no longer in the Inner Layer, but in a foreign realm.
He had been here for two days already. After registering his name and being entered into the records, he was provisionally considered a cultivator of Yeya Prefecture.
Over the past two days, he had also found ways to learn about the situation within the prefecture.
There were currently more than a thousand cultivators in Yeya Prefecture, of whom roughly three hundred were mid-level cultivators.
Because the Outer Layer was tainted by voidborn evils, cultivating mystical powers under such circumstances required ten or even a hundred times more effort than in the Inner Layer. Thus, local cultivators were exceedingly few, while most had come from the Inner Layer.
Especially more than sixty years ago, when the Turbid Tide rose in the Inner Layer and multiple rifts appeared where the Inner and Outer Layers met, the Inner Layer suffered an invasion by great masses of foreign enemies. Encouraged by the Profound Court, many cultivators went to the Outer Layer to resist them. After the war, many of those cultivators did not return to the Inner Layer, but remained here instead.
Unlike the wars encountered in Azure Yang Upper Continent, most of the time the Outer Layer did not face great masses of enemies, but small, scattered bands of exceptionally formidable foes. Thus, aside from the regular army permanently stationed within the heavenly cities, most troops were broken up into smaller units and scattered throughout various places, where they were responsible for exterminating