Riding the wind, Pan Long crossed almost the whole of Great Xia in just a few days and arrived in Qing Province.
The moment he landed and entered the city, he sensed an atmosphere utterly unlike that of the Northlands.
Great Xia was vast, encompassing the Nine Provinces. Across such an enormous realm, customs and ways of life naturally differed from place to place.
Yong Province had poor soil and a cold climate, so farming brought little return. Its people were tough, and bandits gathered in droves. Many were farmers with hoes in hand and robbers the moment they picked up a club, tending fields and waylaying travelers without neglecting either trade.
While traveling Yong Province Road, Pan Long had more than once encountered villages that also ran murderous inns, poisoning lone travelers who stopped there. As a result, solitary travelers were rare in Yong Province. Even caravans often refused to buy food or water from small village inns.
Yi Province had seen little warfare, so its people were gentler by nature, and fights and killings were far less common than in Yong Province. Even when disputes turned violent, people usually stopped once a winner was decided. Rarely did they insist on deciding both victory and death.
Compared with Yong Province, learning flourished far more in Yi Province. Besides the Official Academy, it had private academies as well. Pan Long's father, Pan Lei, had studied at one when he was young. But with the Classic of Mountains and Seas, he had shut himself away and studied so hard that he completed ten or even twenty years of others' learning in a few months. He then passed the provincial examination and, in effect, graduated.
Yun Province lay at the farthest edge of the Nine Provinces. Geographic barriers weakened the Imperial Court's