Ding Kingdom.
A small nation on the edge of the Thirty-Two Kingdoms Continent, with two other countries between it and the Cloud Nation.
By all accounts, the Ding Kingdom was the oldest nation on the Thirty-Two Kingdoms Continent, with a history that might stretch back more than ten thousand years. It had been named the Ding Kingdom because its original territory resembled a giant cauldron. The Heavenly Cauldron Daoist, founding patriarch of its largest sect, the Heavenly Cauldron Sect, was also said to have wielded a cauldron-type magic treasure before attaining the Dao and ascending to the Upper Realm.
The Heavenly Cauldron Sect he left behind ruled the entire Ding Kingdom, whose name also owed something to that legacy.
The Heavenly Cauldron Sect's greatest strength lay in the sect-guarding treasure the Heavenly Cauldron Daoist had left behind: the Seventy-Two Heavenly Cauldron Giant Spirit Formation, which protected both sect and country. Otherwise, it could never have survived so many years on the chaotic Thirty-Two Kingdoms Continent without being annexed or destroyed by another nation or sect.
However, the Heavenly Cauldron Sect was also conservative in its rule. At times in its history, it had harbored grand ambitions to expand its power and unify the Thirty-Two Kingdoms Continent, even marching out to attack other nations, but every attempt had failed.
Over the past few centuries, the strength of both the Heavenly Cauldron Sect and the Ding Kingdom had dwindled rapidly, leaving them all but sealed off from the outside world. Vague rumors had surfaced of civil war within the kingdom, but no one particularly cared what had become of it. After all, its cultivators were exceptionally hostile to outsiders, and almost no foreign cultivator who entered the Ding Kingdom ever came out alive.
Even among those who survived, few gained anything worthwhile