It was utterly unlike the earth-shaking clamor in the valley.
Inside the Miao-Conquest Army's command tent, an oppressive silence reigned.
Qing Chen stood alone before an enormous sandalwood desk. A Jade Slip on it glowed, projecting an exceptionally detailed military map of Qiongzhou in Lingnan Circuit.
Tie Ming had given it to him earlier, and it was extremely detailed.
His gaze landed precisely on the region in the lower middle of the map, outlined in dark red cinnabar and shaped like a vicious venomous insect-Miaochong Prefecture.
The names of its ten counties lay scattered across the tangled terrain like ten venomous insects' fangs:
Black Miasma County: abundant poisonous swamps and dense forests, with miasma that never dispersed throughout the year; the prefecture's first natural barrier.
Coiled Snake County: rolling hills riddled with caves, with strange snakes rumored to dwell there and treacherous roads.
Withered Skeleton County: barren land studded with mines, where armed clashes and revenge killings never ceased, and cultivators were fierce and bloodthirsty.
Hundred Gu County: one of the main settlements of the nonhuman Miao Gu people, where gu arts flourished; difficult for outsiders to enter and intensely hostile to them.
Ghost Wail County: close to the remains of an ancient battlefield, with extremely heavy yin energy and frequent appearances by ghosts and heretical cultivators.
Wind-Splitting Gorge County: a strategic crossroads with a vast gorge running north to south; easy to defend and difficult to attack, it was also a place armies had to contest.
Poison Drool County: several poisonous rivers flowed through it, and both its soil and water contained deadly toxins; it abounded in all manner of bizarre poisonous creatures.
Ten Thousand Insects County: insects of countless varieties crawled everywhere, providing materials from all kinds of gu insects and venomous insects.
Corpse Mushroom County: vast stretches