Hou Niao had little to prepare. He had already laid his plans to pursue a True Disciple position bare to his two brothers, and probably nothing much would come of it.
As he had said, it was still too early; discussing these things now was rather premature. In the Xiuzhen world, waiting was a discipline, and patience an art.
The Northwest was the poorest region on the Brocade Continent. This was not because its people were lazy, but entirely because of its climate.
Drought, windblown sand, a lack of waterways, barren soil... all these factors left most of the Northwest sparsely populated, with low productivity.
With so few people and such harsh living conditions, one could hardly expect Xiuzhen forces to flourish here. This was determined by economic conditions, something human wishes alone could not change.
The Northwest also had the fewest Xiuzhen forces and nations on the continent. Though its area far exceeded that of the Southwest, it had only six cultivation traditions, and their relative size was much smaller than those in other regions. The most famous among them were the Qin Sect and the Yue Sect.
These two traditions ranked among the continent's Xiuzhen powers not because they were particularly strong, but because the Northwest needed at least a couple of names to keep up appearances.
It was precisely these conditions that made the Northwest the region where undead creatures ran most rampant. Unlike other regions, where humans could already suppress nonhuman Xiuzhen creatures, here the two sides still lived alongside one another in mutual hostility.
In Hou Niao's words, it was like Yinling magnified countless times over.
Because of its proximity to the Binxu Desert, the farther northwest one went, the more desolate the region became, until there was not a soul in sight. Both the