Just as Hou Niao had expected, less than three days after he reported his successful breakthrough, the Pastoral Marshal Prefecture sent him a Proclamation, ordering him to leave immediately for Yinling to reinforce the Quanzhen presence there.
Yinling was a very unusual place. It could not be called a town, because few humans lived there, and those who did were mostly scattered among villages. Yet in terms of territory, it was larger than most towns and cities, so it counted as a county, one of the thirty-nine territories of the Great Wind Plains.
There were three places in the Great Wind Plains that were the worst possible choices from any perspective: Bimu Hill, Black Marsh, and Yinling. Demons, monsters, ghosts, and fiends ran rampant in all three, and human strength was weak. Since these territories offered little of value and had small populations, the Jincheng branch of the Quanzhen Sect had no time to clear out their monsters. Or rather, they had tried several times, but to little effect. Wildfire could never burn them out; the spring breeze blew, and they sprang up again...
Yinling lived up to its name: ghosts were its most numerous inhabitants, followed by monsters wandering the fields, and finally the human bandits who gathered there in gangs. Of course, the bandits generally did not rob the local residents-not because they were kind, but because the locals were simply too poor. They usually plundered the surrounding regions, then returned to Yinling, using it as their base.
For anyone posted here, the dangerous surroundings were a secondary concern. The greatest problem was poverty!
Slaying monsters was actually profitable for cultivators. Their bodies, fur, and hair could all be exchanged for money, so risking one's life would at least bring some income and provide an incentive. But what