Northwest Five Guards of Longzuo Prefecture!
With Northwest Guard at its core, this region was vast, but its water resources were exceedingly scarce. Most aristocratic clans relied on livestock raising, mines, or the cultivation of drought-resistant crops.
The famed Northern Heavy Draft Horse was a specialty of the various Northwest Guards. Many aristocratic clans in Longzuo Prefecture purchased and raised heavy draft horses to expand their families' transport capacity.
The entire Northwest Five Guards had eleven Seventh-Rank Aristocratic Clans, while Eighth- and Ninth-Rank Aristocratic Clans were scattered like stars across the vast grassland pastures, too numerous to count. Most members of these clans would never travel farther in their entire lives than Northwest Guard Citadel City.
Northwest Guard Citadel City stood at the edge of the boundless grasslands, its outlines imposing. Its towering, broad walls could easily withstand the charge of a fifth-tier Fierce Beast, while squads of garrison soldiers were stationed atop the arrow towers along the walls.
The sun rose over the horizon, and heaven and earth brightened.
The massive city gates slowly opened. Merchant caravans, common folk, rogue cultivator peddlers, and others who had long been waiting outside entered the Citadel City in orderly succession. Amid the limitless grasslands, humanity occupied only a small portion.
Though the grasslands' produce could not compare to the abundance of resources in the south, they still possessed many unique products. For instance, the famous ordinary grass mushrooms and Spirit Grass Mushrooms grew randomly throughout the plains.
The former were delicious, and when cooked with grassland beef and mutton, made for a rare delicacy. The latter were even rarer and more precious spirit ingredients, useful both as food and as medicinal ingredients in pill formulas.
Yet both types of mushrooms were prized for their freshness. They were best eaten within two or