Ye Yunyun, among the pinnacle martial artists, was remarkably young. Martial Saint Wu Shu from her hometown, Zhang Tiaoxia from the Central Divine Continent, the boorish old Wang Fusui from the Northern Gulu Continent, and Pei Axiang from the Thunder God Temple in the Snowy Continent, were all advanced in years.

Ye Yunyun dearly wished to know just how weighty the fists and feet of a pure martial artist who could exchange blows with Cao Ci and was also his contemporary, truly were. How profound their martial principles, how sublime their martial arts!

Aboard the painted ship, as it sailed into a sea of clouds, the surrounding mist filled the air, invigorating the spirit.

The old woman was white-haired and hunched.

In her younger days, she had held a golden edict for summoning rain, revealed her true form, soared through the clouds and mist, and brought rain to the earth and rivers, bestowing blessed showers.

A young maiden beside her held a small hand warmer in both hands. Due to its small size, it was also known as a sleeve stove, used to warm hands and ward off the cold. It was made of bronze, with charcoal inside and woven bamboo strips on the outside.

The party looked down upon the earth. In sparsely populated areas, the verdant mountains and clear waters remained unchanged. However, along the courses of the great rivers, the majestic cities and towns that were once built by the water’s edge were now mostly ruins, a scene of devastation, a truly wretched sight.

Ye Yunyun couldn’t help but ask, “Has the Yuan clan of Dayuan not yet restored their kingdom?”

Otherwise, with the foundation of the former Dayuan Dynasty, after so many years of recuperation, the people should not be so impoverished and lifeless.

She increasingly felt that Yun Caotang should not only lift the ban on landscape gazettes but also establish an agency specifically for collecting gazettes from various mountains.

Xue Huai sighed, explaining the reasons to his master. It turned out that the old Dayuan Dynasty had long since fallen apart. Now, the lands were divided into three, with three scions of the imperial family from mere fiefdoms each being supported as emperor, establishing their own nations. The Dayuan clan was one of the few dynasties in Tongye Continent that dared to “bite off more than they could chew,” gathering armies successively at the border and in the capital to resist the tidal wave of barbaric demonkin armies that swept across the land. As a result, the number of cities that were completely razed, including the capital, reached as many as seven, causing widespread devastation and severely depleting their vitality. Therefore, they could no longer be compared to the Yu Dynasty, which was once of comparable strength.

The ruins of the old capital and other places had become veritable ghost cities, with malevolent aura soaring into the sky. Except for ghost cultivators, Qi refiners below the level of earth immortals would generally take a detour, avoiding such “bad luck.”

“Apart from a few teams led by virtuous scholars from the academies, along with the recorded cultivators from various peaks, who have entered the ghost cities to search for hidden demonkin, the three separatist forces have also spared no effort in dispatching offerings to pave the way, bringing a large number of Qi refiners to escort soldiers into the cities to collect corpses. They spent a large amount of talismans and immortal coins, and even held several water and land rituals to guide the souls of the dead, but with little effect.”

Besides them, only rogue cultivators would feign…