When Han Li departed from the alley, he continued his stroll.
Not long after, Han Li eventually discovered his main objective for departing from the Heavenly East Enterprise, a store that specialized in selling records.
Han Li walked into it without batting an eye.
The bookstore was on the larger side and was abundant with books, covering topics ranging from astronomy to miscellaneous topics.
But since it was a bookstore for mortals, it didn’t contain any jade slips or records of cultivation.
Han Li only had eyes on the records that were useful to him, particularly those covering the customs and circ.u.mstances in the spirit realm.
It is only with this that he’ll be able to take his first step into understanding the spirit realm.
He bluntly scooped up several books and picked out a map of the nearby surroundings.
As Han Li didn’t have any gold or silver on him, he could only pay using a low-grade spirit stone. The store owner was overjoyed by this and hurried back to give him his change in silver.
With the books in hand, he sought out a restaurant and sat in an unremarkable corner. After ordering a few common dishes, he began to look through the books.
Although Han Li’s spiritual sense wasn’t able to leave his body, he still possessed his amazing memory. Despite how impressively thick a few of the books were, Han Li calmly flipped through them at astonis.h.i.+ng speeds and imprinted each and every word in his mind.
During this time, his face remained unphased, but he continued to turn through the books with an understanding of everything he read.
Let alone anything else, merely the detailed descriptions relating to the spirit realm’s circ.u.mstances left him shocked.
The Heavenly Origin Region that the Heavenly East Enterprise mentioned was actually one of the human territories ruled by one of the three human sovereigns, the Heavenly Origin Sage.
The other territories that were occupied by humans are the North Sky Hegemon’s Black Tortoise Mirror, and Emperor Heavenwonder’s Heavenly Spirit Region. These two sovereigns were respectively known as the ‘Hegemon’ and ‘Spirit Emperor’. The human body refiners originated from the Heavenly Origin Sage, and later founded the Confucian school as well, earning him the name of the ‘Scholar Emperor’. He ruled over the Heavenly Origin Region and had the social customs that were most similar to Han Li’s mortal realm.
This was quite fortunate for him.
The three human clans occupied a vast region, containing anywhere from several hundred settlements to over a thousand.
According to the book, a city of a hundred million people was considered a small city in the spirit realm. Other large cities far exceeded the land and scope of An Yuan City. Heavenly Origin City in particular where the Heavenly Origin Sage resides was nearly the size of a small country.
However, Heavenly Origin City was also the most ordinary of the three human capital cities.
The Hegemon’s Black Tortoise City was constructed on the back of a tremendous huge tortoise known as Can Ling. It was a huge city that could slowly move through the sea. And the Spirit Emperor’s Heavenly Spirit City was even more miraculous. It was built on a tree over fifty kilometers wide. It was said to be able to reach the Immortal Realm.
When Han Li read this, he was shocked as one could imagine. But what amazed him even more was what he read next.
According to the record’s introduction, in addition to the region of the three sovereigns, there were also the neighboring lands of the seven demon kings. The demon clan and the human clans could be said to have a half friendly half hostile relations.h.i.+p.
The reason why this was the case was that the area the three human sovereigns and the seven demon kings ruled over was only a small drop the sea known as the spirit realm.
The land outside their domain was ruled by the clans of other creatures.
Most of these creatures were indigenous to the spirit realm. There were also countless types ranging from savage ancient beasts to giants and even pseudo humans. In addition, there were also other creatures that arrived at the spirit realm by ripping open spatial tears. Although there aren’t many of these clans, they were a powerful force that was hostile towards humans and demons alike. They also possessed their own unique abilities, allowing them to rival humans and demons in power.
In addition to this, there were also many powerful individuals in the spirit realm as one might expect. There were the mythical beasts of legends, fearsome existences like true dragons that could ignore the laws of the world.
Although many vastly powerful characters emerged from the demons and humans, they were only capable of having a standing the spirit realm. Although humans and demons viewed each other with hostility normally, when they faced an even larger threat, they had no choice but to cooperate.
This led to an official founding of the lands they controlled.
In the past, many extraordinary individuals emerged from the human and demon clans, joining together to erect an exceedingly large spell formation, covering the territories of the humans and the demons.
It is said the spell formation is profoundly powerful and was pa.s.sed down from the Immortal realm. It was said to target extremely powerful members of the foreign creatures. The more powerful they were, the more they were restricted by the formation, rendering them unable to enter the areas affected by the spell formation. However, the formation also wouldn’t have any effect on low and mid-grade demon beasts.
This immense spell formation had over ten formation cores spread throughout the regions of humans and demons.
The book hadn’t mentioned where the formation cores in the demon territories were located, but it did mention how they were located at the three human capitals. Unless they were all destroyed, the spell formation protecting the humans would remain.
Considering how important the formation cores were, they must surely be placed in important areas of the demon territories as well.
If a powerful foreign creature wished to invade the territories of humans and demons, they would have to face the combined power of the ten powerful formation cores.
By relying on this powerful Immortal formation, the human and demon clans were able to prosper and hold a place in the spirit realm.
As for the other areas in the vast realm, humans had never delved too deeply into the world. There were only descriptions of how there were countless lands and distances.
At that point, a trace of doubt appeared in Han Li’s mind. Since the region occupied by humans in the spirit realm was so small, then how were cultivators ascending from the lower realms able to accurately land in the region controlled by humans. It would’ve been incredibly dangerous if he appeared in an area outside the grand Immortal formation.
Han Li felt puzzled, but the book hadn’t mentioned anything else so he could only set the thought aside for the time being.
After going through a few descriptions from the book, Han Li discovered that demons as a whole were more powerful than the human clans, but the humans seemed to possess more powerful cultivators.
As a result, the two clans formed an odd equilibrium and the three sovereigns and seven kings agreed to a defensive pact as well as several other treaties.
One of these agreements noted that high-grade cultivators couldn"t arbitrarily suppress low-grade demon beasts of remote areas and couldn"t partic.i.p.ate in defending human cities from periodic beast waves. In addition, demons couldn"t pillage humans at will and they needed to establish territories where humans could gather and be protected.
When the humans and demons divided their land, the territories of the humans and demons were mixed to a vast degree. Although they chose areas most populated by humans and demons, there were still large numbers of either race that lived in other areas.
The high-grade human and demon cultivators naturally had no problem with this and decided to move them.
However, demon beasts that have yet to gain sentience and ordinary human mortals weren’t able to easily move long distances. They could only continue to live on their original lands and accept the rule of another clan.
From the beginning, there would be wanton slaughter of either side, and war was waged several times. After much turmoil, another agreement was eventually pa.s.sed.
Of course, the book in Han Li’s possession only detailed the most important points and hadn’t mentioned them in detail. As for matters relating to the beast wave, he picked out a book for that in particular.
The so-called beast waves would occur when ordinary beasts would reproduce in too great a number. Since high-grade individuals couldn"t interfere as a result of previous agreements, every period of a few years, the demons and humans had no choice but to slay one another to protect their own lives.
However, if there were human settlements in the region, low-grade demon beasts could lead the beast wave into a human settlement in a half-suicidal charge.
As a result, apart from a few large cities in particular, most human cities would periodically encounter a beast wave.
Although there weren’t many true attacks on human settlements, each beast wave would leave a huge number of casualties in their wake.
Because of this, low-grade body refiners and cultivators had their fates tied together. While ordinary mortals would die, it was also a time for cultivators and refiners to break through their bottlenecks and be honed in powerful characters.
With both disaster and fortune simultaneously occurring, the high-grade human cultivators tacitly allowed the beast waves to continue and held no intention of altering the agreement with the demon clans.
Each beast wave on a city didn’t follow a strict schedule, but there were two types of beast waves that were most commonly seen. They would be the wolf waves from gra.s.slands and serpent waves from other regions.
The two types of beasts had powerful reproductive ability and were bound to launch a beast wave every hundred years or so.
If a city were to encounter two or more types of beasts in a beast wave, it would be considered a grand beast wave with far greater danger. In the past, all the breaches into human cities seemed to have occurred with grand beast waves.
Therefore, if the city knew a grand beast wave was about to occur, the higher echelon of the city would be struck with fear and do their utmost to gather together the nearby body refiners and low-grade cultivators in preparation for the upcoming battle of survival.
When Han Li saw this, he sighed and slowly closed the book.
There was without question that the city was going to experience another beast wave. Furthermore, with the gra.s.slands being so close to the city, it will be a wave of wolves. However, the nervousness of the city revealed that this was a grand beast wave.
He silently picked up the cup of watered wine before him and he narrowed his eyes in thought.