Chapter 1292: Beast Tide

Han Li left the alley entrance and continued to stroll around nearby.

Soon after, on another street, he discovered the true reason he had left the Heaven-East Trading Company group: a bookstore specializing in various ancient texts and classics.

He walked in without drawing attention.

The bookstore was quite large, offering a vast array of books, including astronomy, geography, and various miscellaneous studies from different schools of thought.

As it was just an ordinary mortal bookstore, one naturally couldn't expect to find jade slips or cultivation-related books.

Han Li wasn't interested in useless books; his gaze fell entirely on texts describing the Spirit Realm's environment and customs.

Only through these texts could he gain a preliminary understanding of the Spirit Realm, no longer being completely ignorant of everything.

He unceremoniously selected several thick books and finally purchased a map of the nearby Qin region from the bookstore.

Han Li didn't carry much conventional currency, but spirit stones were extremely rare for ordinary mortals. Upon paying with a low-grade spirit stone, the bookstore owner was overjoyed and even gave him some silver in change.

Carrying the books in one hand, he found a restaurant, sat down in an inconspicuous corner, ordered a few simple dishes, and quietly began to flip through the books.

Although Han Li's divine sense could not leave his body, his photographic memory remained. Despite the extraordinary thickness of each book, he read them at an astonishing pace, calmly imprinting every single word firmly into his mind.

Han Li's expression remained calm, but his heart churned with the growing understanding of the books' content.

Leaving aside other matters, the detailed descriptions of the Spirit Realm's environment and geography alone left Han Li deeply astonished.

It turned out that the Heavenly Origin Realm, often mentioned by the people from the Heaven-East Trading Company during their journey, was actually a human territory ruled by Emperor Tianyuan, one of the Human Race's Three Sovereigns.

In addition, human settlements also included the Black Tortoise Realm, controlled by Emperor Xuanwu, and the Heavenly Spirit Realm, controlled by Emperor Tianmiao. These two emperors were commonly referred to as "Emperor Ba" and "Emperor Ling." Emperor Tianyuan, who was originally a human body refiner but later cultivated Confucian methods, was known as the Confucian Emperor. The Heavenly Origin Realm, which he governed, also had customs and practices most similar to the Human Realm where Han Li came from.

One could say his luck was quite good.

These three human territories were incredibly vast, each containing thousands of large and hundreds of smaller human cities.

According to the books' classification of cities, Anyuan City, which could accommodate nearly a hundred million people, was indeed considered a small city in the Spirit Realm. Other medium and large cities far surpassed Anyuan City in both area and population. Heavenly Origin City, where Emperor Tianyuan resided, was so vast that its size was comparable to a small country in the Human Realm.

However, compared to the main human cities in the other two realms, Heavenly Origin City was still the most conventional.

This was because Xuanwu City, where Emperor Xuanwu resided, was built on the back of an ancient giant tortoise called "Can Ling," forming a slowly moving colossal city on the sea. Emperor Ling's Heavenly Spirit City was even more extraordinary, constructed directly on a Sky-Reaching Spirit Tree said to have a diameter of a hundred li and capable of reaching the Immortal Realm.

Han Li's astonishment upon reading this was naturally profound.

What surprised him even more was yet to come.

According to these texts, in addition to the Three Sovereign Realms inhabited by humans, there were also the Seven Demon Lands nearby, ruled by seven great demon kings. The relationship between the Demon Race and the Human Race was surprisingly half-enemy, half-friend.

This was because even the combined area of the three realms and seven demon lands was merely a drop in the ocean within the Spirit Realm.

Beyond the regions ruled by these two races lay the domains of other exotic beings.

Most of these beings were native inhabitants of the Spirit Realm, such as countless savage ancient beasts and ancient giant races. There were also other communal exotic races that, like humans, forcefully broke through boundaries to arrive in this realm. Although not many of these races were encountered, the known ones were all powerful races, no less formidable than humans or demons, each possessing unique divine abilities, their strength in no way inferior to the Human and Demon Races.

Furthermore, in the Spirit Realm, there were many individuals almost as powerful as immortals from the True Immortal Realm, such as the terrifying existences Han Li already knew of, like Luokun, Kunpeng, and True Dragons, who could, to a certain extent, ignore the power of dimensional boundaries.

Amidst such numerous dangers, though powerful cultivators and demons emerged in both human and demon races, they could only barely gain a foothold in the Spirit Realm. Although they were largely hostile towards each other in normal times and occasionally engaged in minor skirmishes, when facing powerful enemies, the two races had no choice but to join forces to resist.

This situation only significantly improved after the formal establishment of the Three Sovereign Realms and the Seven Demon Lands.

This was because the first generation of Three Sovereigns and Seven Demon Kings, along with many powerful cultivators from the Human Race and powerful demons, jointly set up a colossal grand formation that enveloped all three realms and seven lands.

It was said that this formation was profoundly mysterious and divine, an ancient immortal formation passed down from the True Immortal Realm. It specifically targeted overly powerful exotic beings; the stronger an individual was, the more they would be blocked by this restriction, preventing them from entering the areas protected by the formation. Conversely, exotic beings with strength equivalent to mid-to-low level demon beasts were not subject to this restriction.

This colossal grand formation had a total of ten formation eyes, distributed across the three human realms and the seven demon lands.

The formation eyes in the demon beast lands were not mentioned in the book, but those in the Three Sovereign Realms were the Heavenly Origin Sacred Mountain where Heavenly Origin City was located, the ancient tortoise "Can Ling" in the Black Tortoise Realm, and the Sky-Reaching Spirit Tree where Heavenly Spirit City stood. Unless the Sacred Mountain, the ancient tortoise, or the Spirit Tree could be destroyed, the human-controlled restrictions would remain intact.

The formation eyes within the human realms were thus incredible, and it was believed that the other formation eyes in the seven demon lands would certainly not be simple either.

If those powerful beings truly wished to invade the areas occupied by humans and demons, it would be wishful thinking unless they could simultaneously contend with the power of all ten formation eyes.

It was by relying on this super immortal formation that the Human and Demon Races could prosper and flourish in the vast Spirit Realm, ultimately securing their place.

As for the true size of the entire Spirit Realm, no one had ever fully explored it since the Human Race first appeared there. Its vastness could only be described as boundless and endless.

Upon reading this, a trace of doubt arose in Han Li's mind. Given how small the human-controlled area was in the Spirit Realm, how could it be guaranteed that cultivators ascending from lower realms would accurately land within the regions controlled by the two races? If one were to land outside the colossal immortal formation, wouldn't it be extremely dangerous?

The point of doubt in Han Li's mind was not mentioned in these books, so he had to temporarily set it aside.

Through some descriptions in the books, Han Li also discovered that, overall, the Demon Race in the Spirit Realm was slightly stronger than the Human Race.

However, human high-level cultivators were marginally stronger than their demon counterparts.

This created a strange balance between the two races, leading to the first generation of Three Sovereigns and Seven Demon Kings sitting down together to establish a series of agreements aimed at protecting the interests of both races.

These agreements included stipulations that high-level human cultivators within human territories were not allowed to arbitrarily clear out low- and mid-level demon beasts residing in remote areas, nor could they participate in suppressing the beast tides that regularly erupted in various cities. Similarly, within demon territories, humans were not to be wantonly plundered or slaughtered; instead, designated protected areas for human habitation had to be established.

The reason for such agreements was naturally that when the two races initially divided the three realms and seven demon lands, the residential areas of humans and demons were highly intermingled. Although they had tried their best to select areas with the highest concentrations of humans and demon beasts for division, significant numbers of the opposing race naturally still existed within each other's territories.

For high-level human cultivators and demon cultivators, this was naturally not an issue; they could easily relocate. However, for ordinary, unsophisticated demon beast populations and common humans, it was simply impossible to easily travel such long distances. They could only honestly remain where they were, continue their lives, and accept the rule of the other race.

Initially, there were naturally bloody incidents of wanton slaughter against the opposing race. The Human and Demon Races even fought several major wars over this, and it was only after numerous twists and turns that the current agreements were signed.

Of course, these texts in Han Li's hands only mentioned the most important types of agreements, and not in great detail. However, regarding the beast tides, he specifically chose a related book and gained a rather clear understanding.

The so-called "beast tides" were simply instances where common beasts, due to their excessive reproductive capacity and the protection afforded by the agreements between the Three Sovereigns and Demon Kings (preventing high-level human cultivators from wantonly clearing them out), were forced to fight among themselves for territory and survival every so often.

However, if human cities existed near these areas, the low-level demon beasts born among these creatures would, by tacit agreement, lead their uncultivated kin in semi-suicidal attacks towards the human cities.

Consequently, most human cities, with the exception of some exceptionally large ones, would regularly suffer from beast tides. The more remote the medium and small cities were, the more frequently they would encounter these beast invasions.

Although very few cities had actually been breached by hordes of beasts over the years, each time a beast tide erupted, low-level human existences would undoubtedly suffer heavy casualties.

However, precisely because of this, low-level body refiners and cultivators frequently experienced sudden breakthroughs in their bottlenecks at the brink of life and death. Compared to the casualties among ordinary personnel, these breakthroughs were naturally more valuable, ultimately increasing the overall strength of the entire Human Race in the Spirit Realm.

Given this situation where misfortune and fortune were intertwined, the high-level human existences in the Three Sovereign Realms tacitly allowed the continuation of the beast tides, showing no intention of altering the agreements with the Demon Race.

The timing of beast tide eruptions varied for each city, but the most frequent and common types were only two: wolf tides, typically found in grasslands, and snake tides, capable of surviving in various regions.

Both types of beast hordes were renowned for their powerful reproductive abilities, almost certainly triggering a beast tide approximately every hundred years.

If a city happened to encounter two or more beast hordes erupting simultaneously during a beast tide, it would naturally become a grand beast tide, and the immense danger was self-evident. The few times human cities had been breached by beast hordes in the past were almost entirely due to grand beast tides.

Therefore, if a city's high-ranking officials discovered that a grand beast tide was about to erupt nearby, they would naturally be terrified, frantically summoning nearby body refiners and low-level cultivators, and immediately tightening their defenses to prepare for a battle of life and death.

As Han Li read this, he let out a soft sigh and finally closed the last book. There was no doubt that the city he was currently in was about to experience a beast tide, and given its proximity to the grasslands, it was likely to be the infamous wolf tide. However, judging by the city's palpable tension, he hoped he wouldn't actually encounter a grand beast tide.

He silently drank the cup of weak wine before him, narrowing his eyes as he pondered.