The empire's territory was vast, and there were many dangerous places. However, there were three of them, and they could be divided into the north and the south according to the region. The Southern Territory occupied two fierce lands. One was the Blood King's Cemetery in the Valley of the Dead behind Satin, the capital of trade, and the other was the Land of Darkness to the northeast of the Iron Spear Territory. The fierce realm of the north was the basin known as the Devil's Throat.
The three great fierce lands were widely known in the empire, but the dangers of the three fierce lands were different.
The Blood King's Cemetery in the Dead Valley was known as the most dangerous place. Even though it wasn't the oldest, even though this fierce land could be traced back to at least two hundred years ago, the Blood King's Cemetery was definitely the most dangerous. It was precisely because of the existence of this fierce land that the empire set up a so-called Ancient Investigation Committee. It was because this fierce land was actually a Celestial Ruin.
Back then, it was a rather famous adventurer team that discovered this ruin. However, in the end, only one person from that team escaped from the Dead Valley. The news of the Blood King's Cemetery came from the survivors. In the next seven or eight years, adventurers continued to enter the valley, but only one or two out of ten could survive. Over the past ten years, more than a hundred adventurer teams had been buried in that valley forever. There were not a thousand adventurers who had become fertilizer for that valley, but there were at least eight hundred. As a result, that originally nameless valley was crowned with the name of the dead.
After that, the empire's gaze finally paid attention to the existence of this fierce land. When it learned that it might be a Celestial Ruin, the empire set up an investigation team. That was the predecessor of the Ancient Investigation Committee. In the next decade, the Imperial Army stationed themselves in the Dead Valley, designating the valley and the Blood King's Cemetery as forbidden areas. In the subsequent research and investigation, shocking news continued to spread.
The investigation found that the Blood King's Cemetery was a pyramid-shaped maze building. The deeper one went underground, the wider the maze became. Moreover, there were terrifying and tyrannical ruins creatures in each level of the maze. The adventurers who had been buried in the Blood King's Cemetery had only gone deep into the fourth floor of the underground maze. After the empire invested its army, the number of levels that the maze had been broken through increased by leaps and bounds.
In just three years, the Imperial Army had advanced to the tenth floor of the Blood King's Cemetery. However, this rapid advancement came at the cost of countless bones. Immediately afterwards, because of the large-scale invasion of the Shadow Duchy, the empire could no longer continue to pour troops into the Blood King's Cemetery, which was like a bottomless pit, so it could only be sealed off. After that, it never restarted.
Over the next hundred years, the empire's research on the Blood King's Cemetery was intermittent. Until this generation of Emperor Tangerio, after listening to the advice of the former Prime Minister, simply released the ban on the Blood King's Cemetery and opened it to all adventurers. Moreover, the Empire had provided corresponding supply points in the first ten floors of the maze that had been cleared in the graveyard for adventurers to rest and recuperate while exploring the maze. Not only did the Empire open the graveyard to adventurers to explore, but it also did not prohibit adventurers from bringing the items they found in the ruins out of the graveyard. However, if adventurers were willing to hand it over to the empire, they would receive a corresponding reward from the empire.
For this reason, the investigation committee had specially set up an appraisal team to help the adventurers appraise the value of the relics in exchange for corresponding rewards.
In this way, the empire would not have to invest too many troops in the Blood King's Cemetery, and it would also be able to continuously recover the relics. As for the adventurers, if they made any discoveries in the Blood King's Cemetery, they would often gain both fame and fortune. There were even many new adventurer teams that used the Blood King's Cemetery as a springboard for their lives. After making a name for themselves in the cemetery, they immediately transformed into a mercenary group. There were countless examples of this.
Of course, since the Blood King's Cemetery was ranked as the most dangerous place, it was not an undeserved reputation. The death rate in this underground maze had always been high, but there were still a large number of adventurers who could not resist the temptation of becoming famous overnight and rushed into the Blood King's Cemetery one after another.
If the danger of the Blood King's Cemetery lay in the tyrannical and terrifying creatures of the ruins, then the evil of the Devil's throat lay in the terrain.
The north is cold.
When you cross the Oselina River, you will find a significant difference in temperature between the north and the south. Those who lived in the Northern Lands for a long time knew that among the four seasons of the year, autumn and winter were especially long, while spring and summer were extremely short. In the North, especially in the area near the imperial capital, Oliska, glaciers that had not melted in a thousand years could be seen everywhere. Especially the Ice Star Port, which was close to the Imperial Capital. That port city was basically built on top of a layer of ten thousand years old ice.
After crossing the Oselina River, there was a city that was known to almost all merchants, and that was Frostwind City. Frost Wind City was located near the Cold Ridge Valley. After the snow and ice on the north side melted, due to the effect of the airflow, the cold current would continue to flow south. When passing through the Cold Ridge Valley, due to the special landform of the valley, a cold wind would constantly blow, which was how Frost Wind City got its name.
Even Frostwind City, which was closest to the Oselina River, was like this, so it was not hard to imagine how cold the Northern Territory was.
But it was in such a place that there was a special terrain like the Devil's Throat.
The Devil's Throat was a basin, but the difference between this basin and the plain was astonishing. Moreover, the center of the basin was a magma zone, and because of the geothermal heat, the high temperature did not subside all year round, so the Devil's Throat had white smoke curling up all year round. That was the result of the basin's heat flow and the plain's cold air meeting. In the basin, there was only a sliver of natural danger that could be crossed.
In the last dark place, there were as many bandits as the hairs on an ox. The forces inside were divided, intertwined, and the situation was complicated.
The Bailey Empire's management of the country was very loose. Otherwise, it wouldn't have allowed the lords to fight for power. In the war between the lords, the only ones who suffered were the citizens. In the beginning, the Land of Darkness was nothing more than a dangerous forest, a place where fierce beasts roamed. However, as time passed, the citizens who had been displaced by the war gradually hid in the Land of Darkness, and the number of bandits began to increase.
As a result, in this lawless land of darkness, there were at least a hundred bandit groups of all sizes. The Fire King who was besieged by Hoey back then came from the Land of Darkness. Originally, according to common sense, not to mention the empire, even the lords of the neighboring territories in the Land of Darkness would never be able to tolerate such a thief's lair standing at their doorstep. However, the Land of Darkness had been here for so many years, and it hadn't been cleaned up by anyone. On the contrary, there were a few large bandit groups inside that were doing well.
Therefore, no one would believe that there was no beneficial relationship between the Lords and the nobles in the Land of Darkness.
Generally speaking, merchant caravans would rather take a detour than pass through the Land of Darkness. However, some beast hunting groups or short-distance caravans would choose to enter the Land of Darkness. Of course, when they passed through, they had to pay a poll tax to one or more bandit groups. This had become the first unwritten rule in the Land of Darkness.
Over time, some people who couldn't live in the territory and didn't dare to really do that life-risking business would gather at the edge of the Land of Darkness and extort merchants under the banner of a certain bandit group. However, these fellows didn't dare to harm anyone's life. Most of the time, they would stare at the small caravans. Sometimes, when they bumped into a caravan with strong guards, they would have to be silent like a cowardly turtle, not daring to jump out to intercept them.
The big shots in the Land of Darkness usually turned a blind eye to these fellows. However, if those fellows stepped over the boundary, they would suffer a calamity. Therefore, for those who made a living, a pair of smart eyes was especially important. This pair of eyes had to distinguish which caravans could eat and where the invisible boundaries in the Land of Darkness were. Only in this way would he be able to keep his job and not be suppressed by those real villains.
Abel had such a pair of eyes.
Abel was only fourteen years old this year, but he had been a spy for the Dark Spear of the Bandits for four or five years. The name of the Bandits sounded impressive, but the Dark Spear was simply a crude wooden spear sharpened from some local black wood. Using this kind of black wood spear as a weapon could only frighten people. When Abel was ten years old, the territorial war broke out. His father took him to the Land of Darkness and died of illness. Abel became an orphan. Fortunately, he was taken in by the leader of the Bandits, Rick. The frightening old man, who was actually extremely timid, always said to Abel, "I can't raise you for nothing. Everyone will have objections, so you have to work too."
Thus, the boy who was only ten years old had to play various roles on the edge of the Land of Darkness. Like a lost boy, a wandering orphan, and so on, to win the sympathy of the passing caravans. After sneaking into the caravan, he was responsible for observing the size, number, and so on of the caravan, so that old man Rick could refer to it and decide whether to extort it.
This went on for four years.
Abel, who had now grown into a tall and thin youth, no longer needed to rely on sympathy to obtain information about the caravan. Now, he relied more on his own eyes. As long as he looked at the size of the caravan, he could roughly estimate the number of people in the caravan. From the traces left behind by the wheels, he could tell the weight of the goods, and so on. It could be said that the Dark Spear Bandits had been able to take root in the Land of Darkness for four years, and Abel had earned a great deal of credit.
In the past four years, the number of times the youth had seen the wrong person could be counted on one hand. As for the invisible boundaries that changed from time to time in the Land of Darkness, they could not escape his eyes.
At this moment, Abel was hiding in the crown of a black tree, biting a green grass core that had just grown out, counting how many copper coins he had saved with his fingers. When the war broke out, the enemy lord\'s army rushed into their small village on the border. The war came so suddenly that Abel\'s family was torn apart. He still remembered the panic and fear on his sister Mena\'s face when she was separated by the crowd.
Every time Abel thought of that little face that was red from the flames of war, he couldn\'t help but clench his fists.
He believed that Mena was still alive, and as long as he saved enough money for the journey, the youth would leave the Land of Darkness.
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