The cultivation earth only has three countries with 2 of them being occupied by human settlements and the other being a barren land with only monsters.
the 2 countries each have different empires that being the Yui empire, the Zhu empire and the Der empire. The Zen country that Lunar is in has both the Der and Zhu empire due to both empires being on equal footing. The Yui country only has the Yui empire (named after themselves) due to the war waged on the Fan empire 500years ago, despite the fact that this allowed revolutionary factions to build strength during the 500years it ended up creating a stronger Yui empire making both the Zhu and Der empires more eager to find a way to get rid of each other.
The revolutionary forces came into existence 50years after the creation of the first few empires. Although the strength and reach of these forces is unknown they are considered a more dangerous foe than the monsters that plague the world, this is on account of the unpredictability of the people and the strong brainwashing inflicted on some of their members in order to increase loyalty and obedience. The revolutionists want to unite the countries by exterminating the royal families and punishing those who interfere with torture or death.
It is said that at first people were not able to cultivate and were only born with innate abilities, to survive against monsters of unknown origins they developed their intelligence finding new found power that could replicate what low tier cultivators could do. This is what is assumed as the first civilization. The knowledge and history of back then was mostly lost to time but from what was recovered we know that "spatial cracks" were closed by those with especially good abilities, but in the end it is unknow weather that civilization survived instead the first records of cultivation were found with evidence and research showing that it was only a few hundred years after the first civilization seemingly disappeared. The time between the presumable start of the civilization to the suspected start of cultivation is known as the dark age.
Inner politics in Zhu:
The emperor has three sons. The youngest is a young genius who gave up on himself after his mothers death (the second wife). The middle son is a cunning ploter who has the support of the Immortal sect. The eldest son is a passive figure that is at the 6th stage of qi refining, since his position is guaranteed he mainly focuses on pr and taking over the emoperes position.
The emporer himself is a revierd man due to his long standing position as a powerhouse who keeps balance in the empire. All 4 sects don't fully oppose the royal family but they inconvenience them as much as possible.
sects and the different paths:
Each empire has 4 powerful sects with a royal family that is either on par or stronger then them. The royal families in Zen is on par with the sects while the royal family in Yui is stronger then all 4 sects making it one of the strongest royal families in history.
4 sects in Zhu: Human sect, Demon sect, Immortal sect, Benevolence sect
4 sects in Yui: Intelligence sect, Martial sect, Weapon sect, King sect
4 sects in Der: Scholar sect, Artifact sect, Alchemy sect, Cat sect