In the autumn of the 107,921st year of the Great Wilderness Calendar, demons invaded the realm, their blades pointed straight at the eastern frontier's gateway—Dragonbreak Cliff.
At that time, the Human Race's armies were at the height of their strength. They had won battle after battle and had already forced the demon main force back to the Crimson Blood Wasteland, three hundred li east of Dragonbreak Cliff.
Marshal Yue Wuchang commanded one hundred thousand valiant Yue Family Army soldiers, along with a million cultivators from allied forces across the land. Holding the natural defenses, their morale soared like a rainbow.
All it would take was one decisive battle to cripple the demon main force, reclaim the lost lands, and perhaps even drive the front line back beyond the natural barrier.
Yet beneath the Great Wilderness Human Race's highest council, undercurrents surged.
The peace faction, led by Great Elder Xuan Yin of Soaring Void Palace and Master Netherbone, sect master of the Ghost King Sect, had obtained top-secret intelligence from behind the demon lines:
The demon imperial clan had successfully contacted their ancestral realm somewhere unknown. An expeditionary army far larger than the current force, carrying forbidden ancient Demonic Artifacts, was crossing the barrier between realms. It would reach the battlefield within a year at the latest.
When that time came, even if the Human Race poured in the strength of its entire domain, they might still be unable to withstand it.
The demons also released terms for peace at precisely the right moment: they were willing to use the current line of actual control as the border and sign a ten-thousand-year blood-oath alliance with the Human Race, pledging mutual nonaggression.
The price was that the Human Race had to acknowledge demon rule over the territories they currently occupied and forbid