Jiangnan, Gantang Circuit.
As the sound of a bell echoed out, the members of the Coastal Li Clan made their way to the clan's Council Hall, deep worry written across every face.
The reason was simple:
"The demons from Jiangbei have come calling. Another sect is about to fall."
"You need to say that? The news has spread across all of Jiangnan. Using the Ten Thousand Man Pit, the Wonder they established in Jiangnan back then, as their foundation, the Demon Sect is launching a massive campaign into Jiangnan."
"Flames of war are rising everywhere in Jiangnan now."
"Forget anything else—take the Talisman Gate, the sect closest to Gantang Circuit. Three suns ago, it was breached by a Foundation Establishment demon. Not a single soul in the sect survived!"
"And the Wine Immortal Cult..."
For a time, everyone in the Council Hall was seized by panic.
There was nothing to be done about it. After all, under the Sword Pavilion's rule in Jiangnan, sects large and small focused mainly on the hundred arts of cultivation. Sects skilled in combat were few and far between.
This had been deliberate on the Sword Pavilion's part. Only in this way would those sects need the Sword Pavilion's protection, allowing the Sword Pavilion to collect protection fees more conveniently. The saddest part was that, after so long, even the sects themselves had come to regard this as perfectly natural, seeing nothing wrong with it at all.
But the Coastal Li Clan was different.
As a newly risen Foundation Establishment Immortal Clan, they had obtained the opportunity presented by the Grotto-Heaven Fragment beneath the waters of Gantang Circuit, rising abruptly through it. And with that rise came ambition.
They were unwilling to have the Sword Pavilion pull out their claws and teeth, reducing them to