Today's third update: Chapter 3423! 3/4!
"Could he... really be him?"
After a battle whose details were entirely unknown to the outside world, yet had been labeled a "crushing defeat," seven figures returned quietly to the core heartland of humanity, carrying barely concealed exhaustion and dejection. They gathered deep within Yao Palace, the symbol of supreme authority.
The palace doors were tightly shut, its barriers fully activated to block all prying eyes. Only a heavy, oppressive atmosphere lingered in the air.
A review of that battle—and, more importantly, of the mysterious being's true identity—slowly began amid the dead silence.
Hao Jian, covered in dust and still breathing somewhat unsteadily, was the first to break the suffocating silence.
His voice was dry and hoarse, his tiger-like eyes still bloodshot from the fierce battle and filled with lingering confusion.
His question was like a stone cast into a deep pool, stirring up turbulent waves that had long been churning within everyone's hearts.
Yet the only response he received was an even deeper silence.
The other six were all in a near-dazed state, as if their souls had yet to fully return from the battlefield in Huang's domain.
The battle that outsiders had simply summarized as "seven people defeated by the Wild Lord" carried a complexity and frustration that only those who had experienced it firsthand could truly understand.
What unsettled them even more was that Shen-bao's hopeful suggestion before the battle—to confirm whether the Wild Lord was Xu Kun, whom they had longed for day and night, by probing his combat style, power source, and subtle habits through direct confrontation—had completely failed during the fight.
When they faced the Wild Lord, what they felt was not merely the despairing sense of being utterly crushed by an insurmountable gap in strength.
That