The vast land of China was divided among the Nine Nations. They cooperated with one another, yet attacked each other as well.
The foundation upon which each empire was established was its powerful military, along with those peerless experts who had burst forth from among ordinary humans and blossomed across the starry skies.
These experts were the cornerstone of imperial security, as well as deadly weapons of slaughter.
A single sword could shatter a city; a single fist could break a nation.
Throughout humanity's long river of history, powerful cultivators like these had appeared more than once.
Their existence made the royal families of the Nine Nations both love and fear them. They were loved because their presence kept the nation's land intact and its prestige from falling. They were feared because if these experts suddenly turned their fists and swords toward their own people and cities—or toward those supreme rulers themselves—who could stand against them?
No one knew which genius statesman had first been struck by inspiration, or how many years of communication and negotiation had passed. In the end, the rulers of the Nine Nations gathered under one roof and signed a pact. Its name had been lost to history, but its contents were roughly as follows: unless faced with the danger of national destruction or a city being razed, no nation would be the first to use a peerless expert.
Several thousand years later, whether because of a lack of competitive drive or the loss of various precious manuals and rare records, peerless experts became fewer and fewer. When one or two finally emerged, they found themselves without an opponent beneath the heavens. After savagely beating the monsters that had appeared across the land, along with a few insignificant little bastards, they wept bitterly for three days