He no longer looked as animated as when he had boasted to his daughter about his past bravery. Instead, his expression had grown deeply solemn.
"Qingran."
Jiang Zhan lowered his voice.
"What is it, Father?"
Hearing him, Jiang Qingran raised her head in puzzlement and looked at her father's troubled expression.
"The Outer Dao is not something that crumbles at the first blow."
Jiang Zhan said gravely:
"It is humanity's scourge. If we let our guard slip even a little, it could swallow the entire world at any moment."
Humanity's scourge...
Back in the present.
Dressed in a pear-yellow gown, Jiang Qingran stood atop the wall, thinking of the words her father had spoken when she was still young.
She gazed at the vast army outside the walls, and her thoughts returned to several days earlier-
Thud! Thud!
Suddenly, the ground beneath her feet began to tremble.
Bewildered, Jiang Qingran looked at the two bowls of clear water sitting on a wooden table beside her atop the wall.
Ripples spread across the water in the bowls.
"This is..."
Jiang Qingran murmured.
"All troops, on alert!"
Beside her, Huang Cheng, the legion's marshal, immediately shouted. At the very instant he spoke, the horns sounded again.
Jiang Qingran looked ahead, gazing toward the distant horizon.
The Third and Fourth Armies were still withdrawing, but as the earth began to tremble and the horns sounded within the pass, all four hundred thousand soldiers turned around.
After a brief pause, they immediately began forming ranks again.
As though preparing to fight something.
Then Jiang Qingran saw it.
Beyond the distant horizon, she saw a line of black appear.
It surged forward like a tide.
"What on earth is..."
Jiang Qingran's breath caught, and her heart began to race.
Against that surging black tide, the