In the eastern Northern Netherworld Domain lay Sunset Glow Valley.
The terrain here was high, its mountains and waters beautiful. It looked like a place of cultivation from a tale of the strange.
And it had been. Before Nine Nether Hall destroyed the Azure Mist Sect, the sect had flourished here. Its ancestor, a master at the Eighth Layer of the Extreme Realm, had been a celebrated figure throughout the region.
But times had changed. After more than a century, even the Azure Mist Sect's name had faded from public memory in the east, leaving only the ruins of its mountain gate, strewn with broken bricks and tiles.
Those ruins lay exposed across Sunset Glow Valley like bloodied heads, a constant warning to the restless powers nearby.
Judging by the results, Nine Nether Hall's annihilation of the sect had worked.
They had made their message plain to the world: anyone who made trouble for a direct disciple of the hall had better be prepared to see their entire family destroyed!
Whatever the reason, no one was to lay a hand on a direct disciple of Nine Nether Hall.
Even the Azure Mist Sect ancestor's head had been hung above Sunset Glow Valley, left to the wind and sun.
Yet the old man's eyes had remained wide with fury. It was hard to imagine what he had seen before he died.
Recently, however, someone had taken down that weather-beaten head.
And that was not all. Over the past two days, more than a thousand figures had appeared at the Azure Mist Sect's old site, abandoned for over a century because no one had dared rebuild its mountain gate.
More than half the fallen buildings had been rebuilt, dispelling much of the mountain gate's air of decay.
An outsider who knew nothing