Departure

"Junwu. Your father has returned."

Leaning against the gate tower, Xu Yuan held Li Junwu's already cold corpse in his arms. His gaze calmly stretched toward the distant horizon as he spoke the first words to her since her passing.

A Body Fusion cultivator's flesh could remain uncorrupted for decades. She still looked as she had in life, but she would never answer him again.

At dawn's break, the line traced by the rising sun across the earth cleaved the world in two. It swept from east to west, half in light, half in shadow.

A cloud of dust appeared on the horizon still shrouded in night—a vast, rolling cloud of dust that had arrived belatedly.

The earth trembled and groaned. Through the rising sand and dust, countless armored heavy cavalry could vaguely be seen.

The Desert Wolf Demon Cavalry had arrived.

They reached the Prefecture City on the dawn of the fourth day.

Amid yellow sand swirling through the skies, Western Pacification Prefecture City, steeped in death, welcomed its first breath of life from the outside world. The soldiers within opened the damaged gates and received their brother troops into the city.

Yet beneath the gate tower, there was none of the usual chaotic clamor of soldiers entering the city. It was so quiet that it felt strange.

Other than the snorts and hoofbeats of the Demon Horses beneath them, not a sound came from the vast procession of the Desert Wolf Demon Cavalry as they entered the city. They silently watched this enormous city before them, one that was at once familiar and unfamiliar.

Most of the Western Pacification Army soldiers who had lived through the Tachao upheaval had already grown old. This generation of the Western Pacification Army had grown up amid Great Yan's strength and prosperity,