Lively

The cold wave moving south had finally reached Hongnong. A curtain of rain shrouded the Immortal Mist Mountain Range, which stretched for thousands of miles. Inside the mountain city, bluestone-brick roads had long been laid throughout. Colorful silk umbrellas passed through the markets, and as lanterns began to glow, the flourishing scene was like a painting. Compared to Jiangnan's mist and rain, these rain-veiled mountains and waters possessed a sterner purity.

The Heavenly Yuan Grand Assembly remained prosperous and bustling, laughter and cheerful chatter filling the city. Yet this had become a privilege belonging only to mortals, to the ignorant.

Once they learned that the Prime Minister's Estate—the behemoth born for war from the very day it was founded—had quietly begun turning its gears, they understood. From Beifeng City in the far north to the Heavenly Oversight Tower in the Southern Frontier, from Western Pacification Prefecture City in the Western Regions to Jiangnan by the Eastern Sea, the clouds of war had already blanketed all of Great Yan.

The Tianyuan Grand Competition, once a grand feast for the young, had lost its former meaning. Like a declaration of war, it had delivered this message to the sects gathered here with no room for compromise.

The Sect Alliance's spearheads began converging around Hongnong. Iron hooves bathed in rain, long hawks struck the clouds, and mountains of war supplies were slowly transported in under the command of the Sect Alliance, that colossal entity.

Long Night had arrived. War was at hand.

The cultivator gathering area near Everbright Street had grown far more bleak and deserted than when the competition began. More than half the disciples from the sects who had once gathered here to join in the grand occasion had already departed.

Some had come for the Sect Alliance, traveling beneath stars