Lord Fuyuan!

The Royal Capital.

Upper Capital.

Dawn was just breaking, a thread of golden light rising over the distant horizon.

Jiang Ning stopped, his boot soles stirring up one last wisp of dust on the main road.

As he halted, gazes immediately converged on him from all around the road.

Anyone with a little experience could tell that Jiang Ning, who had appeared so abruptly, was a martial artist of considerable strength.

But unlike elsewhere, the passing merchants and travelers merely glanced at him twice before going about their business. None showed fear or gave him a wide berth.

At that moment, Jiang Ning had no attention to spare for them.

He raised his head, and the towering dark silhouette ahead abruptly filled his vision.

The Royal Capital's walls resembled a black dragon stretched across the earth, their bricks of cast dark iron gleaming coldly in the morning sun.

Between the battlements, armored imperial guards could be faintly seen patrolling with halberds in hand.

Those towering walls stood like a sheer divide cleaving heaven from earth.

They rose so high that even ordinary birds could scarcely clear them, let alone accomplished martial artists attempting to scale them without tools.

In Jiang Ning's estimation, perhaps only grandmasters who had attained celestial unity could cross those walls without outside assistance.

Yet a mechanical crossbow stood every ten paces atop the walls, and the cold glint of their bolts made it clear that these were no ornaments, but deadly weapons capable of devouring lives.

His gaze then traveled along both sides of the walls.

Shrouded in the thin morning mist, they stretched for untold miles before finally vanishing into fog the dawn had yet to penetrate.

For a moment, they gave the illusion of having split the entire world in two.

"So this is