Spring gave way to autumn, wind and frost returned, and another three years passed in the blink of an eye.
In Layered Mountains Continent, trouble began to stir.
Three years earlier, Barbarian Bone, the Barbarian Clan's grand elder, had advanced to the Celestial Phenomenon Realm. Emboldened, the clan was no longer content to lie low in the Greater Dragon Ridge and began a full-scale assault on human territory.
Faced with the fierce onslaught of a Barbarian Clan backed by a Celestial Phenomenon Realm cultivator, the human forces struggled to hold their ground. They lost territory and suffered defeat after defeat.
At the Willow Clan's ancestral home on Slender Willow Mountain, the elders gathered beneath an oppressive silence.
With several Purple Mansion cultivators among its ranks, the Willow Clan was one of the great powers of Layered Mountains Continent.
That was why, when the Mountain-Chasing Dao had fallen, the clan had acted decisively, swallowing vast tracts of spiritual land and seizing enormous resources.
Later, as the Fire-Worship Cult expanded, the Willow Clan had prepared to cut off a piece of its own flesh to feed the tiger and swear allegiance. Then Sword Lord Huaiyu arrived in Layered Mountains Continent.
Sword Lord Huaiyu slaughtered every god of the Fire-Worship Cult, rendering all the Willow Clan's preparations useless.
After a brief spell of doubt and alarm, the clan confirmed that Sword Lord Huaiyu had no interest in the continent's resources. It acted decisively again, seizing part of the Fire-Worship Cult's legacy.
Those two opportunities alone had fed the Willow Clan to bursting and more than doubled its foundations.
As its foundations grew, so did its ambitions. The Willow Clan hoped to follow the Mountain-Chasing Dao's example and become the new overlord of Layered Mountains Continent.
For that reason, its attitude had remained ambiguous