Beneath the gateway.
There was a man.
His blood-red hair spilled over his shoulders, the strands drifting ever so faintly within this windless Starry Sky Forbidden Zone, as though he himself were the only wind amid this dead silence.
A long saber rested in his right hand.
The saber lay across his knees. Its blade was ancient and unadorned, entirely a dark, dull black. No edge could be seen, no cold gleam discerned. Yet as it lay there in silence, the starry sky for ten thousand miles around seemed to lower itself slightly beneath the saber's presence.
He sat cross-legged atop that dried immortal blood, his back like a mountain, utterly motionless.
Stardust from untold years had accumulated upon his robes. It had seeped deep into the fabric, becoming one with the garment, as though he had sat here for far too long—so long that even the dust of time had accepted him as part of this place.
He simply sat there.
Neither speaking, nor moving, nor opening his eyes.
No one knew he was here. No one remembered that within this forbidden zone stood such a figure, guarding this place for hundreds of millions of years, day after day.
Yet throughout the Starry Sky Forbidden Zone, the vast baleful aura lingering around the gateway—still not fully dispersed after hundreds of millions of years—remained obediently dormant at the outskirts beneath this figure's aura, not daring to cross the Thunder Pool by even half a step.
Like a pack of tamed ancient beasts, they encircled him and bowed their heads in silence.
Baili Zhonghu.
Grand Marshal Baili of the War Realm Camp, Eternal Ancient Immortal Territory.
In that earth-shattering war of the Old Era, he had guarded the Star Gate alone. With his blood, his life, and this saber, he had