The skies of the far north had never felt as suffocatingly oppressive as they did that day.
It was noon, when the pallid sun should have reached its zenith and shed its meager trace of warmth.
Yet now, the entire firmament had turned a sickly grayish purple, like a burial shroud soaked in clotted blood, weighing heavily overhead.
At the sun's edge, a dense smear of inky darkness gnawed away at its remaining radiance, like the maw of a ravenous primordial beast.
As the light rapidly dimmed, the temperature plummeted. Even the bitter astral wind that howled year-round atop Black Mountain seemed to have its throat seized by an invisible hand, falling into an unnerving, deathly stillness.
An unsettling tang of static filled the air—the anguished cry of the earth's magnetic field as yin and yang fell into chaos.
"Heavenly Dog Devours the Sun, yin and yang reverse... the time has come."
At the foot of Black Mountain, within a vast pool of shadow, the Mountain-Moving Tribe's chieftain stood with his granite-like torso bare. His black-iron muscles gleamed with a cold metallic luster in the faint light.
A black-iron totem pole weighing fifty thousand jin and covered in primeval runes rested on his shoulder as he looked up at the celestial body about to be swallowed completely by darkness.
The shadow of the eclipse reflected in his golden pupils, where a frenzied wildness burned.
Behind him, three hundred of the Black Mountain clan's finest warriors stood ready to die.
They made not a sound, even suppressing their breathing to the utmost.
Resolute fighting spirit blazed in every pair of eyes—the resolve to storm Great Zhou's forbidden grounds and trade their lives for those of their enemies.
"Brother Chu, it's time you set off."
Mountain-Mover did not turn around. His voice