The sky over Yiling City was so dark it seemed ready to drip.
This was no natural sign of changing weather. Under the crush of countless powerful auras, the city's entire Feng Shui formation had grown suffocatingly stagnant.
On the streets, the martial wanderers who usually shouted and strode about with swords at their hips had lowered their voices without thinking. Even their footsteps had grown lighter.
The air held the oppressive stillness of a storm about to break. Even the dullest commoner could smell the faint tang of blood on the wind.
An earthquake was coming to Yiling.
The feeling had not arisen from thin air.
Since morning, the masters of several well-established Martial Arts Halls and the leaders of the Gangs had gone to the Two-Lakes Martial Alliance's headquarters, hoping to see its chief, Guan Yue.
Without exception, every one of them had found the door closed.
The alliance gave everyone the same explanation.
Alliance Leader Guan had caught a slight chill and was recuperating in seclusion. He would receive no visitors.
The World's Number One Grandmaster, whose blood and vitality were as deep as an abyss and as vast as the sea, had caught a slight chill?
It was an excuse that could not have fooled a three-year-old, yet it struck the heads of the major factions like a hammer to the heart.
Those old foxes exchanged glances, wariness in their eyes.
Guan Yue's refusal to see them was itself the clearest possible declaration.
Meanwhile, in the back courtyard of an unremarkable pawnshop in Yiling City, Li Xiang toyed with a dark-gold Juntong token.
Half an hour earlier, he had invoked the token's highest authority. Several secret signals had spread like a spiderweb through channels the Beiyang Warlords had planted years ago across the Two-Lakes Territory.