Northwest, Kunlun.
Heavy snow swirled beneath the deepening twilight.
Peak after peak stood like heavenly swords, their tips stained with ghastly white blood. A broad glacial river streamed down through the mountains, its light flowing with it, broken ice churning in the water like dragon scales.
A glimmer of silver flickered through the wind and snow, like a bright star tearing open the dusk.
Night was approaching. In the west, the setting sun sank heavily into the earth, like a colossal blood-red eye half-open. The monsters and spirits of Kunlun stirred into activity, their howls shaking the mountains.
Kunlun teemed with monsters and spirits. The Karma Womb had borne three thousand offspring all those years ago, and their scourge lingered even now. With the heavenly epoch returning and the human dao in decline, neither mortals nor cultivators dared approach Kunlun anymore.
Yet that silver light drew steadily closer, finally revealing a human figure. Wearing a silver robe with a sword on his back, he walked upstream into the mountains across a bank of shattered stone. Countless towering, enormous monsters loomed faintly behind him.
He stopped and brushed his hand over the bone-chilling water, his brows drawing together slightly.
A speck of golden lightning instantly sprang from the water, striking like a flood dragon, only to be extinguished in an instant.
The hideous, sinister monsters behind him collapsed one after another, turning into white tribulation ash that mingled with the falling snow. Not a sound escaped them, as though a troupe of paper shadow puppets had fallen apart.
Xu Xuan looked ahead. The river flowed from a lofty mountain wreathed in twilight, spilling through a deep valley and boring through the mountains before converging toward the West Kang Plains.
"The land of ancient lesser yin..."
The farther Xu Xuan advanced, the