A gentle breeze swept up peach blossoms across the sky, carrying their fragrance as it softly teased Floating Life Pass.
The tenderness of those sky-filling peach blossoms spread through the border pass steeped in an air of slaughter, lending this tragic, heroic frontier a touch of poetry.
It was a tenderness laid over bones...
Within the pass, voices bustled and the people lived in peace and happiness. Everything looked so beautiful, as though the carpet of red peach blossoms meant to make the world lay down its fears.
Outside the pass, bones covered the ground, skeletal remains piled like mountains across the wasteland beyond.
Over those scattered bones, countless Demon Beasts with blood-filled eyes were still gnawing on the bodies of fallen soldiers.
Wherever the Demon Beasts passed, corpses became bare bones...
Only a single pass separated them, yet they seemed like two different worlds.
Countless people had piled up their own bones for that seemingly ordinary peace and happiness, keeping everything outside the pass...
Su Mo followed the War King onto Floating Life Pass. The sight of the bones covering the ground outside shook him.
That endless expanse of bones struck straight at Su Mo's mind and soul.
Even as the Human Emperor of the Nine Heavens, he had never seen so many bones...
Yet the moment he turned his head, he saw the world within the pass, filled with tender affection. It was so beautiful within those walls, where peach blossoms bloomed everywhere, that it hardly seemed possible for the two sights to be separated by a single pass.
One pass divided two sides, yet each side was a different painting.
The War King turned toward the silent Su Mo and slowly asked, "Do you know why I had peach blossoms planted throughout Floating Life Pass?"
Su Mo