The scorching sun baked Chang'an City's towering palace walls and sprawling halls, staining heaven and earth gold. Yet beneath this extreme heat and seemingly stagnant silence, the vast war machine that was Hua Country was undergoing internal tempering and profound consolidation far beyond anything the outside world imagined, like oil boiling over a raging fire. The blazing sun became both the finest cover and the harshest whetstone.
West of Chang'an City, the Royal Training Grounds lay utterly exposed to the fierce sun, gleaming gold like a boundless desert. Heat rolled in waves, and sweat poured like rain. Yet every day before dawn, several figures entered this unforgiving place, braving the sun and heat, using heaven and earth as their furnace and the blazing sun as fuel to temper their martial arts and wills.
Clad in a thin green battle robe, Guan Yu stood proudly atop the highest stone platform at the center of the Martial Arts Training Ground, letting the scorching sunlight strike his resolute face. His eyes were closed. Rayquaza's draconic might, which commanded wind, clouds, and sky, intertwined with his own vast, surging Conqueror's Haki, forming a strange, invisible force field around him. The steaming heat quietly subsided within three feet of him, and the churning air currents curved around him and settled. He was undertaking an extreme form of cultivation-comprehending the resonance between "heaven" and "righteousness." The Green Dragon Crescent Blade stood planted blade-first in the ground beside him, its red tassel whipping wildly in the hot wind like a dormant crimson dragon. Suddenly, he opened his Phoenix Eyes, brilliant light bursting from them like two bolts of lightning splitting the clear sky! He did not draw his blade, merely held two fingers together like a sword and slashed through the air! Hiss! An intensely condensed arc