Beneath the gate.
There was a man.
Blood-red hair spilled over his shoulders. In this windless forbidden region of the starry sky, its strands stirred ever so slightly, as though the man himself was the only wind within this deathly stillness.
He held a long saber in his right hand.
The saber lay across his knees, its blade ancient and plain, without a single ornament. It was deep black throughout, revealing neither a keen edge nor a cold gleam. It simply lay there in silence, yet beneath its aura, the starry sky for ten thousand miles around seemed to sink a little lower.
Head bowed, he sat cross-legged upon that dried immortal blood, his spine like a mountain, utterly motionless.
Untold years of stardust had accumulated upon his robes. It had seeped deep into the fabric and become one with it, as though he had sat here for far, far too long-so long that even the dust of time had accepted him as part of this place.
He simply sat there.
Without speaking, without moving, without opening his eyes.
No one knew he was here. No one remembered that within this forbidden region, such a figure had remained on guard, day after day, for hundreds of millions of years.
Yet throughout the forbidden region, the vast killing intent lingering around the gate, still not wholly dispersed after hundreds of millions of years, lay obediently dormant at the outskirts beneath this figure's aura, not daring to cross the boundary by even half a step.
Like a pack of tamed ancient beasts, they surrounded him, silently bowing their heads.
Bai Li Zhong Hu.
The grand marshal of the War Realm Camp in the Eternal Immortal Frontier.
During that World-Shocking War of the old era, he had guarded the star gate alone. With