Three months ago, the Martial World violently churned.
The epicenter of that ripple was at the westernmost edge, the Superwind Cliff (Cho-pung-a) of Jeok-yang region.
The situation had originated from a single beast. A holy beast said to appear once in a thousand years, the Kirin.
Rumors that it had appeared at the Superwind Cliff spreading through the Martial World was the initial trigger.
It was said that he who tames the Kirin will be followed by the entire world, and he who claims its bones will dye the world in blood.
For anyone pursuing strength within the Martial World, it was a massive opportunity they could not refuse. Furthermore, it was an opportunity that was alive and moving without an owner, and its location was distinct.
Regardless of whether they were righteous, unorthodox, or demonic, everyone's eyes flipped.
Countless martial artists, determined to obtain the Kirin, squeezed and flooded into that narrow entrance. They swarmed in indiscriminately, ranging from third-rate weaklings to absolute masters.
Because of this, Mu-cheong suffered first. The walled city flanking the Superwind Cliff was a granary called the rice basket of Central Plains, but in an instant, it suffered a heavy blow as it burst at the seams with foreign martial artists.
Every single inn was packed to capacity every night, and at the narrow entrance leading into the valley, the flags of the righteous, unorthodox, and demonic factions tangled and fluttered as public order collapsed into pieces. At first, it was only martial artists from Pyeong-nam, but soon, martial artists from Pyeong-seo arrived, and before long, warriors swarmed from every corner of the Central Plains. The crop fields of Jeok-yang, which the Thunderclap Martial Academy had protected for decades, were trampled under their lawless footsteps and the city was plunged into chaos.
This mess was given the name the Great Kirin Melee. It was due to the sheer magnitude of the chaos.
However, following the day of the great battle where entire mountain peaks were erased, no one entered or emerged anymore.
Those who entered had either evaporated along with the Kirin or were annihilated, and for those who remained, there was no longer any reason to enter.
After that, there was only rain, even heavier rain, and a moisture that would erase even death.
When rumors first circulated that the Great Kirin Melee had come to an end so simply, the Martial World was not willing to believe it easily.
There was more than one or two hard-to-believe details, but the first among them was the line-up of those who had entered the valley.
Three absolute masters.
One was the new sect master of the Western Saber Sect. The one who had ascended to that position by defeating all seven candidates in a single day during the Blade Emperor selection duel, the Sky-Cleaving Blade Emperor.
Another was an old Taoist of the Supreme Taoist Palace and a renowned scholar of the Martial World. An absolute master—someone whom few could even remember when his face—and was said to suppress the evil energy of an entire region with a single purple sword—
The Violet Void True Sage.
The last one was a leader of the Destruction Demonic Sect. Someone who was said to cut people upon meeting them and eradicate sects upon encountering them—someone whom rumors of death had followed longer than rumors of being alive. A demon in a human form, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord.
And that wasn't all.
Even the Sect Leader of the Hero Gate—had joined them.
The fact that these four individuals entered the same valley on the same day was an event worthy of the unofficial histories.
But for all four to vanish without a trace? And for the Kirin to disappear that very same day?
The circumstances were utterly suspicious.
And yet...
A few days after the peak collapsed, recovery teams from the Supreme Taoist Palace and the Western Saber Sect entered the valley. They were searching for their missing absolute masters. Though unlikely, they hoped to at least retrieve their bodies if they had fallen.
More importantly, their primary goal was to recover the Kirin's remains, should it have died with them.
They scoured the area around the fallen peaks, searching and digging again and again.
And then, they found them.
The two grandmasters were there.
The Sky-Cleaving Blade Emperor and the Violet Void True Sage. Both had been decapitated, their heads severed from their shoulders. It seemed that neither their decades of secluded cultivation nor their blade techniques, said to split the heavens in two, could prevent their own heads from falling.
The two factions lingered in the area for over a month after recovering the bodies, but they eventually withdrew from the Superwind Cliff, carrying only the remains of the two grandmasters.
There had clearly been a fierce battle. The Kirin's mane, fur, and hoofprints were scattered everywhere, yet its main body was nowhere to be found—as if some ghost had come and devoured it.
The deaths of the two absolute masters were thus confirmed.
But they were the only ones whose deaths were certain.
Afterward, additional recovery teams and countless martial artists scoured every inch of the Superwind Cliff Valley's soil, clinging to the faintest hope. Yet the bodies of the World-Eradicating Demon Lord and the Hero Gate Sect Leader were never found.
They left no corpses behind, nor did they ever walk out on their own.
If they had died, they should have remained buried in the earth like the other two. If they had survived, they should have eventually emerged from the Superwind Cliff. At the very least, some trace of them should have been discovered.
But it was none of the three.
And so, the story grew, layer upon layer, until only rumors bordering on myth remained.
They said the four of them clashed at the Superwind Cliff—three died, and one vanished with the Kirin.
Or that the Kirin devoured all four before ascending to the heavens. Or that they had all torn each other apart in the Kirin's presence, two of them shredded so brutally they were washed away by the Superwind Cliff's rain.
But in the end, with no way to verify any of it, the tales remained mere rumors.
While the area around Mu-cheong and the Superwind Cliff was still thick with such unsettling whispers, the Martial World was seething in its own right.
The war between Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect and Dark Net Rakshasa Path had been dragging on for months, a see-saw of skirmishes. The Clear Wind Sword Sect had slain one of the Eight Rakshasas in Buk-hoe, only for Dark Net Rakshasa Path to swallow two Vast Heaven factions near Han-ju in the meantime.
For both sides, it was a war of attrition where the losses far outweighed the gains.
With the Ten Thousand Poisons Sect and the Joyful Sect beginning to align themselves with Dark Net Rakshasa Path, the once-disorganized factions are showing signs of uniting.
Meanwhile, the Nirvana Mountain did the opposite, sealing its gates. Though the Rakshasa Monks continued their intermittent battles outside, the elite forces had not been seen beyond the mountain's gates for some time. But Half-closing the gate was not a retreat.
It meant that the killing intent leaking outward was condensing inward. They were a beast, coiled and waiting, sharpening their claws for something.
Amidst this chaos, the name of one sect rose and fell in a different tone from the rest.
The Hero Gate of Gang-do, which until recently had been on the fringes of the Central Plains.
It was a newly formed sect. Yet, even though its Sect Leader had been absent for several months, the sect's prestige had only grown. In his absence, the martial artists beneath him had stepped up, tightening their grip on the Gang-do region. The people of Gang-do did not hesitate to call the sect Bul-san, claiming a Living Buddha resided there. The name had recently spread throughout the Martial World.
As it spread, the story grew, each retelling adding new layers. Rumors swirled that the Sect Leader, the Living Buddha Kim Rae-won, was not merely a chivalrous warrior resembling a Buddha, but one of the top ten absolute masters in the Martial World.
At the same time, rumors of a completely different nature also circulated. Some even claimed that far from being a Buddha, he was actually a bloodthirsty demon, closer to an Asura.
And rumors, by their very nature, grow larger the longer their subject is absent.
The fact that Kim Rae-won had participated in the Great Kirin Melee also quietly spread, and combined with the earlier Superwind Cliff ghost story,
The rumors were spiraling out of control, morphing into increasingly bizarre tales.
The Living Buddha departed in search of the Kirin to attain Nirvana.
Asura, alongside his Kirin companion, ascended to the heavens after annihilating all who dared interfere.
Yet the Superwind Cliff, the very epicenter of this entire uproar, had fallen deathly silent after the Great Kirin Melee Incident.
When the prize catch is gone, do the anglers remain? When the prey has vanished from the mountain, why should the hunters linger?
No one dared approach the valley where the Kirin had disappeared. Only the rumors continued to gorge themselves like swine on the empty gorge.
Still, the gaze of the Thunderclap Martial Academy never wavered from that spot.
The two who had not even returned as corpses—their absence kept the Jin Clan Leader's hand from ever leaving the valley. For months, the paper slip tied to the hawk's ankle, destined for Mu-cheong, had been frozen with the same two words:
Moo-yong. (No Appearance)
• • •
On the cliffside at the entrance to the Superwind Cliff Valley.
Four pairs of eyes scanned the Superwind Cliff, braving the torrential rain.
Three were spies of the Thunderclap Martial Academy, and one was not.
Though she exuded a frigid aura, as if coated in a thick layer of frost, her beauty was undeniable and universal—Jin Seon-ah, the Number One Beauty of Jeok-yang. She was the only daughter of Jin Gong, the Master of the Thunderclap Martial Academy and Leader of the Jin Clan.
The rain fell just as it had yesterday. She had brought only three spies. Too many eyes would leave too many traces and draw unnecessary attention, so they moved in a small group. In this kind of investigation, numbers were a liability.
The ground of the Superwind Cliff remained the same color as before, with only the puddles rippling faintly in the rain.
"..."
She had been here for over a month already, continuing her search.
Even if her father had not commanded it, she was determined to commit the full strength of the Thunderclap Martial Academy to this search.
Setting aside the absurd rumors about Buddhas and Asuras, there is a fundamental truth, isn't there?
If they died, a body should have remained. If they lived, they should have come out.
The same must hold true for the World-Eradicating Demon Lord, Kim Rae-won, and the Kirin.
"Unit Commander, after searching this thoroughly, isn't it certain they've completely annihilated one another?"
"No."
Jin Seon-ah replied to her subordinate, continuously using her qi barrier to repel the rain.
"There is no such thing as a complete annihilation."
The valley stretched out beneath her gaze.
Only ruins remained.
A section of the western ridge had been severed completely. The severed face, washed by three months of rain, had crumbled into a muddy mess of various rock colors, and the boulders that had collapsed beneath it filled half the valley.
Even so.
If they had died, their bodies—or at least some remains—should still be here.
"But the rumors say..."
"What? That they were all torn to shreds and washed away by this rain? Is that what you're trying to say?"
"..."
"Sure, a common criminal might meet such an end. But that would never happen to Absolute Masters. No matter the downpour or the storm, you can never completely erase the traces of an Absolute Master."
This was because Martial Artists possessed an indelible mark known as internal energy. Even if every last hair were swept away, the final traces of their internal energy should have remained. This was especially true for Absolute Masters, not some third-rate rabble. Besides, how could there be no clues to their final moments after a battle of this magnitude?
'It's absurd,' she thought.
The ground was still scarred with fresh gouges where earth had been frantically scraped away.
Among those marks, the spot where the two grandmasters had been retrieved stood out. Jin Seon-ah's steps had circled back, eventually returning to that very place.
After the disciples of the Western Saber Sect and the Supreme Taoist Palace had dug through the dirt to recover their Elder and Sect Leader, only the excavated pits remained, now filled with rainwater. Beneath the surface, the mud still held the mixed-in traces of nameless bodies.
These were the remains of thousands who had swarmed the entrance in their greed for the holy beast, only to be swept away when a single peak collapsed upon them.
Swoosh. Swoosh.
Ignoring the filth, she spent the next few days meticulously scanning the area, her spiritual sense sweeping over every inch of the ground.
"Hmm?"
How many hours had she scanned like that?
The air in the valley changed. No, the energy changed.
The first thing she sensed was heat.
It was an impossible thing. A dry energy expanding beneath the air of a canyon that was wet all four seasons? A heat that would only rise from ground baked under a midsummer blazing sun suddenly brushed through the streaks of rain.
"...Unit Commander?"
"What is this!?"
Ignoring her subordinates' protective stances, Jin Seon-ah focused all her senses and energy on the surrounding area.
A sudden shift in scent also registered. Beneath the smell of wet stone and moss, there was a dry, acrid earthy odor she had never encountered in this valley.
Jin Seon-ah hurriedly dropped to the ground. She felt something beneath her feet.
Just then.
The ground shimmered. At first, she thought it was the rain.
But it wasn't.
A patch of the ground that should have been soaked was turning to sand.
"What... What is this?!"
There is a saying about a bolt from the blue—thunder from a clear sky.
Yet, in the Superwind Cliff area, the exact opposite was happening.
A dry lightning strike invading a sodden sky.
Just as sand and bizarre structures began to shimmer across the drenched valley, in the blink of an eye, the valley floor was filled with people.
Jin Seon-ah couldn't believe her eyes. Out of the corner of her vision, she saw the three spies reacting in the same sequence: rubbing their eyes, glancing at one another, looking back down, and then surveying their surroundings.
And finally, the sound reached their ears.
"...Hey. What the hell is this? Huh?"
"Weren't we just in the Arena? Where the hell are we now?"
"Is it loading? No, why is the loading taking so long?"
"But why is it raining? Was there a raining zone in the mob field?"
"...This is insane. The raindrops are actually cold."
"The ground is a muddy mess. My shoes are covered in dirt."
It wasn't just one or two people. The entire crowd that filled the ground spoke all at once. Their shouts bounced off the cliff, echoing over and over.
Jin Seon-ah had heard of and studied such phenomena. It was a topic that had fascinated her since childhood, a strange occurrence she had vaguely hoped to one day witness or encounter. Recently, she had even heard various accounts directly from her father.
But she had never heard of, read about, or even imagined anything on this scale.
"..."
Naturally, she couldn't understand a single word they said.
It wasn't the language of the Central Plains. It wasn't the language of the lands beyond the Great Wall, nor was it the tongue of any ethnic group she'd heard about from the spies.
Though she couldn't grasp their meaning, she could clearly read their aura.
Urgent, pale with terror, bewildered, and furious...
Tens of thousands of...
"The Descended... Clan!?"