When a nation is on the brink of collapse, internal weaknesses often reach a breaking point, with conflicts impossible to resolve.

The Witch Hunting Secret Department had subtly overridden the royal authority, reorganizing the dying Old Aran, showcasing the country's last shadow of might, too violent and terrifying for anyone to ignore.

Yet one person gathered a vast army, fulfilling the court magician's prophecy—a descendant of the Overlord would arrive on a Silver Dragon to end the Aran dynasty.

The tenant farmers toiled day and night, indebted and sent to die by the lords.

Wanderers, ruined and homeless, due to a foolish monarch and warring lords.

All these are forms of suffering.

The tragic products of the old system have all converged here.

That person succeeded.

Later, he was called the Emperor, and on the Western Continent today, even extending to all neighboring continents, no one dares utter his name for fear of being harmed by his mysterious fate's power.

The Deputy Director of the Witch Hunting Secret Department was both right and wrong.

All of Old Aran's opposition falsely claimed, or perhaps truly believed, they didn't seize power willingly, only governed for a limited time, envisioning a paradise of equality soon.

No one seizes power with the intent to relinquish it.

Power is the purpose, not the means; persecution aims to persecute, torture aims to torture, power aims for power.

The Deputy Director of the Witch Hunting Secret Department was right.

But...

Not everything can be solved with a blade.

He was wrong.

Even if the Emperor's divine power was unmatched and he had the presence to capture dragons, he could not defy destiny.

It was a year of severe calamity.

In the Holy Spirit Calendar 2671, February, earthquakes collapsed houses, bricks and tiles tumbled, resounding roars. July saw locusts covering the fields, consuming crops entirely. By September, with nothing left to eat, they died in the Narrow Sea.

In the Holy Spirit Calendar 2672, spring brought a great drought. Summer saw heavy rains like hail, hail as large as peaches, the land a scorched red, resembling a hellish bloodscape.

In the Battle of the Royal City, ten thousand cavalry couldn't rely solely on farmers for hope. The roving bandits, fugitives, foreign rebel armies formed the primary bureaucracy of the current military government.

How can the Emperor, with nothing more than common courage, reign as a king?

The newly established Aran regime teeters.

And it's said that beyond the Eastern Great Wall, trade with the Far East Islands made that country immensely wealthy.

When people are sick, they need medicine.

But when the heavens are sick, it devours people.

From then on, Aran embarked on endless foreign wars, expanding west, marching south, advancing north, and waging campaigns east. Neither alien race nor humanity could escape. Aran, with the military government in power, became an unstoppable war machine.

The Oathbreaker Land of the West Sea, the Monges Southern Wetland, the Northern Realm, the Far East...

It all began over ten years ago.

Back then, several affiliated countries bordering the eastern province of Aran, on the west side of the great wall, were still Beima Kingdom territory, later achieving independence.

In the Holy Spirit Calendar 2673, but using Aran's calendar would be more appropriate. That year was 1274 in the Aran Calendar.

Even ancient relics spanning dozens of miles horizontally, dozens of hundred feet high, and hundreds of meters wide as a natural barrier could not halt the Emperor's eastward campaign.

The present king of Beima Kingdom, Philip V, is widely regarded as a Benevolent King.

Imitating Pedan's system, he established a National College in the Central Royal Capital and the East Coast, to prevent talent retention within nobles' lands, issuing the Enlightenment Bill, drawing substantial funds from the national treasury to support education.

On the western continent's extreme east, the kingdom experienced unprecedented prosperity and peace.

When the sky truly falls.

There are no warnings.

The army of New Aran faced prolonged internal turmoil, underwent domestic power transitions, and triumphed over the Witch Hunting Secret Department, which once terrorized the entire Western Continent.

Those who survived under such circumstances were warriors chosen one in a hundred, yet ultimately were... the Thief Army.

The Emperor's demands were astounding; he wanted all of Beima, not just land cession and tributes, but even total upheaval of the monetary system, to hollow out Beima completely.

Philip V had no choice but to lead his army personally into battle.

Yet, the imperial army resembled heavenly soldiers descending to earth, breaking through to the East Coast in eight months.

Rape, poisoning, massacre, arson.

All hope crushed into the mud by iron hooves, the moans of the dead like an invisible great river.

Rusty rain soaked into the creases of the land, ugly vultures pecked at rotting flesh, letters home birthed maggots in the bloodied waters, wedding rings hacked off the ring fingers of brides' remains.

In hatred, cradles became new tombstones, clouding numerous infant eyes.

In the end, Philip V, besieged in a lone city, committed suicide by cutting his throat upon defeat.

His son, Philip VI, knowing he could not reverse the situation, agreed to the Emperor's terms, traveled to Aran for peace talks, only to be lured and assassinated in the Imperial Palace, dying far from home.

The Emperor still did not stop.

He cut trees to build ships, smelted metals to forge swords, driven by the belief that trade with the Far East had made Beima prosperous, thus the Far East was worth plundering, even if it meant crossing the entire East Sea.

He sought to create a Heaven greater than that achieved two thousand years ago by Emperor Xiluo, one that would last millennia.

Thus started the long march to the Far East, establishing a bridgehead in the East Sea, named Heaven Port.

For nearly twenty years.

The Beima Duchy was completely restrained by Aran, still facing endless raids and slaughter from East Coast pirates. Most pirates and fugitives in the East Sea could only survive by plundering coastal villages and towns.

Even today, it remains the same.

It is as if the wounds and pangs of that war linger unshakably.

Still echoing in the ears...

Endlessly roaring.

The present year in the Holy Spirit Calendar is 2690, Aran Calendar 1293.

The Blood Clan has no concept of time.

But the time scale of human civilization is very short.

Twenty years are enough to build a glorious Empire.

The sixteenth Continent Martial Arts Competition.

On September 8th, during the so-called bloody fourth round.

There was one person, a Beima person from the Beima East Coast, who had heard of the town's girls being raped and murdered by pirates, witnessed the cross-border arrogance of Aran military police, and heard his elders speak of the war in 2693, his uncle who fell unseen under an Aran soldier's sword, his aunt who leapt into a river.

Even though he was instilled with deep-seated hatred from a young age.

He felt it distant.

Even more distant than the Far East.

Until this year Beima's internal turmoil, the former royal Rodrigo family ruling for eleven generations, he foresaw a future of tragedy repeating itself.

He needed someone... to assassinate the Emperor, only during the Continent Martial Arts Competition, bypassing all the Imperial Guard, taking advantage of his audience with the Emperor at his most vulnerable moment, to kill him in one strike, a suicide soldier was necessary.

This suicide soldier had to win the Continent Martial Arts Competition to truly have a chance to approach the Emperor, couldn't seize by force but through wits, using the Underworld Organization, with the leader from the Gate of Truth, to obtain the curse poison from the Witch King's possession, and deliver instant death.

September 8th.

At ten-thirty in the morning.

The bloody fourth round, the Imperial Arena was teeming with excited crowds.

The sunlight in Aran Imperial City was blisteringly strong, dazzling Gedre to the point he couldn't open his eyes.

Something...

It was concealed, direction indiscernible, but it had roared by his ears since childhood, endlessly.

Until now, Gedre had found the source of the sound, growing clearer, infinitely real, Aran Imperial City and the Beima East Coast, felt like... two worlds.

Lived on the East Coast for so long, he finally understood the hatred his elders spoke of.

The tar-imbued memories, thorny poison vines climbed from his throat.

Perhaps.

This undefeated martial art might be his destiny.

In the sixteenth Continent Martial Arts Competition, half of the participants were obscure nobodies emerging from who knows where.

As the Stargazing Festival approached, the hostesses meticulously chosen by the Royal Court became more breathtakingly stunning.

"Today... only sixteen contestants will remain, undoubtedly the most brutal day. A contestant must defeat multiple opponents in a day, with the first match featuring an unregistered person, newly anointed adventurer Gedre, the strongest dark horse in this Continent Martial Arts Competition, having slain two champion candidates in three rounds. His opponent is Star Splitter, Clarke, from the Narrow Sea."

The crowd erupted into wild revelry on the spectator stands.

Yet Gedre, displayed like a spectacle, did not come for fame and fortune; those cheers felt like ice blades with barbed hooks.

He understood.

In the river of the past, in every time's crevice, waiting to gouge out that person's moment of cowardice.

It's tomorrow.

A reversed hatred split countless knife-wielding versions of himself in his mind, the flames of resentment igniting all the kindling with a resounding blaze.

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