The echoes of forced celebration and feigned camaraderie faded into the night. The last of the allied sect masters, their faces a mixture of awe and thinly veiled fear, had finally departed, leaving behind a silence that felt heavier than the preceding noise.

Li Mo stood on the precipice of Qunyu Peak, the cool night air doing little to quell the glacial fire in his mind. The image of the hidden thread connecting Commander Feng to the so-called "Master of the Profound" was burned into his vision, a new and alarming variable in an already perilous equation.

First, the Warden of Oblivion sealed beneath the Great Shang Imperial Tomb.

Then, the parasitic Sect Master Shangguan Wencang, blindly seeking to unleash that apocalypse for his own gain.