"What... what have you done?" Rohan muttered, taking an involuntary step back as he stared at the looming figure of Zul’Kharath.

Ever since entering the pavilion, his carefully maintained, detached facade had never broken, but now it shattered completely, replaced by a mixture of deep horror and confusion. The raw, oppressive weight of the beast’s aura felt like a mountain pressing down on his chest.

Barry didn’t even have time to scream. Before the dazed hunter could scramble to his feet, Zul’Kharath moved. It simply ceased to exist in one spot and appeared in another, right over Barry. Its long, crude odachi cut through the air with terrifying speed. The blade seemed to sever the very vitality from Barry’s form. In a fraction of a second, his body withered into a hollow, ash-gray husk, collapsing onto the gravel like a broken puppet.

"Barry!" Dominion cried out.

Panic overriding her exhaustion, she tried to force her newly stabilized essence pool to expand, desperately attempting to manifest a defensive barrier. But the spatial distortion around the beast was absolute.

Zul’Kharath turned its hollow face toward her, and the mere pressure of its gaze caused Dominion’s essence to turn volatile, making her shiver. With a sickening, internal crack, her energy shattered. Before she could even draw a breath to recover, the cold aura of the beast swept over her, extinguishing her life force instantly.

"Move! Back away!" Priscilla yelled, her voice strained as she struggled against the sheer gravitational force radiating from the entity.

But the explosion of localized spatial energy wasn’t finished. A secondary shockwave erupted from the point where the orb had shattered, ripping across the open platform like a physical wall of force.

Eric, Priscilla, and Rohan were caught entirely off guard. The ground beneath their feet fractured, and the edges of the high platform collapsed into loose shale. Disoriented, weakened, and unable to anchor themselves to the disintegrating terrain, all three of them were violently thrown over the threshold, plunging backward into the steep, fog-shrouded gorge below.

As they tumbled down the jagged slopes, battered by rock and debris, a massive rockslide followed them, causing an eruptive roar across the forested mountain that echoed toward the pavilions and the wild zones.

High above, standing at the precipice of the platform, Zul’Kharath raised its skeletal, ash-toned hand toward the sky. The violet, reality-locking aura expanded exponentially, tearing through the cloud line and bleeding downward into every corner of the region.

The thick, suffocating mist of the bogs below began to boil with dark energy. Soon, the entirety of the First Jianghu was covered by a violet force that made itself almost invisible.

Across the entire territory, spanning multiple pavilions and hidden valleys, the ground trembled. Hunters at the training grounds, in the forests, markets, and higher pavilions all wore expressions of confusion as the trembling continued.

From the mud, from beneath the roots of the giant trees, from the grounds of the pavilions, and from the crevices of the rocky ridges, figures began to crawl outward. Hundreds of hollowed-out, corrupted, human-like ancient warriors—their eyes burning with the exact same eerie violet light as the beast—rose from their shallow graves.

The fallen warriors of past expeditions drew their rusted, broken weapons in unison, forming a silent, relentless vanguard that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Jiang Weichen sighed with dejection after he manifested in the open space of the First Jianghu. He wore gray armor and wielded a bow with no arrows.

One after another, the rest of the group manifested as well. Two of them were the Young Masters, Bai and Chen, who looked almost identical. The other three were beautiful females wearing fearsome armor and wielding different weapons.

They were immediately welcomed by Han Jisung, who bowed to the two Young Masters and nodded to the others in respect. He frowned slightly looking at the three females, making Bai laugh lightly.

"Don’t worry. We are just here to meet the Crimson Mage."

"Well, I already told you he won’t be around, as he’s currently on an expedition," Han Jisung said. "But since you were willing to wait for him, I was happy to agree and prepared chambers for you. But... I didn’t expect you to bring this many warriors. This is a place for the newly awakened; I wouldn’t want you doing anything improper."

"It’s not like that. They’re just here to escort me, and he is my manager," Bai said, gesturing toward Jiang Weichen.

"We understand your caution, Hunter Han," Master Chen spoke up, his tone smoother and more diplomatic than his brother’s, though his eyes remained sharply fixed on the layout of the lower pavilion. "But our intentions are strictly professional. The Crimson Mage possesses great insights and is a good friend of our dad. We mean no disruption to your territory."

Han Jisung kept his pace steady as he led the group down the central thoroughfare of the staging area, though his hand remained close to his side. "He ’was’ a good friend of your dad. Everyone knows they aren’t on such good terms anymore. Ah, guild and high-ranking politics sure are complicated."

They all laughed lightly.

As the prestigious group passed, conversations among the local hunters ground to an absolute halt.

"Is that Hunter Bai?" one hunter muttered, keeping his head down. "And those three... look at the runes on that plate armor. Those are the Three Jades!"

"What are high-level Hunters doing down here?" another whispered, pulling his cloak tighter.

Jiang Weichen walked a step behind the Young Masters, his unstrung bow resting flat against his shoulder. His gaze didn’t drift to the gawking onlookers; instead, his eyes constantly scanned the perimeter, calculating sightlines and exit routes with mechanical precision.

To be truthful, his heart was racing at an abnormal rate. Yes, he had just spent a week with his wife and kids, and he had even promised her the infamous purple orchid flowers from the First Jianghu when he returned, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was absolutely wrong.

’What couldn’t go wrong?’ he thought. ’Bai said we were here as spies to kill the Crimson Mage, but then he goes ahead and announces our arrival to one of the trusted government Hunters, the dangerous Han Jisung.’

Jisung noticed his tactical vigilance. "Your manager keeps a tight perimeter for a simple waiting visit, Master Bai."

Bai laughed again, a light, careless sound that didn’t match the calculating look in his eyes. "Weichen is simply thorough. You know how the frontier is, Han... danger doesn’t always knock before entering."

The words had barely left his mouth when the air pressure dropped with the force of a falling hammer.

An invisible violet membrane enveloped the upper sky, drawing the visitors’ attention upward as a sudden rumble echoed from the forested peaks.

A grim expression surfaced on Bai’s face. The same went for Jisung and the rest. Jiang Weichen could only shiver and grimace.

Then, a tremor resounded throughout the entire region. Slowly, figures began to rise from the ground. They looked like ancient human warriors, wielding crude weapons and staring at the Hunters with pure malice.

Suddenly, a voice resounded from above. Everyone turned their gazes upward and saw a figure cloaked in darkness, wielding a long odachi.

Zul’Kharath spoke.

"Mercy be unto the one that woke me. Death be unto the ones that killed me. Mercy taken from the ones that woke me from death. They shall know death too."