The blue sky was still, the wind calm and the water smooth.

Only a light rain fell over Nanhong's waters and lands, amid the faint cry of a dragon.

From the Baohua Sect on the border between Xihong and Nanhong all the way to the seven great immortal sects out on the frontier, everyone saw that rain.

Not long ago, the huge yellow-miasma venom dragon rolling and fighting in the clouds had filled the many cultivators and living things with dread. Now they all stared blankly at the sky.

“Gulp.”

The two sect masters of the Mountain-Moving Sect stood shoulder to shoulder. The younger of the two turned to look at the other and opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say.

Old Huang was silent a long while. Then he seized the other man's arm and said sharply, “Seal off Nanhong!”

It was absurd.

He had been ready to take part in a brutal slaughter. After all, in all the time Hongze had existed, no cultivator had ever truly tried to wipe out a Dragon Palace.

Just staying alive under those dragons was already doing well; living with a shred of dignity proved real strength.

Even the Boundless Dao-Sovereign Sect could only barely hold its own against the North Dragon Palace.

Something like the Nanhong Seven, who had held the South Dragon Palace down and briefly been the dominant power—search all four Hongs, and that was the only case.

But Sect Master Huang had never imagined that this great war, which might well have swept across both Xihong and Nanhong, would be over before it even began.

Once the Nanhong seven sects were ready to strike, the South Dragon Palace, which had seemed a match for the seven sects, hadn't even been able to fight back. It had been slaughtered to the last, swept away like dead leaves.

It gave him a dreamlike sense that none of it was real.

So this was why Sect Master Shen had posted the two of them at the Baohua Sect to wait… Where the Mountain-Moving Sect and the Baohua Sect stood,…