Black war-clouds blotted out the northern horizon, rolling over the green plains of Taichu like an encroaching night.
The earth trembled beneath the synchronized marching boots of one hundred thousand ruthless cultivators. Four hundred heavily armed war-barges floated just above the treetops, their black sails bearing the blood-red emblems of the Jade-Clear, Raging-Flame, Profound-Ice, and Myriad-Poison sects.
The composition of the enemy army was terrifying to behold.
On the left flank, twenty-five thousand Raging-Flame disciples marched with smoking iron pikes, their red hair whipping in the violent wind. On the right flank, twenty-five thousand Profound-Ice warriors advanced silently, their frost-crusted armor leaving trails of permafrost across the lush green grass.
In the center, fifty thousand Jade-Clear swordsmen and Myriad-Poison cultists pushed massive siege ballistas mounted on the backs of mutated iron-hide rhinos. Green poisonous vapor pooled beneath their feet, killing every blade of grass in their wake.
At the vanguard of the armada, five colossal bone-chariots hovered thirty feet in midair.
Each chariot was forged from the ribcages of ancient leviathans and pulled by four skeletal wyverns breathing sickly green corpse-flame. Standing atop the central chariot was Ancestor Jade-Bone, his tattered grey robes billowing in the freezing wind. His sunken eye sockets blazed with ghostly pale fire, and his desiccated hands gripped a five-foot dragon-skull staff.
