The news didn’t travel like wind. It erupted like a fiery blast wave across the entire eastern continent.
Within three days, there was not a single teahouse, royal court, training academy, or secluded mountain abbey that had not heard the tale of the Grand Defile. Merchants from Patriarch Lu Feng’s Hundred Treasures Pavilion, riding swift wind-chasing rocs, carried the story into every bustling country capital, their voices ringing from tavern stages to packed merchant plazas.
Every retelling added a layer of mythic grandeur.
In the royal pavilions of the Central Continent, high ministers and golden-robed marshals huddled over jade scrying basins. Their faces were pale with disbelief as they read the intelligence dispatches.
Thirty thousand elite traditional fighters—commanded by five high sects. It was backed by twelve flying war galleons and twenty fire giant crossbows. Had marched to exterminate a demonic uprising. Yet they reached the Grand Defile. Then, not a single drop of human or beast blood had been spilled.
The grand army had been halted by giant adhesive silk nets. The legendary Sword Saint Gu Qingfeng had disarmed vanguard commanders with a fresh green willow twig. Captured core students had been placed in heated rooms and fed gourmet pork dumplings.
