Several thousand leagues north of the kingdom of Hauss loomed a great mass of red and pinkish rock that made the army of mountains around it seem like nothing more than a simple host of tiny hills. Unlike those nearby, the mountain in question was completely barren with the tallest of its neighbours topping out at half its height. Peculiarly enough not a single speck of snow resided upon its rigid surface, the air around it heavy with heat despite the high altitude.

It was only a decade or so ago that people had begun to settle into the area, a time period that coincided with an abrupt drop in the presence of demonic beasts in the region. What was once viewed as a forbidden land had now opened up to the hundreds of thousands of people that lived within the countless mountain communities strewn throughout this region of the Dragon’s Tail, though initially the area only attracted powerful recluses and wayward criminals.

Strong energies pervaded the proximity in and around the mountain that were very beneficial to the living creatures around it, though the presence of such powerful energy also presented a heightened threat for the possibility of demonization for both beast and man. Several huge valleys had formed between this great mountain and the ones around it, within which many cities had sprung up in the time that it took for a young boy to reach manhood.

A huge plateau of verdant earth overlooked the newly populated highlands, upon which rested a beautiful palace constructed with dark blue rock and thick white wood, the eaves and all corners fitted with layers of smoothly shaped gold. Immaculate hedges surrounded the rectangular base of the five-storey complex, around which a beautiful pathway of polished cobblestones formed an orderly perimeter. Four paths lined by sprawling gardens trailed off toward four gated entrances, one in the centre of each line of golden fencing that enclosed the entire estate in a resplendent belt of exaggerated grandeur.

With over a hundred rooms of varying purpose and design the golden-gated residence had adopted an eerie aura which seemed to exude into the surrounding landscape. Only a single person lived within these hallowed halls, a man of such great identity and dedicated demeanor that his consecutive successes had earned him the highest level of esteem in the hearts of those that he had pulled out of poverty. These were the commoners that had clamoured to swear fealty to the increasingly recognizable banner that had come to represent him and his forces, which were largely made up of the initial settlers that he’d swayed into submission.

Just what was the reason for the disappearance of demonic beasts in the area? This man had desired their deaths, as he had coveted the thousands of demonic cores that powered the devious monsters as well as the land that they had resided in. Since the moment he arrived he'd been possessed of a mind for geographical prospecting and future settlement, all to purport his greater plots. Such turbid energies made the minds of men more susceptible to his manipulation, more receptive to malice. How else could he coerce his legions of black knights to carry out his every command, no matter how devious and delinquent? There was a reason why he’d based their barracks midway up the Red Mountain.

Sitting atop the roof with his legs dangling off of the eaves that directly faced the great looming mountain was the man that had recently adopted the moniker of the Red Mountain King.

“Not bad for a simple side project of mine.” He sipped at the delicious wine that he had acquired in the vineyards of the western region of Hauss, the silver chalice in his hand having once belonged to the lord of that land. “Not bad at all.”

Though it appeared as if he were mumbling to himself, he knew for a fact that his words fell upon two hidden pairs of ears. Just as he detected the presence of the expected arrivals he also anticipated the flash of spiritual energy that knocked the cup from his hands and sent it falling down to the courtyard below, sliced in several pieces.

“I’ll have you know that this is quite a handy Essence Fusion object. It ensures that any liquids within it maintain a constant temperature.”

“You mean was, do you not Marcus?” said a gruff voice as two forms materialized behind him, both draped in thick black cloaks.

He looked into the contradictory face of the speaker, an old man with a clean shaven head and an utter lack of facial hair. Marcus liked to refer to him as the ancient baby, though his position as the eighth Great Elder of the Bloodhand Sect prevented him from showing such disrespect. That and the fact that the man’s cultivation was one level above his.

“My dear Mr. Hemmel, am I one to say something that I don’t mean?”

The old man snorted while the woman at his side considered him with a distasteful grey-eyed stare. Marcus ignored them as he produced a large bottle of the same fine wine that he'd been drinking and carelessly poured it over the edge of the roof. He directly inserted the cork back into the bottle with the lightest exertion of his thumb and then stowed it away with a snap of his fingers. The container was instantly replaced with the chalice that he had just dropped, which was now fully intact with a healthy supply of liquid sloshing within it.

The great elders stilled as he reached out for the chalice while maintaining eye contact, both unable to suppress the momentary exhibitions of surprise that flashed across their faces as they witnessed the nonchalant employment of such a complex reconstruction arrayment. Not only had he returned the container’s body to its original condition, he had also repaired the preservation arrayment that had made the piece so special, all in a matter of moments.

“Would you like some?”

“We didn’t come here to drink like some low-budget vagabonds. Lord Sect Master has work for us. The time has arrived for you to put an end to whatever it is that you’ve got going on in these backwater mountains.”

Marcus was one of the few great elders mobilized thus far in the sect’s budding conquest of the easterly kingdoms, the one in charge of the Haussian front. This placed him far from the eyes of his peers, an opportunity that he had taken full advantage of. With such an important task resting upon his shoulders, why would he have been selected for this mission? Unless…

“What kind of work requires three great elders?”

“Not three, but five.” Hecha, the Seventh Great Elder, fixed him with a steely stare. Her hair had gone silver in recent decades, though her appearance remained that of a fair-skinned woman of middling age as it had for the past fifty years. “Andel is dead.”

Marcus nearly dropped his glass, though years of harrowing experience enabled him to rein in his shock and maintain the same nonchalant disposition that defined his image. Even he wasn’t confident that he could kill the man without having to lay down his own life in the process. Lord Andel was the Third Great Elder and an expert at the sixth level of the Genesis stage. “Where did this happen?”

“In Thebes.”

Now that he thought on it, hadn’t that needle-eyed geezer gone off to the far west to secure a peace pact with the empire? Even if the negotiations failed, a man of his strength wasn’t easily killed even by those several levels higher than him in cultivation. “And what would Lord Sect Master have us do?”

“We head west at dawn.”

“They have more experts than us, and you both know as well as I do how powerful Andel was. Even with five of us, it will still be a reckless endeavor to charge straight into their lands.”

“We must give them a warning,” said Hecha. “As far as they’re concerned they just killed one of the four Genesis-staged members that they believe us to possess. Even if they’re expecting some form of retaliation, there’s no way that they will anticipate a force of five such individuals.”

“Their emperor will notice us the moment that we cross into their territory. He’s not someone that we can go against. Only Lord Sect Master is able to match him.”

Hemmel turned his gaze to the west, the squint in his eyes giving off the impression that he could see through the vast pinkish mountain that dominated both land and sky. “That is why we won’t go more than a few dozen leagues past their borders.”

“So we are to make our way to Grale?” More precisely, the target would be the Marquis of Fauland, the empire’s easternmost province. This man was a cultivator on the same level as Andel, who was the fourth strongest member of the sect in terms of cultivation. “If we’re only going after him then it’s possible. We’d only have about an hour before their experts arrived, so it’d have to be within that timeframe.”

Hemmel tossed a small piece of parchment into the air. It floated over to settle upon Marcus’s palm. “This is…” The talisman in his hand was a spiritual catalyst for a killing arrayment, particularly the most powerful of the nine that resided in the recesses of the sect's treasury. So this is why five of us are required for this assignment.

“We will show the empire who reigns supreme on this continent. The world has no idea how much we’ve progressed since the Acquisition of Mour, and there’s no telling how many of our disciples will attain the strength of a seated elder once we’ve finished up with the current Acquisitions.”

“And what of the other sects? Surely they won’t just sit back and watch as we expand across such a large chunk of the continent.”

“Which one of them would risk turning their back on the others in order to war with us? Besides, I hear that they're busy bickering amongst themselves these days.”

Marcus recalled hearing news that an unprecedented development had taken place across the western seas just before the invasion of Hauss. The Night Shadow Sect had formed an alliance with several other powers in order to war against the Crescent Moon Sect, the most powerful organization in the known world. As of now both sides had sustained hundreds of thousands of casualties and wrought immense amounts of devastation upon the lands where these battles were taking place. Despite the destruction and danger brought on by the conflict, the war was unfolding thousands of leagues away from the continental mainland within the vast archipelago where all of the martial sects resided.

“Ah, I’d nearly forgotten. Is there any word on the Crescent Moon Sect’s young miss?”

The patriarch’s daughter had reportedly left the sect in the company of a single Protector, both of which had yet to return to their battle-torn homeland. The rumours that the two of them had been killed didn’t stop a legion of hopeful cultivators from embarking on journeys throughout the lands in search of the young girl, for there was no question that her father would reward untold riches to anybody that managed to return her home safely.

“Dead or captured.” Hecha’s eyes settled on a distant point midway up the mountain, particularly where several thousand black knights resided. “The Protector’s remains were discovered in the southeastern recesses of the Dragon’s Tail, surrounded by the corpses of dozens of disciples from the Night Shadow Sect.”

He’d heard of the woman before, the youngest Protector in the history of the Crescent Moon Sect. For all of the people he’d killed in his life, he always felt a sense of loss whenever the truly talented met an untimely end.

“A shame."