The "Great Silence" that had gripped the Central Plains after the humiliation of the Seven Swords was finally broken, not by words, but by the rhythmic, bone-shaking thunder of a million marching feet.
In the high command center of Wuhan, High Lord Jo Mu-Sang stood before a massive map of the Anhui and Henan provinces. For the first time in his tenure, the "Martial Emperor" did not look like a statesman; he looked like a man who had stared into a void and realized that the void was staring back. The reports on his desk were no longer about trade disputes or minor sect squabbles. They were casualty lists and desertion warnings.
"The time for diplomacy has passed," Mu-Sang said, his voice hollow. "If the Yun Clan believes they can overwrite the laws of the Murim with a wooden staff, then we shall see if they can overwrite the sheer weight of a million lives."
He reached for the Alliance Seal—a massive block of spirit-jade—and slammed it onto a scroll made of dragon-silk. This was the activation of the Silver Vow Organization.
The River of Silver Steel
The Silver Vow was an ancient emergency mandate, a "Holy War" mechanism that theoretically united every martial artist under the Orthodox banner. In the cities of Henan and Hubei, the call went out like a physical shockwave.
The mobilization was a sight of terrifying beauty. From the north came the Hebei-Peng Family, their black-iron "Mountain Splitting Blades" glinting in the sun like a forest of jagged glass. From the east, the Namgung Family arrived in gilded carriages, their Azure Heaven Thunder Dragon Division crackling with blue-white lightning. Even the smaller, periphery sects—the Blue Sparrow School, the Hidden Blade Gate, and the Torrent Clan—were press-ganged into service, their disciples acting as the "redshirts" and fodder for the coming storm.
The army was a microcosm of the Murim hierarchy. At the front were the "Peak" and "Transcendent" masters, the elite who were fed the finest spirit pills. Behind them were the "1st Rate" and "2nd Rate" warriors, the mid-level officers who maintained the formations. And at the very rear, stretching for miles, were the "3rd Rate" trainees and commoner conscripts—men and women who had barely mastered their breathing, yet were now being marched toward a Nature-Realm god with nothing but rusted sabers and desperate prayers.
The Logistics of Despair
"Tactics may win a duel, but logistics win a war," noted the new Head Strategist, a junior member of the Jaegal family who had been promoted after Jaegal Woon's mental collapse.
The mobilization required a staggered supply line that drained the treasuries of the Five Great Families. Thousands of wagons, protected by the Jo Family's Grand Chamber of Commerce, carried food, medicine, and thousands of high-grade Spirit Stones intended to power "Portable Arrays" that would supposedly nullify the Yun Clan's resonance.
But beneath the surface of the "Orthodox" fervor, the rot remained. The Namgung lords refused to share their high-grade medicinal pellets with the Peng warriors. The smaller sects whispered about the "Declaration of Sovereignty" they had seen in the villages, wondering why they were fighting to protect a bloodline that had never given them a single scroll.
The First Step of the Titan
As the sun set over the Hubei border, the million-man army halted. The horizon was dominated by the jagged silhouette of the split Heavenly Pillar mountain—the site where the Patriarch had bifurcated the earth.
High Lord Jo Mu-Sang rode to the front of the line on a white stallion. He looked at his million swords, his "Silver Vow" warriors, and he felt a momentary swell of pride. In his mind, numbers were an absolute law. No matter how strong a single master was, he could not kill a million men before his Ki ran dry.
"To the West!" Mu-Sang roared, drawing his sword. "For Justice! For the Alliance! For the Heavens!"
The response was a million-throated scream that shook the clouds. But far to the West, atop the ruins of the split peak, Yun Cheon-Hwi stood alone, his wooden staff planted in the dirt. He didn't need a million men. He had already synchronized with the heartbeat of the army.
"They bring a million shadows to fight the sun," the Patriarch whispered, his eyes glowing with the light of the Eternal Transformation. "They have not yet realized that the more shadows you gather, the more obvious the light becomes."
The march had begun. The Hundred-Day War was no longer a threat; it was a reality. And as the "Silver Vow" crossed the first river into Yun territory, the very ground beneath them began to vibrate with the frequency of a world that was no longer theirs to rule.