Yun-Long City had once been the shimmering trade jewel of the central Anhui province, a place where the silk of the North met the spices of the South. But today, the city's white stone walls served a different purpose. They were the first major defensive line of the Yun Sovereign Zone. For weeks, refugees—commoners and 3rd-rate trainees who had fled the press-gangs of the Alliance—had poured through the gates, seeking the "Absolute Protection" promised by the Yun Patriarch.
Outside the walls, the horizon was a jagged sea of silver. The Murim Alliance vanguard, led by the War Sword Division of the Namgung Family, had established a camp that stretched as far as the eye could see. Ten thousand "First-Rate" warriors and two thousand "Peak" masters stood in formation, their blue-and-white banners snapping in the wind like the wings of a predatory bird.
"They have fortified a merchant city," sneered General Chu Seong, the leader of the War Sword Division. He adjusted the heavy lightning-etched hilt of his saber. "Do they think thick walls can stop a master of the Transcendence Realm? We will breach the gates before the morning mist clears."
Beside him, a junior strategist from the Jaegal family consulted a set of complex blueprints. "General, our scouts report strange structures atop the battlements. They are not ballistae, nor are they standard catapults. They appear to be... architectural lungs."
Chu Seong laughed. "Lungs? The Jaegals have grown too imaginative since the Strategist's breakdown. Forward the infantry! Let the 'Silver Vow' earn their place in history!"
The Descent of the Vow
The assault began with the rhythmic thud of a thousand drums. The Alliance forces marched in the Heavenly Net Rain formation, a defensive array designed to overlap the Sword Qi of the front ranks into a shimmering dome of protection. To any traditional army, this dome was impenetrable; arrows and stones would simply bounce off the collective internal energy of twelve hundred warriors.
As the Alliance reached the three-hundred-yard mark, the "Strange Structures" atop the city walls began to hum.
They were Spiritual Siege Engines, the Yun Clan's answer to the Alliance's numerical superiority. These were not made of wood or rope, but of "Spirit Iron" and resonance-glass. At their core sat a "True Martial Flower"—a terrifying phenomenon where the Ki of an Unrestrained-Realm master is compressed into a physical, floral-shaped seed that retains its form even after being released from the body.
The Wrath of the True Martial Flower
"Ignite the Core," a Yun commander shouted from the battlements.
The engines didn't fire projectiles. They functioned as Slash Projections of massive scale. The "Resonance Void" inside the engines drew in the atmospheric Ki, synchronized it with the "True Martial Flower" core, and discharged it in a concentrated beam of white-hot sovereignty.
The first beam struck the center of the Heavenly Net Rain formation.
There was no explosion of fire. Instead, there was a sudden, absolute erasure of space. The defensive dome of the Alliance—the pride of the Namgung family's tactical genius—didn't just break; it evaporated. The twelve hundred warriors inside the formation were not struck by shrapnel; their internal Ki was simply "overwritten" by the frequency of the beam.
In an instant, three hundred masters of the Alliance were reduced to "Empty Cores," their dantians snuffed out as if they had never existed. They collapsed in the mud, alive but stripped of every drop of cultivation they had spent decades accumulating.
"What... what kind of heretical art is this?" Chu Seong screamed, his own lightning-aura flickering in fear. "They aren't killing our men! They are unmaking them!"
The Geometric Rout
The Yun didn't stop. The engines pivoted with the fluidity of a "Wind Walking" master, firing in staggered intervals that traced geometric patterns across the battlefield. This was the Divergent Flow philosophy applied to artillery. Each strike created a localized vacuum that sucked the Alliance's "Sword Force" into the ground, grounding the lightning of the Namgungs and the brute force of the Pengs.
Desperate to save his division, General Chu Seong leaped into the air, manifesting the Azure Heaven Dragon Claw Sword. He aimed a strike at the city's central tower, intending to destroy the commander.
But as he reached the apex of his leap, the air around him turned into the Black Glacier. A specialized siege engine, tuned to the frequency of absolute zero, fired a "Heart-Chilling Frost" pulse.
Chu Seong didn't even have time to swing. Mid-air, his skin turned to blue-white ice. His "Imperial Divine" level saber shattered into a thousand frozen shards, and the "Thunder Knight" of the Alliance fell from the sky like a common stone, slamming into the earth with a hollow, metallic thud.
By noon, the "million-man" vanguard was a fractured, panicked mob. The Siege of Yun-Long City had lasted less than four hours. Not a single Yun warrior had left the walls, yet the Alliance had lost three thousand elite officers and their most decorated general.
The message was clear: The Yun Clan was not just the strongest family in the Murim. They had fundamentally evolved the nature of war itself. The era of the "Gosu" as the ultimate weapon was over; the era of the Federation's Hegemony had arrived.
High Lord Jo Mu-Sang, watching from the distant command ridge, felt a coldness in his chest that no medicinal pellet could cure. "They have reached the Exalted Realm of Logistics," he whispered, looking at the city that refused to fall. "We are not fighting heroes. We are fighting a new world."