Chapter 1094: The War of the Nine Nations Begins (1/2)

Chapter 1094: The War of the Nine Nations Begins

A massive wind surged up. It was as if the Windswept Realm was building up power, which could explode out at any moment.

Once that power erupted, the Nine Nations would be swept into war, a war between all cultivators. It heralded... the Echelon battles!

It would determine who was truly number one in the Echelon, who was the true peak power amongst them. To become an Echelon cultivator, one had to be a Chosen among Chosen in any given Mountain and Sea. They were people who could, based on their own cultivation base... challenge experts above their own level!

Blazing suns like that were people who wouldn’t easily accept being inferior to others; they were people who strove to be the champion of their generation!

Actually... despite the fact that young man from the First Mountain and Sea was publicly acknowledged as the number one in the Echelon... how could the others fear him?!

The fighting would happen one way or another. Furthermore, in the Windswept Realm... this was a chance for all members of the Echelon in this generation... to experience their first true war!

The war began in the instant that Meng Hao stepped onto the mountain peak, and the light from the central temple shot into the sky, revealing the statues.

As of that moment, Meng Hao’s name spread throughout all Nine Nations, and was fixed firmly into the minds of all the cultivators from the Nine Mountains and Seas, and all of the other members of the Echelon.

It was at this point that a figure could be seen speeding along through the Fifth Nation. It was a young woman, incredibly beautiful, although frowning slightly. Behind her were eight beams of light, doggedly pursuing her with deadly intent.

Each one of those pursuing figures was in the Ancient Realm. Furthermore, these people did not have less than five extinguished Soul Lamps; rather, they were so profound as to be unreadable!

That was supposed to be an impossibility in the Windswept Realm, and yet... it clearly wasn’t!

The woman was none other than the successor of the Immortal Ancient Daoist Rite, Xue’er. As she sped along, she looked up and saw the light coming from the central temple. She saw the statues and the mountains up in the sky, and she saw Meng Hao. At long last, she also heard his name.

“Is it him...?” she thought. Despite being pursued the way she was, her eyes shone with a brilliant light, and she instantly committed Meng Hao’s name to memory. Then, she continued to fly along, and her eight pursuers whistled after her as they tried to catch up.

Meanwhile, back on Mount Whiteseal in the Ninth Nation, Meng Hao took a deep breath and looked back down from the sky. The fire in the statue's hand cast light into his eyes, filling them with a strange flickering.

After a moment passed, he smiled.

“So, I broke the previous record.... I bet that really sets off the other Echelon Chosen. Well... GOOD!

“I don’t care what other strange things there are in this Windswept Realm, or what Jian Daozi and his pals are scheming... they have nothing to do with me!

“I never imagined that I wouldn’t even need to go to the central temple to find a method for fully absorbing my second Nirvana Fruit and... stepping into the Allheaven Immortal Realm!” Meng Hao took a deep breath. His heart burst with anticipation, and intense excitement filled him.

Without any hesitation, he stepped forward and sat down cross-legged. Next, he released Chu Yuyan from his bag of holding. After looking around for a moment, Chu Yuyan was clearly shaken. She could sense how different the Windswept Realm was, and without any further prompting from Meng Hao, she sat cross-legged and began to practice cultivation. Her focus was now breaking through into the Immortal Realm.

Meng Hao nodded silently, then sent out his divine sense into the flame. Instantly, he could detect the three hundred great Daos inside, the three hundred natural laws, the three hundred Essences!

He had the sudden premonition that the more Essences he came to understand, the easier it would be to absorb his second Nirvana Fruit.

“If one nation isn’t enough, then it will have to be two. If all of the Nine Nations and their 2,700 Essences are insufficient, then I’ll go to the central temple, and use 3,000 Great Dao Essences to fully absorb my second Nirvana Fruit!” He closed his eyes and fully poured his divine sense into the flame.

At the foot of the mountain, Jian Daozi’s face flickered. Behind him, the other old men were staring reverently at Meng Hao. After a while, they began to disperse.

Time passed. A month went by in the blink of an eye. During that time, the Windswept Realm seemed peaceful and quiet. However, dark undercurrents swept about. Although fighting had not yet burst out between the ordinary cultivators, and the Echelon cultivators were still adapting themselves to the locale, the mortal armies of the Nine Nations had already begun to wage war.

The armies of the Nine Nations had long since prepared for this war, and now they began to march toward the center of the Windswept Realm... to the region of the central temple.

That area consisted of an enormous plain, at the very center of which was the temple, which was a restricted area. The grass on that plain was white, and the soil was black.

Also located on the central plain were nine towering pagodas. They were ancient and archaic, as if they had existed there for countless years.

Each one of the pagodas stood for one of the nations, around which the armies of the Nine Nations clustered. Each nation had over a million troops; added altogether, there were a total of nearly 10,000,000 soldiers on the battlefield.