It was a Monday evening when the war between the West and the East finally came to an abrupt stop.
But it was not because the two sides had agreed to a truce.
There had been no negotiations.
No peace treaties.
No surrender.
The war ended because there was no one left to rule.
The kings of East China were dead.
The queens were dead.
Their royal guards lay scattered across blood-soaked courtyards, their armor shattered, their banners trampled into the mud.
And the man responsible for it all stood alone in the center of the ruined palace grounds.
Zixuan.
A warrior whose name had begun to spread like wildfire across the eastern lands.
Curiously, the people of the West barely knew his name.
To them, he was just another rumor from distant kingdoms.
But in the isolated territories of Southeast China, his name carried a different meaning.
It carried fear.
Not because he was cruel.
Not because he enjoyed slaughter.
But because no one had ever defeated him.
Zixuan wiped the blood from the edge of his blade and glanced around the silent palace courtyard.
The wind moved gently through the shattered gates.
The war had ended.
Just like that.
Yet his face showed no pride.
No satisfaction.
Only boredom.
"…So this is the end," he muttered quietly.
For years he had fought in countless battles. Armies had charged at him, generals had tried to crush him, and entire kingdoms had united just to stop his advance.
But none of them had given him what he truly wanted.
A worthy fight.
Zixuan had not become this powerful by accident.
From the age of twelve, he had begun walking a path that very few humans in history had ever managed to master.
A path known as Qigong.
But the Qigong he practiced was not the common form known by ordinary martial artists.
It was an ancient discipline said to originate from techniques practiced by Grandmasters during the Tang Dynasty.
Three principles formed its foundation.
Tiao Shen (Body)
Tiao Xi (Breath)
Tiao Xin (Mind)
Most martial artists struggled for decades just to grasp the basics of one.
Yet somehow, Zixuan had begun mastering Tiao Xin before he had even become a man.
The story behind it was almost absurd.
When he was twelve years old, Zixuan had noticed something strange on the wall of his family's small home.
A tiny black dot on the white plaster.
At first, he simply stared at it out of curiosity.
Then he stared longer.
Minutes turned into hours.
Hours turned into days.
Every day after his training, he would sit quietly and focus his eyes on that tiny dot.
At first his mind wandered constantly.
He thought about food.
About fighting.
About the sounds outside.
But slowly… something changed.
His thoughts began to quiet.
The world around him faded.
The dot became the only thing that existed.
For five consecutive years, he repeated this strange habit.
Day after day.
Year after year.
Until eventually, he realized something incredible.
His mind had become completely still.
This was Tiao Xin.
The discipline of controlling the mind.
Most masters spent their entire lives attempting to reach that level.
Zixuan had reached it as a teenager.
What happened after that became a mystery.
At the age of seventeen, Zixuan disappeared.
No letters.
No explanation.
No witnesses.
For twenty years, no one knew where he had gone.
Some believed he had died in the wilderness.
Others believed he had joined a hidden sect deep within the mountains.
But when he finally returned…
He was no longer the boy who had left.
He was something else entirely.
His mastery of the remaining disciplines—Tiao Shen and Tiao Xi—had become frighteningly complete.
His body moved with terrifying efficiency.
His breathing flowed like a calm river.
And when those techniques combined with the stillness of his mind…
They formed the ancient art of Qigong.
A power that very few in history had ever fully understood.
Yet even after reaching such heights…
Zixuan felt nothing.
Battle after battle, opponent after opponent, the result was always the same.
They fell.
Too easily.
Too quickly.
It felt less like fighting and more like cutting grass.
And slowly, that emptiness began to grow inside him.
Until one day, he heard a rumor.
They said there was a monk who had lived since the same era as the ruthless conqueror who once shook the world.
A monk who had walked the earth during the time of the great Mongol expansions.
A monk who had witnessed the age of Genghis Khan with his own eyes.
And yet…
He was still alive.
Some claimed the monk was over seven hundred years old.
Others said he was immortal.
Many dismissed the story as nothing more than drunken gossip.
But the moment Zixuan heard it…
His heart ignited.
For the first time in years, his fighting spirit stirred again.
So he began searching.
Across mountains.
Across deserts.
Across ancient temples and forgotten villages.
Ten years passed.
Ten long years of wandering the world in pursuit of a single man.
Most people would have given up.
But Zixuan never doubted the rumor.
Because deep down, he felt it.
Somewhere in this world…
There was someone strong enough to challenge him.
He finally found the place on a quiet morning.
A mountain range where the peaks rose and fell like waves frozen in stone.
Mist rolled through the valleys below, drifting slowly between the cliffs.
The air was silent.
Peaceful.
At the top of one of the tallest peaks sat a lone figure.
A monk.
He was sitting on a large stone boulder as if he had been waiting there for centuries.
His robe was plain.
His posture relaxed.
At first glance, he looked like an ordinary man in his fifties.
Yet something about him felt… ancient.
Zixuan climbed the final stretch of the mountain and stepped onto the rocky plateau.
His boots scraped lightly against the stone.
The monk slowly opened his eyes.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The wind whispered quietly around them.
Then Zixuan broke the silence.
"Are you the monk!?"
His voice echoed across the mountain.
The monk did not answer.
Instead, he calmly bent down and picked up a small rock from the ground beside him.
Without warning—
He threw it.
The rock shot through the air toward Zixuan.
Zixuan's body reacted instantly.
His instincts moved faster than thought.
He stepped aside.
The rock flew past him.
And struck a tree several meters behind him.
At first…
Nothing happened.
Then the tree began to move.
Not falling.
Not cracking.
Moving.
The entire trunk wobbled like jelly, bending and rippling unnaturally as if its solid wood had suddenly become soft.
Leaves shook violently.
The bark twisted and wrinkled.
The once sturdy tree now looked like it had turned into liquid flesh.
Zixuan stared at it in disbelief.
For the first time in many years…
His eyes widened.
"…What?"
He slowly turned his head back toward the monk.
Then, slowly…
A grin spread across his face.
A real one.
Not the bored expression he usually wore.
But the grin of a warrior who had finally found something interesting.
The monk stepped down from the boulder.
Even up close, he looked no older than fifty.
Yet the calmness in his gaze carried the weight of centuries.
Seven hundred ninety-nine years of life.
And standing before him now…
Was the man who had searched ten years just to meet him.
The wind grew stronger as it swept across the mountain peak.
Zixuan rolled his shoulders slightly, his excitement rising.
"Well…" he said quietly.
His grip tightened around the handle of his sword.
"I finally found you."
The monk simply watched him in silence.
His expression unreadable.
But slowly…
Very slowly…
The monk's lips curved into a faint smile.
The monk's lips lifted slightly, as if he were about to say something.
But he didn't.
The smile remained on his face, quiet and calm, as if he were watching something mildly amusing.
The wind swept across the mountain peak, carrying with it the scent of wet stone and distant pine trees. The silence between the two men stretched for several seconds.
Finally, the monk tilted his head a little.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice gentle and slightly confused.
Then he chuckled softly to himself.
Not a mocking laugh.
More like the quiet amusement of someone who had lived long enough to see the world repeat itself many times.
Zixuan heard the question clearly.
For a moment, he simply stared at the monk.
Then he chuckled as well.
A short laugh escaped him, the kind that came from genuine excitement rather than humor.
It had been a long time since anyone had asked him such a simple question.
Slowly, he straightened his back.
His posture became firm, like a soldier reporting his name before battle.
His chest expanded as he inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the cold mountain air.
Then he spoke.
"I am Zixuan!"
His voice rang across the mountaintop like a drum.
"I'm a warrior from Southeast China!"
The wind carried his words across the stone ridges.
The monk listened quietly.
He did not react immediately.
Instead, he studied the man standing before him.
Zixuan stood tall, his shoulders broad, his body built from years of brutal training and endless battles. His clothes were simple, worn from travel, and his sword hung loosely at his side.
But what caught the monk's attention was not the weapon.
It was the man's eyes.
They burned with something the monk had not seen in a very long time.
Not hatred.
Not arrogance.
But hunger.
The hunger of a warrior who had spent his entire life searching for something greater than himself.
The monk's smile deepened slightly.
"Southeast China, hm…" he murmured.