Chapter 344 – Explosion, Nine Suns, Year-End Gathering, Ghost Domain Expansion, Wolfmother’s Warning - Part 1

June arrived.

The tribes of the Nine Flames had converged on a frozen patch of tundra claimed by no tribe. They were here for one reason only, the summons of the Khagan.

The sacred weapon of the Nine Flames... The Khagan’s Token... Born of the Everflame....

These phrases framed today’s assembly. Yet the warriors gathered with a mix of eager curiosity and lingering doubt. They wanted to see the fabled token, but wondered what could make a mere object worthy of a Khagan’s seal.

Amid howling wind, swirling snow, and the never-ending polar night, Li Yuan stood on a jagged ice crag, both hands wrapped around a massive golden axe. Flames roared around him; the axe, bathed in fire, blazed even brighter, casting shards of light across the tundra.

Drawn to that radiance, the silhouettes of the tribesmen pressed closer, encircling Li Yuan the way people huddled around a bonfire. He counted roughly 4,000 people. That was almost every able-bodied person in the region. The aged, infirm, and children had remained in the settlements; others still scoured the permafrost for food.

“This axe!” Li Yuan’s shout cut through the gale, snapping every head toward him. “It was wrought in the heart of the Everflame, a sacred gift Heaven and Earth bestowed upon the Nine Flames. Whoever wields it claims Heaven’s favor and can unleash their might to its fullest!”

He lifted the golden axe high, and with a casual sweep painted a crimson crescent across the driving snow. Steel and fire fused, radiating an aura of unassailable power. Expectation and skepticism flickered in every eye.

“Khor’eer Hudor, chieftain of the Bronze Clad Tribe, step forward!”

“Khagan!” A hulking, bald warrior with skin sheened like bronze strode out. After a few steps he dropped to one knee, arms raised, awaiting the blessing. This was the most sacred rite of the Nine Flames; the chieftains had merely adapted it for the Khagan.

The flames around the axe guttered out. Li Yuan climbed down from the rock and placed the weapon into Hudor’s waiting hands.

Hudor lifted it. He had heard Suljagar speak of the axe’s wonders, but half-believed the tale. The instant his palms closed around the haft, a blistering heat surged through his flesh.

The Yang energy in his blood, ever present but half-dormant, was pulled outward like glowing threads, binding to the axe, then to something even fiercer within it. Strength flooded every muscle.

Hudor’s eyes widened like bronze gongs. He felt his own excitement burn and saw the axe blaze. This was no weapon now, but living fire.

“This ... ” His breath hitched.

“THIS—!” With a roar, he charged into the open snowfield. The great axe whirled in his grip like a coiling golden python, cleaving arcs of blazing light through the storm.

The tribesmen stared, slack-jawed.

Hudor was already one of their mightiest. Now he seemed bolstered by Heaven itself, an opponent no one could hope to defeat.

With a savage roar, he raised the axe and smashed it into the ground.

BOOM!

Ice and snow erupted like a furious tide, shards whirling into the storm. When the spray settled, a jagged fissure over a hundred meters long cracked open across the glacier. Deep within, the shapes of frost-bound beasts could be seen.

An astonished murmur rippled through the crowd.

On this permafrost, a single chisel-blow usually cost a strong warrior half a day; even a chieftain might manage a cut a few meters across. Yet here was a yawning trench in an instant.

Hudor’s eyes burned. The axe was unmarked. Excitement tinged with reluctant greed flickered across his face. But he hastened back, knelt before Li Yuan, held the axe aloft and cried, “Heaven favors the Khagan, granting us this token!”

Li Yuan did not reclaim it. “Tsus’gar Yankhan, chieftain of the Blood Arrow Tribe,” he said, “you and the others, try it.”

Red-eyed with desire, the chieftains began their

baptism of flame

.

Each one, the moment they gripped the weapon, lit up as though they had discovered a priceless treasure.

By now all of them understood that whoever held this axe would gain enough power to become khagan.

Next Li Yuan invited the sixth rank warriors to attempt to wield the axe. Unlike the chieftains, they could not stir a flicker of its strength. Jen’gal Blacktooth was among them; the Yang energy in his blood was too faint to touch the power sealed within.

Li Yuan watched, thoughtful. The rule was clear. Much like shadow blood cultivators, only those who had reached fifth rank could wield a spirit artifact.

That, at least, was good news. Not everyone in the Nine Flames would now risk life and limb for the axe, only the handful of fifth rank chieftains.

During these trials, Li Yuan noticed something else. The martial arts of the Nine Flames were crude. Within the same rank, strength barely diverged; there were no outliers. Save for the elderly and infirm, sixth rank warriors uniformly clustered between 600 and 800 in combat power. Even among the fifth rank chieftains, the strongest chieftain Hudor hovered around 1,800~1,850, while the weakest sat near 1,615~1,650.”

In other words, a warrior’s power depended more on how robustly they were built than on any refined martial arts.

When all was done, two new terms emerged on every tongue, Khagan’s Axe and Child of the Sun.

The golden axe was soon hailed as the Khagan’s Axe.

And just as the emperors of the Central Plains were called the Mandated Sons of Heaven, every future great khagan would carry a new title of their own—Child of the Sun.

Soon, the old legend of the gods forsaking this land when devils defiled it was quietly replaced...

“The Sun, driven off by encroaching darkness, abandoned its homeland yet left behind a spark. Every khagan is a child of that Sun. Armed with the axe the Sun bestowed, they hold the line on the very edge of light, venturing into the dark until dawn returns to the tundra.”

The story changed little on the surface, but it aligned far better with the beliefs of the Nine Flames.

Li Yuan shattered the tribe’s dated myth of the gods and rebuilt a solar faith.

To worship the Everflame was to worship the Sun.

To worship the Sun was to honor the Khagan, the Sun’s chosen child.

A true khagan must be a pure-blood of the Nine Flames for three generations and the bearer of the Khagan’s Axe.

In one stroke, Li Yuan severed any outsider’s path to the throne.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Li Yuan’s greatest concern had been the Wolfmother, guardian of what she called the burial ground of the gods. One might expect her to oppose the demolition of the worship of the gods, yet she backed the new creed. It seemed she welcomed the existence of the gods sinking into obscurity. It would be easier to hide the burial ground that way.

Deeper still lay the Deathless Tomb with its maze. She and Li Yuan invented a fresh warning. A terrible force of darkness slumbered in the labyrinth, and death awaited those who disturbed it.

The truth? All that rested there was the black-and-white twin fish, and anyone who stepped into that zone would see their power drop to 0~1.

That maze crawled with direwolves, carefully chosen sixth rank demonic beasts that thrived in the cold and patrolled the burial ground without end.

Approach the Deathless Tomb? The wolves would know.

Enter the burial ground? They would ambush.

Few warriors could even reach the site. Were someone as strong as Li Yuan to venture in alone, his power would vanish at the threshold, and the pack would tear him apart in moments. That was the true safeguard of the burial ground of the gods.

Li Yuan’s refusal to enter that day saved his life; the Wolfmother’s decision to become his woman was pure necessity. As long as he stayed outside, she had no chance to kill him.

A guardian’s first instinct was to erase every threat. Only when that proved impossible did the Wolfmother settle for a wary alliance built on mutual deception.

Li Yuan understood that killing the Wolfmother would solve nothing. She was only the tip of an enormous, unseen iceberg. And like certain fourth rank cultivators, she might even harbor two distinct minds—one the naive girl persona who yearned to see the outside; the other the true, predatory Wolfmother.

So the smarter choice was to keep her alive. A living wolf held clues, a dead one slammed the door on an entire unknown world.

Besides, during their talks, Li Yuan had gleaned a disturbing hint. Should this wolfmother die, another would soon appear from somewhere else. It was far wiser then to work with the naive girl half, who at least on the surface was friendly toward him.

The Wolfmother, for her part, grasped a hard truth. The tundra would stay calm only if she and the Khagan stood together. She was willing to use her body, her resources, even her secrets to keep that alliance intact. So a delicate balance was struck.