The Martial Unity

Soon after Amare reunited with a slumbering Rui, human civilization reckoned with the sheer gravity of what had just happened.

No more than nine hours had passed since the Unfolding, and not only had a party from the True World traveled all the way to the Panama Continent, it had also located the most technologically advanced nation on the entire continent and had mounted an attack with a single combatant.

The worst part was that it came this close to actually capturing and later destroying Esocline Federation.

This event rocked the leaders of human civilization.

While the public and even most of the Martial World remained entirely in the dark about the sheer gravity of what had happened, the leaders of human civilization felt an unbearable amount of pressure mounting upon them.

It was pressure that exceeded even what they had felt upon the epoch of the Beast Incursion.

For the first time in all of human history, it was the leaders of humanity who had begun experiencing mental breakdowns while the citizens had begun calming down from their hysteria.

A record number of heads of state and governments committed suicide within a single day.

An extremely disturbing statistic that alluded to just how unbearable the horror of recent revelations was.

Not only was the Panama Continent the smallest continent surrounded by six other much larger continents, but they still didn’t know if the Martial Sages of human civilization were alive and they didn’t know if the Beast Incursion was truly complete.

And on top of all this maddening dread, they had gotten confirmation that they were dealing with at least one civilization with vastly superior technology than even the Esocline Federation which was heads and shoulders above all other countries in the Panama Continent.

They were, presumably, able to locate the Esocline Federation through its technological signatures by the time the Esoterist had even gotten the idea to do that. This proved that they possessed a degree of control and awareness over the planet the likes of which the people of the Panama Continent couldn’t even begin to imagine.

What truly horrified the leaders of human civilization was that this foreign entity was able to best one of their peak Sages in battle.

A peak Sage was close to the very limit of power that human civilization possessed. They were generally a title given to the strongest Martial Sages of the thirteen Sage-level powerhouses across human civilization, although the Kandrian Empire had become so powerful that it broke this system of Sage evaluation.

More importantly, the fact that such an extraordinary Martial Sage could be defeated by a single entity of the surrounding continents inspired true fear within the depths of their heart.

For the first time in their entire lives, they experienced the fear of absolute inferiority.

The terror of weakness.

A terror that not even the Beast Incursion was able to evoke within the depths of their hearts.

Of course, it was theoretically possible that the foreign entity was among the very strongest of fighters that the true world had to offer, but not a single person in the know could bring themselves to muster such absurd optimism.

This horrifying dread of weakness bore heavy on their already frayed minds and spirits.

And then there was the hysteria of their people upon the Unfolding that they had just spent the past eight hours quelling. On top of that, there were the most immediate environmental effects on the geophysics of the continent.

The distribution of heat and light, wind currents, and water currents across the entire continent had been disrupted, causing a preliminary wave of calamities and disasters to wash over the entirety of human civilization.

Perhaps the only solace they had was that their Martial Artists were freed from the burden from the Beast Incursion, at least temporarily, but it barely ameliorated the problem.

The leadership of human civilization was in a chaotic disarray of spiral of dread, terror, and horror unlike anything ever recorded in human civilization. Never before had such a universal confluence of crisis after crisis and nightmare after nightmare bombard the highest echelons of human civilization.

The island belt revolving around the Panama Continent began panicking the most as they were the most exposed to the true world, a complete reversal of what had previously been the case with the Beast Incursion where they were the most secure and entirely untouched.

The coastal nations were also the first targets for any invasion from the True World.

This further exacerbated the sheer peril and horror of the situation of human civilization.

Just nine hours after the Unfolding, and the tethers holding together the very fabric of human civilization were truly beginning to tear. So much so that historians of the future would go on to describe it as the day that human civilization almost disintegrated into pure anarchy.

The near-destructions of institutions by civilian uprisings and mass hysteria and all the chaos that came with it. The preliminary wave of environmental hazards and catastrophes that swept across human civilization truly tested the limits of all polities with crises ranging from floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other deadly disasters.

The uncertainty of the Beast Incursion, the uncertainty of the Martial Sages of human civilization, and the terror of the true world and the limits of the human minds of the leaders of human civilization pushed them to make irrational decisions.

Decisions that would have destroyed the final ounces of integrity of human civilization.

And yet, one event stayed their hand.

One event halted the continuous tumble of destruction.

A single announcement from the Kandrian Empire.

From the Emperor of Harmony himself.

“The Kandrian Empire hereby invites all of human civilization to the second Human Summit, the Summit of Salvation.”

Another shockwave rippled through human civilization as the leaders of human civilization found themselves looking up to the Emperor of Harmony, now universally regarded as the greatest human leader to have ever existed in human civilization.

If there was anybody capable of giving them hope in the age of the true world, it was none other than the Emperor of Harmony.

And thus, with shocking speed and urgency, the leaders of human civilization converged upon the Summit of Salvation.

They converged, seeking hope.

–