On the outskirts of the Black Flame Forest, west of Silver Moon City, the dawn mist had yet to disperse, but the air already thrummed with an unusual restlessness.
Morning dew clung to the withered yellow blades of grass, only to be shaken loose by the sound of stealthily approaching footsteps. A few startled gray sparrows flapped their wings and took to the sky, but they were silently sliced to pieces mid-air by a Wind Blade. Feathers and flecks of blood drifted lightly to the ground, a harbinger of the bloodshed to come.
Deep within the dense forest, Luo Hu, the red-haired Hall Master of the Blood Hand Gang, was wiping his gleaming Broad Axe with a coarse palm. The blood-red patterns engraved on the axe's blade glowed with an eerie light in the morning sun.
Behind him stood over a hundred bare-chested gang members, each bearing scars of varying depths—medals earned from street brawls in Silver Moon City and from Hunting Demon Wolves in the Black Flame Forest.
