As the elders of China, the Ancient Clans tried to convince the various Dynasty Legatees not to do this, as this would bring in foreign forces and harm China overall.
Originally, the fighting between the Dynasty Legatees and Great Qin had already weakened China, and now that they were allying with foreign factions to attack Great Qin, this was simply too dishonest. They were simply helping outsiders attack their own people.
Ordinarily, people would have called them traitors, as they were helping others to attack fellow Chinese people. However, they had long since stopped considering Great Qin one of them, as Great Qin had threatened them too greatly and was their greatest enemy. As such, they wanted to use any means to destroy it, whether or not it was a Chinese faction.
Moreover, in order to stand on the side of righteousness and attract even more people, they rallied people by saying, "Get rid of the evil demon and restore China's righteousness!"
The 'evil demon' was, of course, Great Qin. The various factions had twisted many of the stories about Great Qin to make it seem eviler and paint it as a vicious demon.
Now that they had portrayed Great Qin to be an evil demon, their actions in allying with foreign factions to attack it could be considered to be just.
The Ancient Clans continued to desperately try to persuade them otherwise. They wanted to maintain the status quo, and since the various Dynasty Legatees were so far away, it would be better for them to just keep developing their own factions. Why did they have to care about how Great Qin was doing?
However, the Dynasty Legatees ignored the Ancient Clans because Great Qin's threat was not something that could be ignored simply because they were far away. Because of how great this threat was, they had to get rid of Great Qin.
However, the Dynasty Legatees also gave Great Qin an option: as long as it handed over its Clan Armament, did not step out of the Forest of Horrors for three years, and allowed them to suppress its Nation Armament, they would trust Great Qin and no longer stand against it.
However, the Ancient Clans knew that it would be impossible for Great Qin to agree to such terms. If it agreed, it would not be Great Qin anymore.
If they really agreed, Great Qin would become weak while they would become much stronger. Who knew who would be destroying who when the time came?
Seeing that they could not persuade the Dynasty Legatees, the Ancient Clans could only turn their gazes to Great Qin. However, when they thought of how domineering Great Qin was, they gave up on trying to persuade it as well. As such, they could only sigh and see how the situation progressed.
The Dynasty Legatees and foreign factions fighting against Great Qin would only consume a large amount of resources. If they just used the ordinary people to attack, the actual factions would not suffer any losses, and with so many factions allied together, they had a massive amount of resources at their disposal.
Even if they used a lot of resources, if they split it across the many factions, each of them would not expend much, so they did not care as long as they achieved their objective.
With so many resources, they felt incredibly confident and started to plan.
They didn't know just what that golden dragon was, and it seemed to be that some kind of unknown existence had attacked the golden dragon, causing everything to quieten down, after which the unknown existence had disappeared.
They felt that the golden dragon most likely did not have much power left, or else the unknown existence would not have just stopped. Moreover, if they attacked and the golden dragon tried to stop them, would that unknown existence help them stop the golden dragon again?
Without the golden dragon, they became much more confident. Before, the players of a single region could force Great Qin into retreating, so what about four regions? The result would be obvious.
In the end, they finally made the decision to attack. Of course, they couldn't just enter the Forest of Horrors without any preparations because it was now the base of Great Qin. They didn't want things to go like last time, with them falling into Great Qin's countless traps and retreating pitifully.
As such, they had to make sufficient preparations this time to defend against Great Qin's tricks. This required a arge amount of money, and this was provided by the Dynasty Legatees. Right now, money did not matter much to them; they just wanted to destroy or heavily wound Great Qin.
In the face of great benefits, the players in the four regions around the Forest of Horrors turned into ravenous wolves and had no fears. They were all incredibly excited and were eager to leap at Great Qin and bite it.
Zhao Fu quickly heard about this, and his expression became serious. He discussed with his Generals as to how to face this situation. Now, many players were gathering at the surrounding four regions, and there were roughly ten million of them. It would be quite difficult to deal with them, especially since they would not die true deaths and had no fears.
On the other hand, all of Zhao Fu's soldiers were real lives, and if they died, they would remain dead. They could not endlessly revive like the players.
If they fought directly, no matter who won or lost, Great Qin would suffer great losses.
If the golden dragon hadn't expended most of its power, it might have been able to instantly kill all of them. However, it was a pity that in order to give Zhao Fu the Heaven Murder Bloodline, it had forcibly stolen the Fate of countless creatures and used up most of its power.
Many other factions quickly joined this alliance against Great Qin. Countless neutral factions watched on, and very few factions supported Great Qin. However, they were not able to help much.
No one dared to jump to conclusions as to who would win this battle. Even though it seemed like the Dynasty Legatees held an overwhelming advantage, they were facing Great Qin. Even though they had many people and had made all sorts of preparations, Great Qin had unfathomable potential, so the conclusion was quite unpredictable.
The Hundred Schools of Thought and the various Sects felt quite complicated towardsGreat Qin. Sometimes, they were forced to act against Great Qin, but they wanted to remain neutral and not offend anyone.
It could be said that their Sect Masters had been killed by Zhao Fu, but after knowing that the golden dragon belonged to Great Qin, they would not attack.
Back then, they had thought that someone from another world was trying to steal their world's Fate, so they had all acted. However, they had been killed by that golden dragon and died quite pitifully.
However, even though all of the Sects' disciples were quite furious, their Sect Masters told them not to be too angry. On one hand, they had offended Great Qin many times, so this was part of their compensation to Great Qin. On the other hand, if Great Qin really could restore its nation, they hoped that their disciples could go serve Great Qin and achieve their aspirations.
After all, Great Qin was currently the faction with the most potential, and having tense relations with it would not be good.
Flower Moon also discussed this matter. In actuality, they had long since wanted to work together with Great Qin, but because Great Qin had captured one of their people and refused to release her, this had not happened, and they had remained neutral.
The atmosphere in the Forest of Horrors became quite oppressive, and the various Dynasty Legatees prepared to launch their attacks. However, by now, the temperature had fallen to under -10 degrees Celsius, and many streams and lakes and been frozen, as snowflakes fell from the sky.
By now, it was late winter, and even those who wore thick coats felt quite cold. Whenever it snowed, it would snow for at least three days, and the entire Heaven Awaken World seemed to turn into a world of whiteness.
The snow was usually at least 1.2 meters deep, and some places even had layers of snow that were three or four meters deep. This forced the Dynasty Legatees to put a pause on their operations, and it also forced Great Qin to stop clearing out the Forest of Horrors.
At the same time, a new festival arrived.