Huang-Mo Wars

Huang-Mo Wars were a series of clashes some 20,000 years ago by Eastern Azure's time between Huang Heavenly Clan and Mo Heavenly Clan. The war affected broad swathe of the Azure Astral, Ten Thousand Stars and August Splendour Starfield. The clashes are generally divided into three campaigns.

## First Campaign

While exact details about reason for war is unclear, one of the broadly accepted version comes from *Insanity of a Thousand Years – The First Huang-Mo Campaign by Kong Wei.* According to the excerpt the war started as a fight between juniors of Huang Clan and Mo Clan on Red Splendour Great World. As a result The Mo Clan juniors had their good fortune seized and were executed as 'sinner against the world'.

When Mo Clan sent an expedition to demand answers they were insulted and mocked. Enraged the leader of expedition departed but before he did he noted how the rulers of the world had used various stratagems to stymie the good fortune of others that they might keep their position secure. Upon returning, the leader disseminated widely that this world was, as such, deeply exposed to karmic backlash and that there was good fortune to be made among those who sought to quell villains in the eyes of their own heavens.

This resulted in many influences paying visit to the world and slaughtering anyone with karmic demerits widely without care for status to aid their own advancement. This, in a single stratagem, forced the rulers of that world into a pit, whereupon their rotten edifice collapsed as their own fortune was overturned and their rampant behavior consigned everything they had built.

The end of the first campaign of the Huang Mo war came with the climactic clash between Mo Zhao, the Celestial Demoness, Dao Mother Binary Ruin, granddaughter of God Slaughtering Lunatic, and the heroine of Huang, Saintess of Emei, Huang Guo Wuli. These two Heavenly Venerates clashed on the very spot where the whole conflict began, and while neither fell, no side could clearly claim victory. during the fight Mo Zhao destabilized Red Splendour Great World's sun, forcing Huang Wuli to seal it away with her own two hands.

## Second Campaign

Things stayed calm for a while but, not happy with the results, righteous faction tracked down Mo Xiao, Mo Zhao's daughter, on a Great World at edge of the Kong, Huang and Meng territory. This resulted in many juniors attempting to embroil Mo Xiao in troubles but they were met with failure after failure and disappeared without a trace. After eight such disappearances a Celestial Venerate revealed that Mo Xiao, who many thought to be a junior was in fact a World Venerate. This resulted in righteous faction accusing her of assassinating juniors and demanding restitution.

The climax of second campaign came when the favoured scion of the Wise Emperor of Shu, Shu Tenjin, after much beseeching from all sides, finally entered the fray succeeded in cornering Mo Xiao on the Supreme World of Kang's Origination in the territory of Ten Thousand Stars Bureau.

Cut off from her clan, Mo Xiao and Shu Tenjin fought a peerless battle in the skies above Kang’s Origination. He, a Dao Ascendant aided by three companions: Huang Fei, Kong Lihua and Fang Zihao. The battle, which lasted 100 days, resulted in Mo Xiao's defeat. Seeing Mo Xiao defeated many were keen to see great prize be paid and Mo Xiao suffer penalty. They demanded that the Mo clan had to pay reparations to every world slighted in the war and Mo Xiao had to become the concubine of Huang Gan Murong, a recently ascended scion who had ferocious momentum within the Wise Emperor of Huang’s court.

## Third Campaign

The righteous faction, pushed by their victory, seized all treasures of Mo Xiao, and distributed them to those they felt most deserving of recompense while the great powers looked on. Her precious blades they presented to Huang Gan Murong as Mo Xiao’s gift upon becoming his concubine. However, still not satisfied and seeking further insult, the many victims sought to embarrass Mo Xiao and the Mo clan to the utmost and thus dragged forward 100 maidens of the Mo clan they had captured and stripped them, displaying them above Kang’s origination, finally stripping Mo Xiao herself and binding her in the sky as well, while all looked on and laughed.

In that instant, ethereal words, whispering from beyond the vault of heaven, assailed whole starfield: *“How easily you forget, it seems, o ‘righteous seats of wisdom’, that you show such disrespect to our God Slaughtering Hall? This strength with which you guarantee all here to be untouched by events, having shamed our Daughter – I wish to witness it for myself.”*

In that instant, a shadow descended from the void and cloaked Mo Xiao, carrying her away. Those elders who had stripped her and taken her things were all slain in its passing and every other, junior and elder alike, who had been present and seen Mo Xiao’s heavenly body, was struck blind, tears of blood streaming from their eyes.

It took a great amount of pressure to divorce the disastrous fallout of what happened above Kang’s Origin, from the ‘second campaign’ itself, in the eyes of most. The curse put upon half a star field by the God Slaughtering Hall for the shaming of their Saintess was dropped thoroughly in the lap of the Huang clan. This was exacerbated when it became clear that the *only* way that the curse could be lifted was for those ‘afflicted’ to bow nine times before each of the hundred maidens of the Mo clan and acknowledge their crime with true repentance in their hearts.

As such, the Huang clan’s uppermost echelons within the court of the Wise Emperor of Huang largely washed their hands of the matter and told their ‘juniors’ to resolve it promptly, or new ‘Elders’ could be found, who had better eyesight.

Thus, was the Third ‘campaign’ christened ‘Ten Thousand Eyes of Blood’, and a great many people both high and low learned that the heavens contained terrors such as they had never conceived as they were faced with a cruel choice – cast aside all reputation and bow to the Mo clan, whom they held to be mendacious villains, or be known forevermore as an influence that offended God Slaughtering Hall. The Gan and Hong branches’ influence was lessened markedly for the next several thousand years, blamed as they were for the loss of reputation for not knowing when to quit in the eyes of the Wise Emperor’s Advisors.

## Aftermath

The third ‘campaign’, the so-called ‘Ten Thousand Eyes of Blood’, caused massive ructions throughout the territories of the Huang, Kong and Sheng. While the Mo clan’s apparent willingness to take money over face at nearly every turn in the aftermath caught many off guard, it allowed the Huang clan the opportunity to claim a sort of awkward victory in the eyes of their more ardent supporters.

They also touted widely that they would have won, had God Slaughtering Hall not ‘interfered’, in contravention with many formally established agreements in the matters of the Heavenly clans, and that the Mo had effectively been forced to hide in its shadow through their thoroughly fortuitous, in the eyes of many, links to a Saintess of the hall.

The final straw, really, was the vast, overinflated sums that various powers and the Huang clan had to pay to ransom back the eight juniors who had been captured by Mo Xiao, simply to avoid the ignominy of the Mo clan parading them widely in their own territory.

As such, when the five great powers set up the ‘Young Sovereign’ competition, as much as a way to stimulate morale, while they did reach out to the cardinal courts, such was the ill sentiment among many regarding God Slaughtering Hall, and so widely had the outcome of the war been complained over, that there was little serious engagement with them, and as a result the other three, Turquoise Pond, North Star Grotto and Vast Obscurity Grove, were, if not disrespectfully disregarded, perhaps not given the due concern that they might otherwise have expected. This would, when the Heavenly Hundred was later set up, become a source of *many* bitter regrets.

1. ↑ https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36051/memories-of-the-fall/chapter/635281/chapter-83-shatterpoint