The wind howled softly across the Obsidian Plaza, carrying with it the scent of mountain pine, cold granite, and heated Mobil 1 synthetic lubricating grease.
One thousand righteous cultivators—veterans of brutal sect wars, demon-slaying crusades, and ancient tomb expeditions—stood rooted to the flagstones. Their gleaming swords, consecrated staves, and jade talismans were drawn and charged with divine spiritual energy, yet nobody moved. Zero warriors drew a blade. An eerie, suffocating silence hung over the concourse as they stared at the sixteen-year-old youth sitting comfortably behind the sliding cedar ticket window.
"Four hundred and fifty thousand... what?" stammered Grand Abbot Wu Nian, the nine golden rings on his bronze khakkhara staff chiming faintly as his hand trembled.
"Spirit stones, Venerable Abbot," Li Xiaoyao repeated pleasantly, sliding an engraved brass coin tray through the ticket counter slot. "Mid-grade or higher. We also accept high-grade spirit crystals at the standard imperial exchange rate of one to one hundred. That figure already reflects our generous ten-percent volume discount for holy crusades exceeding five hundred registered participants."
Patriarch Guang Ming’s solar halo flared with indignant, white-hot fury, singeing the crisp morning air:
"Insolent cur! We have not crossed three continents, braved the eastern gales, and mobilized the sacred hosts of heaven to pay an admission toll! We are the wrath of the righteous path! We are here to sever the demonic root of your master, dismantle his blasphemous sun, and return this land to the cosmic order!"
Li Xiaoyao did not blink. He did not even flinch at the late Soul Formation pressure beating against the reinforced glass. With calm, measured movements, he reached under the counter, pulled out a thick, brass-bound binder of municipal bylaws, and flipped methodically to a blue-tabbed page:
"Sovereign Austin’s public operating hours are strictly from seven in the morning until six in the evening, honored crusade. Furthermore, slaying the master of the mountain falls under our **Floor Nine: Cataclysmic Raid Encounter** tier. Pursuant to facility operating policy, no raid party may engage the Boss without first clearing Floors One through Eight in sequential order. Skipping floors causes severe queuing bottlenecks and invalidates our dynamic load balancing."
Xiaoyao picked up a massive stack of crisp, heavy parchment sheets printed with rows of dense, four-point black text, and slid the entire ream through the window opening:
"Additionally, pursuant to the Municipal Safety Code of Sunset Peak Contracting LLC, no hostile, non-hostile, or semi-autonomous divine entities may enter the subterranean labyrinth without signing and initialing the **Fourteen-Page Visitor Liability Waiver and Non-Disclosure Agreement**."
Patriarch Guang Ming snatched the top document from the brass tray.
His divine spiritual sense, honed over eight centuries of immortal contemplation and ward-breaking, swept across the parchment. He was searching for insidious blood-curses, soul-shackling hexes, or karmic tracking runes designed to enslave their righteous souls.
What met his divine consciousness struck him like a forty-ton pneumatic drop-hammer:
Patriarch Guang Ming’s hands began to shake.
The parchment was stiff, smelling of wood pulp, petroleum solvent, and heavy printer's ink. There was no spiritual essence within it, yet the semantic density of the text exerted an unnatural, crushing psychological weight.
"This... this scroll..." Guang Ming breathed, his voice cracking with profound awe. "It is not a blood covenant. It is... an ancient Contract of Absolute Karmic Renunciation!"
Grand Abbot Wu Nian leaned over his shoulder, his wrinkled bronze brow furrowing into deep ravines as he read Clause 07.4:
"Heavens protect us... look at this, Brother Guang Ming! 'Loose immortal beards exceeding six inches must be tied back or tucked into high-visibility safety harnesses...' This is an ancient ascetic vow of humbleness! The demon lord demands that we strip away our earthly vanity and worldly pride before entering his underworld!"
Abbot Wu Nian stroked his own long, silver beard with trembling fingers, feeling the terrifying weight of karmic vulnerability:
"If an immortal’s beard is caught in the rotating trammels of samsara, decapitation is instantaneous... without refund! Even the cycle of rebirth is denied compensation!"
Sword Matron Ling Yue leaned in from the other side, her nine frost swords quivering in their orbits as her spiritual sense scanned Clause 14.2:
"'Sunset Peak LLC accepts ZERO karmic liability... and all severed appendages become facility property for auxiliary boilers...'" Ling Yue whispered, her icy composure shattering into sheer horror. "In all my three hundred years of sword cultivation across the Central Continent, I have never witnessed a soul-binding contract so thoroughly, ruthlessly impenetrable! Not even the ancient Heavenly Tribunals could find a single semantic loophole in this fourteenth clause! To sign this is to willingly surrender our physical shells to the cosmic furnace!"
"It is a psychological trial!" Guang Ming declared, his eyes burning with grim, fanatical revelation. "The demon king tests our conviction! He wishes to see if our righteous crusade will falter before the terrifying binding power of his administrative decrees! He thinks we fear his 'Section Three Slag Indemnification'! He believes our holy hearts will quail before his uninsulated grounding loops!"
Guang Ming turned to face his thousand assembled warriors, his voice rising in fierce, unyielding resolve:
"Brothers and sisters of the Righteous Path! We are crusaders of the light! We do not fear the molten metal of the earth, nor do we cower before the rotating trammel gears of the netherworld! If the demon demands that we tuck our beards into our breastplates, we shall tuck them with pride! Fetch the sacred inkstones! We shall sign his fourteen scrolls with our true names and enter his domain to purge him!"
"Wait," Li Xiaoyao called out, tapping the wooden counter with the blunt end of his ticket punch. "Inkstones and traditional calligraphic brushes are strictly prohibited on the concourse."
Patriarch Guang Ming frowned fiercely: "You dare reject the consecrated ink of the Radiant Sun?!"
"Black pine-soot ink smudges the optical barcode reader at the turnstile," Xiaoyao explained patiently, pointing toward the brass scanner pedestals. "If wet ink transfers onto the glass platen, the scanner throws a 404 Read Error and locks the rotor. Please use the official Sunset Peak Branded Yellow Grease Pencils provided in the wooden caddies."
With smooth efficiency, Xiaoyao set out ten heavy cedar caddies filled with freshly sharpened, hexagonal yellow grease pencils.
Patriarch Guang Ming hesitated. He reached out and picked up one of the yellow pencils.
He turned the hexagonal cedar shaft over in his calloused fingers. His spiritual sense probed the bright yellow wax core, detecting the faint scents of refined beeswax, paraffin, and aromatic mountain cedar. The shaft was foil-stamped with crisp golden characters: *SUNSET PEAK LABYRINTH: MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE*.
"Remarkable..." Guang Ming murmured, awestruck by the tactile perfection of the implement. "A divine writing talisman devoid of liquid ink, yet capable of laying down dense, moisture-proof runes that defy water, oil, and heat. Even his clerical instruments are engineered with terrifying First Epoch precision!"
Holding the yellow pencil with religious solemnity, Patriarch Guang Ming flipped to Page Fourteen of the legal waiver. He pressed the yellow wax tip firmly against the signature line and wrote:
*Guang Ming, Holy Patriarch of the Radiant Sun Orthodoxy.*
Below his signature, he diligently initialed every single subsection from Clause 01.1 to Clause 14.2:
*G.M. — G.M. — G.M.*
"Next," Xiaoyao said, stamping the signed document with purple indelible ink and sliding a second fourteen-page packet across the counter.
One by one, the thousand holy crusaders formed a disciplined, orderly queue within the red velvet ropes. Ancient Golden Core elders, austere Buddhist abbots, and proud sword masters leaned over the cedar railings, gripping yellow grease pencils in their armored gauntlets. With furrowed brows and racing hearts, they carefully initialed Sections One through Fourteen, solemnly agreeing not to sue Sunset Peak Contracting LLC in the event of conveyor-belt decapitation, high-voltage flashover, or pneumatic crushing.
It was, by any legal or theological metric, the most comprehensive industrial liability indemnification ever executed in the history of the cultivation world.
Fifty paces away, leaning comfortably against the cedar railing of the Timber Lodge porch, Austin took a slow sip of hot mountain tea from his ceramic mug.
"You see that, Tie Kuang?" Austin murmured, pointing his yellow grease pencil toward the orderly line of paladins dutifully initialing legal boilerplate. "Civilization. No screaming, no collateral damage to my cedar shingles, and every single one of them has legally waived their right to sue us if they stick their arm into the conveyor rollers."
Tie Kuang stood beside him, watching a three-hundred-year-old sword master carefully tuck his long white beard inside his dragon-scale breastplate to comply with Clause 07.4.
"Master Austin..." Tie Kuang muttered, shaking his head in profound, stunned reverence. "I have worked stone and metal for two centuries. But watching an entire holy crusade voluntarily sign away their mortal rights with yellow grease pencils... this is a magic far greater than earth-shaping."
"It's not magic, Tie Kuang. It's risk management," Austin replied dryly, setting down his mug. "Go check the brass turnstiles. The line is moving, and the show is about to begin."