With a synchronized hum of thirty-six twin-turbo spirit engines, the Golden Rolls-Royce Phantoms crested the final cloud-wrapped landing of the Nine-Bend Stairway and glided onto Mount Qingcheng’s white-jade Grand Sword Plaza.
Two thousand inner and outer disciples stood in rigid ranks along the east and west galleries, their eyes wide as the thirty-six floating golden sedans fanned out in a gleaming V-formation across the sacred flagstones.
At the northern end of the square, atop a nine-step dais of carved obsidian, sat three elevated jade thrones.
In the center sat Sect Master Xuanji, a gaunt sixty-year-old Taoist in purple-gold crane robes whose grey beard hung down to his belt. To his left sat twenty-three-year-old Senior Brother Jian Wuchen in spotless white brocade, his hair crowned with a silver jade hairpin and a jewel-encrusted scabbard resting across his lap.
And standing just behind the right-hand deacon seats, clinging tightly to the sleeve of a pudgy Mount Qingcheng inner deacon named Deacon Sun, was a woman in a gaudy pink silk dress who looked startlingly familiar.
Lin Mo stepped out of the lead Golden Rolls-Royce, adjusted his tracksuit collar, and swept the dais with his [Pure-Heart Eye Lv.3].
Three distinct halos popped up above the northern platform:
