The heavy cargo doors of the three Taichu Spirit-Wing Airships hummed open.
Ramps lowered into the mud. Tie Niu and the Righteous Iron Guards guided the two hundred rescued beasts aboard, laying down fresh straw and silver troughs filled with spring water.
White spirit-cranes folded their wings peacefully beside resting cloud-deer. Golden thunder-leopards lay on padded carpets, gnawing happily on dried spirit-meat.
The thirty-six Golden Rolls-Royces formed an escort perimeter, tires churning through the red clay as the convoy set off eastward.
Thirty miles east of Ten-Thousand Beasts Valley stood the Immortal Land Registry Pavilion.
It was an octagonal granite fortress built at the crossroads of three major mountain passes. Inside the open-air pavilion, five sect masters from the Southern Border League sat around a circular sandalwood table.
They were drinking plum wine and chuckling over a yellow land deed.
Above the table hovered a floating illusory map of a sprawling valley encircled by jagged peaks. The map showed dry, cracked riverbeds, barren stone slopes, and brown meadows.
