As the three-hundredth and final lot rose from the subterranean floor inside a cage of black vampire chains, the temperature in the Sovereign Royal Auction Hall plunged below freezing.
Locked inside the barbed blood-iron bars rested an ancient octagonal disc forged from celestial cold-bronze. Its surface was engraved with the twenty-eight lunar mansions, ancient dragon-scale trigrams, and micro-constellation grooves. Even wrapped in twelve layers of pulsing vampire blood-seals, a beam of pure, primordial starlight pierced straight through the cage and illuminated the vaulted ceiling.
Up in the Royal Box, eighty-two-year-old Master Wen [Goodness: 95 / 100] gripped the mahogany railing with both hands, his breath catching in his throat.
“The Ancient Kunlun Star-Compass Fragment!” Master Wen gasped, his voice trembling with awe and grief. “One hundred and twenty years ago, when the royal astronomical sanctuary was looted, the sacred Star-Compass was shattered and its core fragment vanished into Europe! My carpentry master died with his eyes open praying someone would find it!”
Beside him, Old Master Mo [Goodness: 94 / 100] raised his sightless eyes toward the ceiling, his bamboo cane vibrating in harmony with the starlight. “That cold-bronze wasn’t smelted by mortal fire, Brother Wen. It carries the primordial magnetic pulse of Mount Kunlun’s ancestral Dragon Vein! That is why Duke Malakor’s twelve blood-chains are hissing—the relic’s righteous starlight is burning his vampire seals from the inside out!”
