“How dare a stripped seventh-rank censor occupy the #1 Manor above my Sima ancestral hall!” Grand Preceptor Sima Quan roared outside the buckled bronze gates.
Standing atop his black-iron war carriage, the seventy-year-old head of the Sima House radiated a suffocating Rank 7 Early Nascent Soul pressure that turned the afternoon clouds above Jade-Dragon Ridge the color of clotted blood.
Behind Sima Quan’s carriage stood two hundred elite Sima House guards in black-iron armor, along with a goateed old geomancer in eight-trigram robes holding a spinning brass compass.
He was Feng-Shui Master Ge ([Goodness: -22/100]), the Sima Clan’s chief array adviser.
“Grand Preceptor,” Master Ge whispered with a sinister sneer, pointing his brass compass at the #1 Prime Minister Manor’s front wall. “Even if that provincial merchant paid ten million Jade for the Imperial Crown Pavilion’s title deed, we cannot attack a sovereign deed directly without triggering the Capital Guard Array. However, twenty years ago I secretly buried twelve Black-Iron Leech Stakes along the boundary wall of this ridge!”
Sima Quan’s hawk-like eyes narrowed coldly. “The Feng-Shui Leech Array?”
“Exactly!” Master Ge chuckled, pulling three blood-dipped array flags from his sleeve. “The #1 Prime Minister Manor sits on the head of the Jade-Dragon leyline, while our Sima Ancestral Estate sits three hundred feet below on the dragon’s belly. The moment I activate the twelve Leech Stakes, we’ll suck all nine spirit-springs and every drop of official luck out of Wen Zhengming’s manor—turning his ten-million-Jade palace into a freezing, haunted graveyard…
