The morning breeze that swept over the Eastern Pass of the Grand Desolate Forest had lost its customary sweetness. Usually, the mountain air tasted of damp cedar bark, wild jasmine, and the cool spray tumbling down the Seven Cascades. Today, it tasted like hot kiln brick and iron dust.
Lin Xiao stood upon the curved cedar railing of the safe hall’s highest watchtower, dressed in his favorite midnight-blue scholar robes with loose sleeves cinched by silver cord. In this eighteen-year-old human form, he possessed dark silky hair that stirred in the wind and sapphire-blue eyes that mirrored the cloudless sky above. Beside his boots rested a small glazed clay jug of chilled plum tea, nestled in a wooden bucket packed with shaved mountain ice.
He lifted his gaze to the sky vault. High above the horizon, the twin suns of the Azure Cloud Realm—the blazing Great Golden Orb and the smaller, crimson-tinged Vermilion Eye—were slowly converging along a matching spirit vein line. Such a sky solar conjunction occurred once every twelve hundred years. To mortal astrologers, it was an omen of royal upheaval. To traditional sects, it was an auspicious cycle for refining solar spirit pills.
To Lin Xiao, it felt like someone had left a huge rising heat oven running on maximum broil with the kitchen window wide open.
