(Outlawing Conscription and Biological Weaponry Across All Human Dynasties)
The Hall of Heavenly Codices was the intellectual heart of the Golden Sun Empire.
Lined with soaring bookshelves of polished red sandalwood that reached thirty arm-lengths toward a vaulted skylight, the cavernous chamber housed over eight million scrolls, jade slips, and ancient legal tracts. For hundreds of years, royal scribes had drafted tax quotas, penal codes, and declarations of territorial conquest within these quiet walls. Every flat stone slab had witnessed ages of solemn bureaucrats calculating how many bushels of grain could be pulled out from peasant counties and how many conscript footmen were needed to guard post frontier outposts.
Tonight, however, the heavy air of royal high council was fully overturned.
A pleasant scent of dried honeysuckle and mountain pine filled the room as Su Ling’er arrived via cloud carriage from the Floating Mountain. Dressed in elegant lavender-and-white silk robes, her nine snowy-white fox tails swishing with graceful rhythm behind her, the Chief Diplomat of the Myriad Spirit Safe hall unrolled several long bolts of heavy, stringy mulberry paper across the thirty-foot teak conference table. Beside her, assistant scholars from the safe hall unpacked fine china ink-stones, jade paperweights, and silver-tipped reed pens.
