Morning light spilled across the cedar porch of the Floating Mountain of Myriad Spirits, washing the white flat stone slabs in warm, honeyed amber. Five thousand feet below, an unbroken sea of clouds drifted like churned cream, parting sometimes to reveal the distant green ribbons of the Azure Cloud Realm’s fertile river valleys.
Lin Xiao rested on a giant silk cushion woven from low-friction spirit spider threads, thoroughly enjoying the total absence of deadlines. In his natural form as a semi-clear sapphire-blue slime, he was roughly forty inches in width, plump, cool to the touch, and remarkably elastic. Extending a thin, see-through slime arm into a shallow celadon fine china bowl, he siphoned up a mouthful of chilled honeydew melon juice. The sweet, fragrant liquid swirled through his jelly-like body in bright golden currents before dissolving directly into his Primordial Chaos Void dantian with a faint, contented hum.
Retirement in an immortal realm, Lin Xiao thought lazily, flattening his upper dome into a relaxed, sunbathing oval. No spreadsheets, no logistics manifests, no six-in-the-morning alarm bells, and no screaming dispatch managers. Just fresh mountain melon and a gentle breeze.
It had been nearly three months since the conclusion of the Golden Sun Empire’s total row war. Thanks to the signing of the Continental Humanitarian Concordat, the royal legions had disbanded their siege engines, poisonous blood arrays had been permanently outlawed. The common mortal folk across four empires could finally plant spring wheat without worrying about rogue swordsmen trampling their irrigation ditches…
