The silence that blanketed the Floating Mountain was so dense that the crackle of sparks from the chariot’s fire-drakes sounded like snapping twigs.
Aboard the Solar Vanguard, thirty golden-armored court guards gripped their sun-spears. Their polished visors turned toward one another in stunned disbelief. Array masters who had spent hundreds of years studying the solemn rites of sky subjugation stood numbed at their consoles. In all the official training manuals of the Heavenly Tribulation Court—across three thousand volumes detailing the proper crushing weight of rebellious mortal domains—there was not a single chapter dedicated to handling a target that offered the prosecuting judge an afternoon snack.
Sky Envoy Bai Ming gripped his ivory scepter so tightly that the carved dragon head creaked. His eyes narrowed, burning with suspicious hostility.
“A snack?” Bai Ming’s voice dropped into a dangerous, hissed whisper. “Creature... Do you take the judges of the Heavenly Court for simpletons? Do you believe a sky envoy of the Third Heaven can be swayed by poisoned mortal offerings? Or has your monstrous brain rotted under the pressure of our decree?”
Down on the terrace, Lin Xiao didn’t bother answering right away.
With a soft, fluid shimmer that rippled like moonlight on a calm lake, the forty-inch blue slime shifted form. The semi-clear jelly condensed, lengthened. Then he took shape, resolving into the slender, graceful figure of an eighteen-year-old scholar clad in simple azure linen robes. His dark hair was tied loosely with a silver spirit-silk ribbon. His sapphire eyes shone…
