The cloud-barge dropping from the high-sky rift didn’t bear the gold-trimmed solar eagles or the roaring dragon prows of a royal war armada.
It was a modest, plain vessel built from pale white cloud-pine, flying a single silk banner of flawless snow-white from its central mast. Flanking the vessel were no armored golden galleons. Instead, two hundred exhausted sky guards hovered behind the stern, their axe-spears reversed and their golden sun-banners rolled tightly in velvet sheaths.
At the prow of the white barge stood Grand Chief Inquisitor Zhao.
The supreme judge of the Heavenly Tribulation Court, who for three thousand years had struck terror into the hearts of rising mortal sects, looked as if he had aged five hundred years in three days. His towering royal coronet was gone, replaced by a simple gray jade hair-pin. His gold-stitched court robes were devoid of military regalia. His pale, wrinkled hands clutched a royal white-jade scroll so tightly that his knuckles were bloodless.
The barge touched down upon the stone arrival plaza of the Floating Mountain. Then, Inquisitor Zhao stepped onto the flat stone slabs.
He had prepared himself for horrors. He had spent the twelve-hour flight dropping through the clouds steeling his immortal spirit for blood-soaked torture chambers, iron cages hung above boiling magma lakes, and the horrifying sight of a multi-mile ancient chaos giant beast waiting to swallow his soul whole.
