By the time the afternoon reached its golden prime. The sun hung was suspended like a polished brass gong in the azure vault above the Floating Mountain.
In an ordinary midsummer gathering across the southern plains, such direct, unshielded sunlight would have turned open-air banquet courtyards into scorching furnaces. high-sky mountain summits were notoriously unforgiving. The thin air amplified solar glare, wilting fresh leafy salads, heating wine in open bowls, and forcing dignitaries to retreat beneath silk parasols fanned by weary servants.
Lin Xiao, currently floating in a wide shallow bowl of chilled mountain spring water placed upon his favorite terrace table, looked up at the sky and let out a gentle, bubbling pulse.
“It’s getting a little warm out here,” Lin Xiao murmured, lazily extending a blue slime arm to nudge a floating slice of cucumber. “If people get sunburned on their foreheads, they’re going to get headaches before the evening fireworks.”
Standing at the edge of the terrace stone railing, Xiao Long turned his snake-like head.
The Nine-Clawed Azure Flood Dragon was currently resting in an elegant, condensed form roughly thirty feet long, his sinuous body draped casually across the carved jade railing like a fancy living garland. His scales shone with deep ocean-blue and rainbow-bright jade highlights. At the same time, his golden antlers glowed with soft, surrounding water-qi. His long, pearl-white whiskers drifted gracefully on the wind.
