The first rays of dawn ignited the eastern horizon in a blaze of crimson and molten amber, transforming the vast sea of clouds two thousand meters below into a rolling ocean of liquid light.
On the high Eastern Crag Plateau of the Floating Mountain, the morning wind blew crisp and invigorating. The air was perfumed with alpine dew, wild mountain thyme. The sharp, clean scent of weathered granite.
Lin Xiao bounced across the smooth stone terrace in his semi-clear sapphire slime form. He was followed by Su Ling’er and two students who carried a heavy wooden metal tube.
With a soft thud, the students laid the metal tube upon a wide, flat slab of river-polished dark rock. Su Ling’er slid off the lacquered bamboo caps. She drew out a fifteen-foot-long scroll of thick, stringy mulberry paper. Unrolling the scroll across the stone, Gu Qingfeng and Tie Shan pinned the corners down with four heavy river pebbles.
The parchment was fully blank, clean white beneath the rising sun.
“Everyone gather round,” Lin Xiao announced, his voice bubbling with pure artistic excitement. “For three weeks, while everyone else was talking about treaties and harvest quotas, I was consulting with Dao Spirit on the most important blueprint in the history of the sect.”
