Inside the Grand Council Chamber of the First Spire, forty high elders of Radiant Dawn Academy were having simultaneous spiritual nervous breakdowns.
The chamber was bathed in the sickly crimson glare of seventy floating scrying spheres.
【Target: Academy Emergency Scrying Spheres】 【Status: Overheating / Displaying 10,000 Hostile Void Pests】 【Inspector Note: High-anxiety broadcast monitoring equipment. Elders are currently screaming at standard resolution video feeds. Highly unproductive crisis management.】
Across the polished obsidian floor, ancient scrolls of emergency defense decrees lay trampled and abandoned.
Grand Inquisitors, Arch-Mages, and senior pill-refiners shouted over one another in sheer, wild panic.
"The swarm has broken through the lower thermals!" an elder from the Astral Observatory shrieked, clutching his starry divination robes with white-knuckled fists. "Ten thousand Abyssal Shadow Locusts! The biomass density is off the charts!"
"Three mortal kingdoms fell to half that number during the Black Sun Calamity!" cried an ancient formation grandmaster, his beard vibrating in terror. "Our barrier runes cannot withstand that level of localized Yin corrosion! They will strip the outer wards in twelve seconds and eat the mountain foundations by nightfall!"
"We must sever the tether chains!" yelled the Grandmaster of the Alchemical Crucible, his voice cracking into hysteria. "Cast off the outer three spires! Sacrifice the lower islands! If we drop them into the abyss, the swarm might feast upon their wreckage and spare the central peak!"
"Are you insane?!" an Inquisitor roared back. "There are three thousand junior disciples stationed on those islands!"
"Then draft their death notices!" another voice shouted. "Better three thousand die than the entire academy be swallowed into darkness!"
At the head of the colossal semicircular council table, Chancellor Valen stood in his gold-trimmed sovereign robes.
The leader of Radiant Dawn Academy looked as though he had aged fifty years in the span of five minutes.
His palms pressed hard against the cold black marble of the podium.
His knuckles were bloodless.
His breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps as he stared into the largest scrying sphere in the center of the hall.
The magical sphere displayed a live, high-altitude optical projection of the Seventh Spire.
Through the cloudy lens, the scene was horrifying.
The black swarm had completely crested the southern cliff edge.
Ten thousand obsidian beasts were diving down from the clouds like a falling mountain of living darkness.
Their razor mandibles snapped with enough acoustic violence to cause static feedback across the council chamber's communication crystals:
*SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!*
"They are hitting the Seventh Spire first!" an elder wept, collapsing into his heavy oak chair and covering his face with his sleeves. "It is over! The Seventh Spire will be reduced to bare bedrock in three breaths!"
"The Recluse..." Chancellor Valen whispered, his voice trembling so hard the words barely left his lips. "The Supreme Solar Patriarch is on that porch... Why hasn't he fled? Why hasn't he drawn a blade?"
Through the scrying sphere, every elder could clearly see the porch of Solitude Spire.
Felix Vance was sitting in his woven recliner.
His legs were crossed.
His straw slippers dangled lazily from his toes.
In his hand, he held a simple white teacup.
Beside him, the clockwork owl stood motionless on the railing.
In the clover yard, the massive golden gryphon was sleeping with its belly to the sun.
"He is not moving!" an inquisitor screamed, tearing at his hair. "Has he been paralyzed by abyssal terror?! Why is he holding a teacup?!"
"Silence!" Chancellor Valen roared, slamming his fist onto the marble desk. "Watch the mirror! Watch the Sovereign!"
Forty elders held their breath.
The entire hall fell into a suffocating, tomb-like hush.
The black swarm reached forty paces above the garden fence.
Ten thousand pairs of razor scythes extended, aiming straight for the glowing heart of the Sun-Lotus Cabbage.
Then, the world flickered.
It didn't sound like a strike.
It sounded like a quiet, clean hum:
*ZZZZZZZZT.*
Across the scrying sphere, a geometric spiderweb of blinding golden lines flashed into existence.
It lasted for exactly zero point zero five seconds.
The golden grid flared with such pure, concentrated solar luminosity that seventeen of the seventy scrying spheres instantly overloaded, their glass shells cracking with sharp snaps:
*CRACK! PING!*
Several divination elders cried out in pain, clapping their hands over their blinded eyes.
"My eyes! The light!"
"What was that?! Was that an ancient solar flare?!"
Chancellor Valen didn't blink.
He endured the searing brilliance, tears of optical strain burning down his cheeks as he stared through the smoke.
When the flash cleared, the council chamber went so quiet you could hear an ant crawl across the marble floor.
The black swarm was gone.
The screeching wall of ten thousand shadow beasts had vanished.
There were no severed wings.
There were no crushed bodies.
There was no black blood splattering the mountain stones.
High above the Seventh Spire, a gentle, warm gray dust drifted down through the sunlight like soft winter snow.
It coated the emerald cabbage leaves.
It dusted the soil.
Down in the cabbage patch, the Ghost King bowed his forehead into the dirt, weeping with holy gratitude.
On the porch, Felix Vance lifted his teacup, took a slow sip, and pulled his straw hat down over his eyes to resume his nap.
Zero stones on Solitude Spire had shifted.
Every fence rail remained completely intact.
The entire extinction-tier swarm had simply ceased to exist in one twentieth of a second.
A heavy silence lingered in the hall for ten long seconds.
Then, an elder’s trembling fingers slipped.
*CLATTER.*
A priceless celadon tea bowl tumbled from his hand, shattering across the polished floorboards.
Nobody looked at him.
Nobody scolded him.
Forty grandmasters stood frozen in place, their mouths hanging wide open, their skin pale as fresh parchment.
"Where..." a senior astrologer croaked, clutching his throat as though he were suffocating. "Where did the ten thousand locusts go?"
"They were... erased," the Grand Inquisitor whispered, his legs giving out beneath his robes.
He slid down the side of his chair, landing hard on his knees upon the marble flagstones.
"Erased down to their atomic dust," the Inquisitor whimpered, staring at his trembling palms. "Ten million pinpoint light strikes. We just witnessed ten million individual photon beams fired simultaneously from three wooden effigies on a common garden fence."
The Chief Diviner of the Astral Observatory staggered toward the central scrying sphere, his hands shaking so violently he could barely cast an evaluation spell.
"The targeting matrix..." the diviner stammered, reading the spectral ripples lingering in the air above the Seventh Spire. "The calculations required to track ten thousand high-velocity targets and strike each one with five hundred micro-beams in zero point zero five seconds... A mortal formation array would require an entire mountain of spirit crystals and four thousand computation elders working for six months!"
"Yet those three straw puppets fired instantly," Chancellor Valen murmured, his voice hollow with absolute, crushing awe.
Valen slowly took off his ornate golden chancellor’s cap.
He set it down on the podium.
His hair was damp with cold sweat.
"Elders," Valen said, his voice echoing through the silent hall with solemn, holy reverence. "Look at the dust falling upon his cabbage."
The remaining scrying spheres zoomed in on the vegetable terrace.
They saw Lord Nether-Bane carefully raking the warm gray ash into the soil.
"He did not merely destroy them," Valen whispered, his eyes wide with profound revelation. "He did not unleash a vulgar shockwave to blow them into the canyon. He converted ten thousand abyssal calamities into sterile, high-grade agricultural fertilizer."
The elders gasped in collective terror.
"He used an extinction-level migration... to feed his vegetables?!"
"He didn't even draw his sword!"
"He didn't even set down his tea!"
"He sat upon his porch, flicked his sleeve, and let three farm puppets annihilate a force that could have wiped three kingdoms off the map!"
Chancellor Valen walked slowly down the steps of the dais.
His heavy sovereign robes dragged across the stone floor.
He stopped in the center of the Grand Council Chamber, turned his body toward the distant silhouette of the Seventh Spire, and fell to both knees.
He pressed his palms against the cold obsidian flagstones and bowed his forehead deeply into the stone.
"Chancellor!" an elder gasped. "What are you doing?!"
"I am bowing to the absolute sovereign of this heaven," Valen said, his voice ringing with fierce, unshakable conviction. "For three centuries, we foolish elders treated the Seventh Spire as an overgrown trash heap. We thought it was a desolate rock inhabited by an eccentric recluse who slept through morning drills."
Valen lifted his head, his eyes burning with intense, fanatical devotion.
"We were blind fools!" Valen declared loudly. "The Seventh Spire is not a neglected mountain peak! It is the absolute fortress of heaven! It is the divine sanctuary of a prehistoric star sovereign whose mere resting breath guards our entire archipelago from the abyss!"
The forty elders looked at one another.
One by one, the Grand Inquisitor, the Chief Diviner, the Alchemical Masters, and the Formation Grandmasters sank to their knees.
Forty high elders of Radiant Dawn Academy knelt across the chamber floor, bowing in unison toward the distant Seventh Spire.
"Hear my decree!" Chancellor Valen commanded, his voice trembling with solemn authority. "From this hour forward, let it be etched into the eternal archives of the academy!"
"First! The Seventh Spire is hereby declared an Imperial Divine Sanctuary! No disciple, elder, or visiting envoy shall cross the suspension bridge without three levels of written clearance signed in gold ink!"
"Second! All air corridors within twenty miles of Solitude Spire are permanently closed! Any war galley, flying sword, or messenger bird that dares produce acoustic turbulence above sixty decibels near Senior Brother’s porch shall be shot down immediately by the enforcement fleet!"
"Third! Gather forty pairs of the finest velvet felt slippers from the imperial storehouses! Send two carts of nine-star morning dew peaches to the bridgehead as humble neighborly tribute!"
Valen took a deep, trembling breath, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
"And above all else," Valen added in a deadly whisper, "warn the delivery disciples. If anyone sneezes within earshot of that timber porch, they will be exiled to the salt mines for nine lifetimes."
"We obey the Chancellor's decree!" the forty elders shouted in unison, their voices filled with terrified reverence.
Far across the gorge, on the quiet cedar porch of Solitude Spire, Felix Vance rolled over in his recliner.
He let out a long, peaceful snore beneath his straw hat.
His internal Sol-Class core hummed with perfect, warm hydrostatic balance, keeping him cozy and comfortable.
He had no idea forty high elders were kneeling on a marble floor across the valley.
He only knew his nap was finally back on schedule.