Three leagues to the south, atop the highest observation tower of the Heavenly Wind Academy, the atmosphere was thick with suffocating dread.
Gathered inside the grand astrological chamber were Chancellor Valen, Vice-Chancellor Shen, and seven Supreme Elders of the Disciplinary Council.
All nine high cultivators were clad in their most resilient celestial defensive robes.
Around the chamber, twelve defensive barrier talismans fluttered frantically, humming with nervous spiritual energy.
At the center of the hall rested the ancient **Thousand-Mile Sky-Mirror Basin**—a massive bronze cauldron filled with mercury and enchanted liquid silver.
For the past four hours, the academy’s celestial seismographs had been vibrating off their brass mounts.
The arrival of the Azure Dragon Sovereign, followed by seventy-two Calamity-Grade Elder Wyverns, had registered as an extinction-level atmospheric catastrophe.
Chancellor Valen leaned over the bronze basin, his knuckles white against the rim.
His silver beard was trembling with intense, vindictive anticipation.
"It is over," Valen declared, his voice trembling with grim satisfaction. "The arrogant slacker of Solitude Spire has finally overstepped the boundaries of the mortal realm!"
Vice-Chancellor Shen adjusted his jade spectacles, nodding somberly.
"Indeed, Chancellor," Shen agreed. "Our scouts reported that the Azure Dragon Sovereign brought forth the ancestral Seventy-Two Primordial Wardens. In the history of the Western Sky, that fleet has only been deployed three times—and each time, an entire imperial dynasty was wiped from the continent."
"Felix Vance thought he could lounge in his hammock forever," Valen sneered, his eyes gleaming with dark relish. "He thought his strange, vulgar sorcery could defy the true monarchs of the Upper Heavens! But dragons are creatures of pure, unforgiving pride! By now, Solitude Spire is nothing more than a crater of smoking glass and crushed bone!"
Valen raised his right hand, channeling a torrent of high-grade spiritual qi into the bronze cauldron.
"Elders! Feed three thousand top-grade spirit stones into the scrying array!" Valen ordered. "Clear the cloud interference! Let the academy witness the terrifying aftermath of draconic vengeance!"
*VROOOOOOM.*
The mercury inside the basin swirled violently, glowing with bright azure light.
The thick storm clouds shrouding the northern peaks began to dissolve upon the surface of the enchanted liquid.
The image sharpened.
A crystal-clear, high-definition spiritual projection of Solitude Spire materialized above the cauldron, floating in mid-air before the nine academy leaders.
Chancellor Valen leaned forward, grinning savagely.
He braced himself to behold severed limbs, gouged earth, and the smoldering ruins of the insolent youth’s cottage.
Then, Valen’s grin froze.
His eyes widened until the veins in his sclera turned crimson.
The breath trapped inside his lungs refused to come out.
Beside him, Vice-Chancellor Shen’s jade spectacles slid down the bridge of his nose, slipping entirely off his face and shattering against the marble floor tiles:
*Clink.*
Neither man noticed.
Every single Supreme Elder in the room stood frozen like carved granite statues, their mouths hanging wide open in absolute, paralyzed horror.
There was no smoking crater.
There were no crushed bones.
Solitude Spire was in a state of pristine, sparkling perfection.
Up on the cedar roof of the cottage, the legendary Azure Dragon Sovereign—a creature whose roar could shatter mountain ranges—was happily crawling along the eaves on his hands and knees.
He wore a faded cloth bandana tied around his royal horns and an iron scraper in his foreclaw.
Beside him, two ancient Dragon Marshals were holding wicker whisk brooms, delicately sweeping dry pine needles out of the wooden gutters:
*Swish... swish... swish.*
Whenever the Dragon Sovereign finished scraping a section of shingles, he blew away the cedar dust, patted the wood affectionately, and offered a thumbs-up to a skeletal gardener standing below.
"What..." Chancellor Valen croaked, his voice a dry, strangled wheeze. "What... is the Sovereign of the Western Skies doing?!"
"He's... he's clearing the gutters, Chancellor," Vice-Chancellor Shen whispered, his eyes glazed with madness. "He appears to be removing moss to prevent moisture rot."
"WHY WOULD A PRIMORDIAL CALAMITY DRAGON BE CLEARING GUTTERS?!" Valen shrieked, clutching his temples with both hands.
Before anyone could answer, the scrying mirror shifted its focus toward the western garden.
The nine elders gasped in simultaneous horror.
Down along the raised vegetable beds, seventy-two massive, Calamity-Grade storm wyverns were lined up in neat, orderly rows.
Every single dragon wore a coarse, stained hemp apron tied tightly around its scaly midsection.
The terrifying war beasts were crouched on their haunches, their tongues sticking out of their fanged jaws in agonizing concentration.
Using miniature iron hand-rakes and the tips of their world-ending spatial talons, the dragons were gently, lovingly weeding around the roots of glowing golden cabbages and giant white radishes.
Beside them marched Lord Nether-Bane, the terrifying former Ghost King of the northern void.
Whenever a wyvern scraped too close to a turnip root, Nether-Bane tapped the beast’s horn with the handle of his rake.
And the eighty-foot calamity dragon didn't roar.
It didn't breathe lightning.
Instead, the dragon whined pitifully, tucked its tail between its hind legs, and apologized with frantic, submissive bows!
"The Seventy-Two Wardens..." Elder Lu whimpered, collapsing against the bronze basin for support. "The apex predators of the storm... they are wearing domestic kitchen aprons! They are picking dandelions!"
"Look at the eaves!" another elder screamed, pointing a trembling finger at the edge of the porch terrace.
Resting beneath the cottage roofline was the colossal, two-hundred-ton Abyssal Storm-Slate eviction tablet.
The ancient, sacred imperial decree of the Nine Dragon Courts had been wedged beneath the roof overhang at an exact four-degree angle.
Rainwater cascaded off the cedar tiles, hit the sacred imperial draconic runes, and flowed smoothly down the stone into a compost ditch.
The two-hundred-ton celestial artifact was being used as an outdoor splash board to keep mud away from a pair of cheap straw sandals.
And on the covered porch, lying peacefully in a cloud-silk hammock, was Felix Vance.
He had his straw hat pulled over his eyes.
Beside him sat the low cedar table, perfectly leveled by Grandmaster Vivienne's purple Sovereign Heart Seal jammed under its short front leg.
On top of the table, the radiant Soul-Pearl served as a paperweight for Felix’s handwritten gacha drop-rate calculations.
Right next to it, the white porcelain Infinite Cozy Teacup steamed at an unvarying 68.5°C.
Up on the wall perch, Barnaby the clockwork owl stood completely motionless, the thick black rubber stopper clamped tightly in his brass mandibles:
*Tick... tick... tick.*
Felix shifted slightly in his hammock, reached out with one lazy hand, picked up a roasted sesame rice cracker, and took a slow, crunchy bite.
*Munch.*
The sheer, unbearable domestic tranquility of the scene crashed into Chancellor Valen’s soul like a ten-thousand-ton warhammer.
His high-noble cultivation logic fractured into a million jagged pieces.
"I... I understand now," Elder Lu gasped, his eyes wide with terrifying, ecstatic comprehension.
The other elders spun toward Lu, desperate for any explanation that didn't violate the fundamental laws of reality.
"What do you understand, Elder Lu?!" Valen demanded, his voice cracking.
"The ancient scriptures of the First Epoch!" Elder Lu cried out, tears of divine terror streaming down his wrinkled cheeks. "The lost texts spoke of the **Order of the Gutter Monks**! The primordial celestials who sweep the cosmic dust from the eaves of the universe!"
Vice-Chancellor Shen’s jaw dropped. "The Gutter Monks?!"
"Yes!" Lu proclaimed, clutching his robes. "It is the ultimate Daoist humiliation ritual! Vance did not merely conquer the dragon clan with brute force! If he had slain them, their spirits would have died with warrior pride!"
Elder Lu pointed at the scrying mirror with manic fervor:
"Instead, he shattered their martial souls from within! He stripped them of their ancestral armor and forced them to wear the hemp garments of the lower earth! He made their Emperor sweep moss from his roof! He made their fiercest war wyverns weed his turnips!"
"To force an emperor of dragons to find spiritual salvation in cleaning gutters..." Shen whispered, his face turning ghostly pale. "This is not cultivation. This is total, absolute spiritual subjugation! Vance has turned the most terrifying apex predators of the Western Skies into his personal unpaid estate crew!"
Chancellor Valen stared at the image of the Dragon Sovereign happily wiping cedar dust off an iron scraper.
He looked at the seventy-two wyverns begging for sesame rice crackers from a skeleton in an apron.
He looked at Felix Vance sleeping under a straw hat, using an imperial war decree to keep his slippers dry.
The sheer, unfathomable gulf between Valen’s expectations and this absurd reality overloaded the Chancellor’s spiritual meridians.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
His breath grew shallow.
His Golden Core began to spin in reverse.
"The Sovereign of Dragons..." Valen wheezed, blood vessels bursting across his cheeks. "Sweeping... gutters... for... crackers..."
*BZZZZT.*
Over on Solitude Spire, Felix Vance opened one eye beneath his straw hat.
He felt a tiny, irritating vibration in his pocket.
Felix reached in and pulled out his obsidian AetherDeck.
A small, high-priority system box was blinking on the display:
Felix blinked, slightly annoyed that a random external IP was siphoning his bandwidth while he was trying to browse the idle game shop.
He tapped the screen to summon his Inspector HUD, zooming through the scrying link to check on the source:
【Target: Chancellor Valen】 【Location: Academy Astrological Tower】 【Current Health: 100% -> 8% (Rapidly Plummeting)】 【Mental Status: Complete Worldview Collapse / Acute Apoplexy】 【Diagnosis: Suffered catastrophic psychological trauma after witnessing high-tier raid bosses performing routine landscaping. Highly fragile.】 【Inspector Note: An elderly administrator who desperately needs to touch grass, though ironically, watching others touch grass appears to be killing him.】
Felix let out a low, deadpan sigh.
"Man," Felix muttered, shaking his head. "Why are people in this world always peeping through open network ports? Use a firewall like a normal person."
Felix swiped his thumb across the screen, toggling the scrying port to `DISABLED`.
*Pop.*
Back in the Academy Astrological Tower, the Thousand-Mile Sky-Mirror Basin abruptly went black.
The mercury went completely still.
The connection was severed with the cold, unceremonious finality of someone unplugging an Ethernet cable.
Chancellor Valen stood rigid before the dark cauldron.
A faint wisp of white steam escaped his nostrils.
His eyes rolled back into his head, showing only the whites of his eyes.
A small bubble of white foam formed at the corner of his lips.
"Gutter... monks..." Valen whispered softly.
Then, his knees gave out.
*THUD!*
The Chancellor of the prestigious Heavenly Wind Academy collapsed backward onto the cold marble floor, completely unconscious.
"CHANCELLOR!"
"THE CHANCELLOR’S CORE HAS OVERHEATED!"
"BRING THE SMELLING SALTS! FETCH THE SECT PHYSICIAN!"
The observation tower dissolved into shrieking chaos as elders scrambled to revive their fallen leader.
Meanwhile, three leagues to the north, Solitude Spire remained wrapped in absolute, uninterrupted peace.
The cool autumn breeze rustled through the pine needles.
Up on the roof, the Azure Dragon Sovereign scraped another clean line of moss, humming a cheerful draconic tune under his breath.
Down in the garden, seventy-two wyverns in hemp aprons gently set down their rakes, eagerly crowding around Lord Nether-Bane to receive their reward of half a toasted sesame cracker.
And on the covered porch, Felix Vance adjusted his straw hat, took a final, warm sip of his Nine-Sun tea, and drifted back to sleep.