High above the floating cloud-sea of Aethelgard, the First Spire cut into the azure sky like a golden spearhead.
This was the Solar Peak, the beating political heart of the Radiant Dawn Academy.
Here, marble colonnades were inlaid with celestial brass, silk banners of the Griffin Clan fluttered in the temperate sky-winds, and disciples glided between floating pavilions in immaculate azure robes.
Today, however, the pristine serenity of the Solar Peak was entirely shattered.
Inside the Grand Council Chamber, twenty-four high elders and spire masters sat around a massive round table carved from a single slab of star-obsidian.
The atmosphere was suffocating.
Normally, an emergency conclave was convened only for continental wars, abyssal void breaches, or the death of an Imperial Sovereign.
Yet the subject of today's crisis was far more terrifying.
"Speak plainly, Diviner Moros," Grand Chancellor Alistair rumbled, his snow-white beard twitching as his wrinkled fingers drummed against the black stone. "The reports circulating through the lower dormitories are bordering on absolute madness."
At the far end of the table, Chief Diviner Moros of the Third Spire stood up.
His astrological robes were rumpled, his spectacles sat crooked on his nose, and the dark circles under his eyes suggested he had not slept in four days.
"Chancellor, the reports are not madness," Moros croaked, adjusting his brass-rimmed lenses with a trembling hand. "If anything, they are understated."
Moros waved his sleeve across the table.
A miniature illusion array sprang to life above the obsidian surface, projecting a shimmering blue phantom of the floating archipelago.
"Exhibit A," Moros whispered, pointing a quivering finger at the westernmost projection. "Three nights ago at midnight, the Seventh Spire—Solitude Spire—spontaneously ignited."
"Ignited?" snorted Master Vane of the Blade Spire, leaning back with his arms crossed over his silver-chiseled cuirass. "You mean a scrub fire? The boy probably knocked over a kerosene lantern."
"Not a scrub fire, Vane!" Moros shouted, his voice cracking with hysteria. "A localized solar ignition! The astral meters recorded three hundred and eighty-four yottawatts of pure, unadulterated True Yang radiance!"
The chamber went dead silent.
"For twelve seconds, the midnight sky across three thousand miles was turned into blinding noon," Moros pressed on, his fingers frantically tracing celestial coordinates. "The twin moons were completely drowned out. Every scrying orb in our observatory developed micro-fractures from the photonic shockwave!"
Several elders exchanged pale, horrified glances.
"And that is not the worst of it," Moros continued, his voice dropping to a terrified rasp. "The gravitational displacement was absolute. Solitude Spire's elevation dropped by three full yards into the cloud bank in less than a heartbeat."
"Three yards?" an elder from the Alchemical Crucible gasped, knocking over his teacup. "An island of solid granite and mithril bedrock, measuring four miles wide? What kind of mass could drag a sky-island downward against the floating ley lines?!"
"The mass of an entire planetary sphere," Moros breathed. "Or an ancient god condensing his divine core."
A chill swept through the room.
In the shadowed corner of the council chamber, a muffled whimper broke the silence.
All eyes turned toward Arch-Inquisitor Valen.
The formidable head of the Law Enforcement Bastion was sitting in a padded velvet armchair, swaddled in three thick wool blankets despite the mild afternoon warmth.
His face was as pale as chalk.
His hands shook so violently that the hot chamomile tea in his porcelain mug sloshed over the rim, dribbling onto his scorched silk cuffs.
His proud, razor-sharp mustache was half-singed off, and his eyebrows looked like two fuzzy caterpillars that had survived a brush with a blast furnace.
"Valen," Chancellor Alistair said gently, leaning forward with deep concern. "You led twelve elite enforcers to Solitude Spire to deliver an eviction notice. Tell the council what you encountered."
Valen began to shiver.
His teeth chattered like loose dice in a leather cup.
"The... the porch," Valen stammered, his eyes glazed with trauma. "He was... he was eating cold salted radishes. His hair was tied with an old bootlace."
"Who was?" Master Vane demanded impatiently. "The boy? Felix Vance? The untalented mortal brat left behind by Vivienne Frost?!"
"He is no boy!" Valen suddenly shrieked, splashing tea across his knees as he recoiled against the cushions. "He is an ancient slumbering horror! The air... the air didn't have oxygen! It had ozone and gravity! When he looked at me, my soul fell to its knees!"
"Control yourself, Inquisitor!" Vane barked, scowling with deep disgust. "You are a Tier 5 High Master! You have quelled blood-cults with your bare hands!"
"Then explain Exhibit B, Master Vane," Diviner Moros interrupted grimly, waving his hand over the illusion array again.
The blue projection shifted.
The image of a colossal dragon appeared above the table.
It was an ancient Frost-Scale Drake, a Calamity-tier apex predator measuring sixty yards from snout to tail, renowned for terrorizing the northern sky-routes.
Except in the projection, the great beast was not flying.
It was encased head-to-tail in a solid block of translucent, absolute-zero ice, plummeting like an anvil into the deep mist of the southern ravine.
"The northern drake was migrating across the Seventh Spire's airspace yesterday afternoon," Moros said quietly. "It passed within three miles of the cottage."
"And?" Chancellor Alistair leaned in. "Did the dweller strike it down with lightning? With a divine sword ray?"
"Neither," Moros said, swallowing hard. "According to our long-range divining mirrors, the youth on the porch merely yawned, tucked his hands into his sleeves, and drifted off into an afternoon nap."
The room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"As he fell asleep," Moros explained in a hushed, trembling tone, "his dormant dantian entered a state of absolute cosmological rest. In order to sustain his slumbering state, his internal void sucked all thermal entropy out of the atmosphere for five leagues around."
Moros tapped the frozen dragon’s image.
"The drake's wings were frozen solid in mid-flap at minus two hundred degrees. It fell out of the sky without making a single sound. The entity didn't even open his eyes."
The elders looked as if they might faint.
"The Dao of Inaction..." an ancient scholarly elder muttered, his knuckles whitening as he gripped his walking staff. "The legendary Void Slumber of the Primordial Era. To freeze an apex calamity with a single exhale of sleep!"
"Absurd!" Master Vane slammed his armored fist onto the obsidian table with a thunderous crack.
The illusion shattered into blue sparks.
"You are all cowering before shadows and coincidences!" Vane snarled, rising to his full height. "Vivienne Frost abandoned that junk heap three years ago! Felix Vance is nothing more than a lazy, mortal orphan who sweeps her floors and squatters in her kitchen!"
"Then how do you explain the three-yard island drop, Vane?" Moros challenged angrily. "How do you explain the frozen drake?! How do you explain Valen’s elite disciples dangling from a cloud-cedar with their flying swords bent into pretzels?!"
"Illusion formations!" Vane roared. "Ancient defensive wards left behind by Vivienne before she vanished into the Great Rift! The boy simply stumbled across an ancestral trigger stone and set off her stockpiled traps!"
Vane looked around the table with cold, arrogant disdain.
"A true cultivator does not rely on relics and parlor tricks," Vane declared. "My top personal disciple, Prince Kenneth of the Silverwing Clan, has just achieved the peak of Tier 5 Spellblade mastery. He has mastered the Nine-Fold Astral Comet Thrust and wields the ancestral Heaven-Slicing Rapier."
Chancellor Alistair frowned. "Vane, you cannot possibly mean—"
"I have already dispatched him," Vane said, a smug grin curling beneath his mustache. "Kenneth is flying to Solitude Spire as we speak. He will drag this so-called 'primordial god' out by his hemp collar and expose him for the fraudulent mortal squatter he truly is!"
Valen let out a pathetic, strangled sob from his armchair and pulled the blanket completely over his head.
***
Meanwhile, on Solitude Spire, the afternoon breeze was delightful.
The sky was clear, the air was warm, and the sweet scent of blooming cabbage drifted lazily across the overgrown front yard.
Felix Vance lay sprawled horizontally across his canvas hammock, gently swaying between two ancient iron-wood trees.
His eyes were closed. His hands were folded comfortably over his stomach.
Beside the hammock, sitting on a three-legged stool, Lyra Ashford was diligently peeling a basket of mountain radishes with a silver paring knife.
Her ears twitched at every rustling leaf.
Whenever a sparrow landed on the porch railing, Lyra would shoot it a glare of such lethal aristocratic intensity that the bird would immediately drop its worm and flee for its life.
*Senior Brother is currently wandering the Infinite Ocean of Void Consciousness,* Lyra thought reverently, glancing at Felix’s slack, peaceful face. *I must ensure that not even a fallen twig disturbs his divine comprehension.*
On a low branch overhead, Barnaby the clockwork owl stood frozen on his brass perch.
A tightly fitted black rubber stopper remained wedged firmly into the owl's beak.
Behind his amber glass retinas, tiny brass cogs spun and whirred with violent, suppressed indignation.
Barnaby desperately wanted to screech his 2:00 PM motivational quote (*"Sloth is the rust of the spirit sword! Rise, disciple, and polish your marrow!"*), but all that escaped his stoppered beak was a muffled, vibrating squeak:
*"Mmmph-grrrr-clack!"*
Felix let out a soft snore, rolled onto his side, and reached into his sleeve.
His fingers brushed the cool brass frame of the AetherDeck.
He didn't bother opening both eyes. He just cracked his left eyelid open by a millimeter and tapped the obsidian power rune.
The screen lit up with a crisp, amber glow:
Felix tapped `[1. CLAIM REWARDS]`.
A satisfying chime echoed in his mind.
Underneath the hammock, a small pile of star-iron ingots and a sack of fertilizer pellets vanished seamlessly into his bottomless digital storage box.
Felix yawned, stretching his arms until his knuckles popped with a dull crackle.
In his chest, the miniature 1.0-Earth-Mass stellar core rotated smoothly at fifteen million Kelvin, purring like a well-oiled furnace.
It was warm, cozy, and completely maintenance-free.
"Nice," Felix muttered to himself, his voice thick with sleep. "Eleven hours of offline gains. Not a bad haul for doing absolutely nothing."
He lazily shifted his gaze toward the eastern horizon, where the soaring towers of the Solar Peak gleamed against the clouds.
His passive Inspector HUD instantly booted up, throwing two sharp brackets across his vision:
【Target: Grand Council of Six Spires】 【Status: Convening Emergency Conclave】 【Threat Level: Harmless Dialogue NPCs】 【Inspector Note: A room full of old men in silk bathrobes panicking over your morning routine. Recommend letting them talk while you boil water for tea. Unskippable political cutscene in progress.】
Felix scratched his chin, thoroughly unbothered.
"Figures," he sighed, letting his head sink back into the pillow. "Whenever you find a good farming spot, the local NPC factions always start spamming council meetings to pad the runtime."
He closed his eyes again, ready to drift off for another twenty-minute power nap before tea.
Suddenly, a high-pitched draconic shriek echoed from the clouds above the island's perimeter.
Lyra instantly leapt to her feet, her silver rapier clearing its scabbard with a sharp, ringing hiss.
"Senior Brother!" Lyra whispered, her voice taut with lethal focus. "An intruder approaches from the Blade Spire! A white wind-griffon bearing the banner of Prince Kenneth!"
Felix didn't even twitch.
He pulled the edge of his wool blanket higher over his shoulders and let out a long, heavy breath.
"Tell him visiting hours are between never and never," Felix mumbled into his pillow. "And if he steps on the radishes, he's buying the next fertilizer pack."