When the morning clouds parted over the Great Seven Spire Mountain Range, the mountain path leading to the Seventh Spire was blocked by three thousand grandmasters.
Representatives from the Seven Spires, the Western Sky Empire, the Nine Cloud Palaces, and forty-two independent immortal clans stood shoulder to shoulder in the mountain pass.
They did not carry weapons.
They wore their most pristine ceremonial silk robes, embroidered with silver dragons and gold phoenixes.
Behind them stretched a baggage train of two hundred flying spirit galleons, laden with the greatest treasures ever assembled in the history of the continent.
There were chests of million-year cold jade, cages holding celestial spirit quails, scrolls of ancient primordial sword manuals, and barrels of thousand-year dragon marrow wine.
At the front of the procession walked Chancellor Valen, holding a golden incense burner with both hands.
Beside him, Vice-Chancellor Morgana carried a silk scroll inscribed with the names of ten thousand weeping cultivators who had broken through bottlenecks over the past forty-eight hours.
"Brothers and sisters of the Dao," Valen whispered, his voice trembling with spiritual reverence. "Tread lightly. Every pebble beneath our boots is consecrated by the Lord of Solitude's grounding wire. Breathe gently, lest your mortal breath disturb his supreme meditation."
The three thousand cultivators nodded in solemn agreement, taking synchronized, whispering steps up the stone staircase.
At the entrance to the cedar porch of Solitude Spire, however, they came to an abrupt halt.
Leaning against the rustic wooden fence post was Lord Nether-Bane.
The ancient skeleton wore an oversized straw hat, his bony hands resting casually on the handle of his iron garden rake.
Beside him sat a wooden wheelbarrow heaped high with decaying vegetable scraps and dark soil.
"Morning, folks," Nether-Bane chuckled, his empty jaw clicking cheerfully. "Bit of a crowd today, isn't it? If you're here to apply for cabbage harvest labor, line forms to the left behind the compost pit."
Chancellor Valen immediately dropped to his knees in the dust, bowing until his forehead touched the bottom rung of the wooden gate.
Behind him, three thousand sect masters, imperial grand chancellors, and venerable sword elders dropped to their knees like falling wheat.
"Venerable Groundskeeper!" Valen proclaimed, raising his incense burner toward Nether-Bane. "The Seven Spires and the mortal kingdoms have assembled in conclave to offer eternal gratitude! The Supreme Sovereign has bound the sun in gold, flooding the mortal realm with boundless spirit nectar! We bring the wealth of forty empires as an offering to his eternal majesty!"
Nether-Bane scratched his bony ribs with the tip of his iron rake.
"Wealth?" Nether-Bane looked down at the glittering chests of jade and gold bullion on the flying galleons. "Master Felix does not care much for shiny rocks. Got plenty of rocks up in the gravel yard. Tend to stub your toes on them if you walk barefoot at night."
Elder Guan-Zhi crawled forward on his hands and knees, holding up a crystal chalice filled with celestial dew.
"Venerable Elder," Guan-Zhi pleaded, "might we offer this dew to moisten your sacred bones?"
Nether-Bane reached down with a rusty tin ladle, scooped a slosh of brownish water from the garden irrigation bucket, and handed it to Guan-Zhi.
"Here," Nether-Bane muttered. "Have some runoff. The grounding wire trickles down the downspout. Tastes like iron filings, but it keeps the weeds from complaining."
Guan-Zhi took a tentative sip from the rusty ladle.
The moment the brown garden runoff touched his tongue, his eyes rolled into the back of his skull.
A column of blinding violet light shot from his forehead into the stratosphere, scattering high-altitude clouds for fifty leagues.
"Heavenly essence!" Guan-Zhi shrieked, falling backward and clutching his head in pure ecstasy. "The residual dishwater of the Sovereign contains the condensed soul of forty dying nebulas! My bottleneck has dissolved! My spiritual roots are immortalized!"
The three thousand kneeling cultivators gasped in synchronized frenzy, lunging forward with their jade flasks to scoop up mud from the ditch.
"Order! Maintain solemn decorum!" Chancellor Valen roared, swatting two sect elders away with his golden whisk. "Do not fight over the holy garden silt! We are here as humble supplicants!"
Vice-Chancellor Morgana stepped forward, trembling as she clasped her hands.
"May we... may we be granted the supreme honor of gazing upon the Sovereign's face?" Morgana pleaded softly. "To prostrate before the Lord of Heaven and receive his sacred command?"
At that moment, the front door of the cottage clicked open.
Lyra Ashford stepped onto the cedar porch.
She was wearing a simple, comfortable apron of grey linen over her disciple robes, carrying an empty wicker basket for morning herb gathering.
The Sovereign Heart Seal under the table leg hummed with a quiet, soothing frequency, maintaining the porch at an ideal room temperature.
When Lyra saw the sea of three thousand kneeling grandmasters stretching down the mountain ridge, she paused, blinking in mild surprise.
"Chancellor Valen?" Lyra asked gently. "What brings the academy council to our garden so early in the morning?"
Valen raised his tear-streaked face.
"Mistress Lyra!" Valen choked out. "We have come to give thanks! The entire mortal world has entered a golden epoch! Barren deserts are blooming! The dead are finding peace! We beg to know what tribute the Supreme Sovereign demands to sustain the Great Dyson Halo!"
Lyra looked up into the cloudless blue sky.
Far above the atmosphere, thirty miles into the void, she knew Senior Brother Felix was floating in his geostationary recliner.
She remembered the conversation they had shared before Felix floated upward into the sky.
Felix had complained that the recliner’s footrest was slightly stiff, that his lower back was itching, and that he had run out of the dried sour plums he liked to chew on while browsing his game menus.
He had also mentioned that the morning dew made his ankles cold when he woke up from his afternoon naps.
Lyra lowered her gaze to the kneeling chancellors, speaking with serene, absolute dignity.
"The Senior Brother does not require gold or ancient swords," Lyra stated calmly. "The treasures of mortals are merely dust to one who crowns stars. His desires are far deeper, touching the fundamental harmony of existence."
Valen held his breath, leaning forward frantically.
"Tell us, Mistress Lyra!" Valen whispered. "Whatever the Lord requires, even if we must overturn the seven seas, we shall deliver it!"
"He requires two things to maintain cosmic balance," Lyra declared. "First... dried mountain plums. They must possess the perfect equilibrium of sour and sweet, to harmonize the digestive fire of his divine vessel."
"Dried plums!" Valen repeated, his eyes wide with religious awe. He turned to the imperial envoys behind him, hissing in a frantic whisper: "Did you hear that? The Sacred Fruit of Equilibrium! The Yin-Yang Plum of Digestive Harmony! Dispatch three thousand flying sword couriers to the Western Orchards immediately! Harvest only the top branches touched by noon light!"
Twelve imperial scouts leaped onto their flying swords, rocketing into the western sky with thunderous sonic booms.
"And the second requirement?" Morgana asked, her voice hushed with breathless anticipation.
"Thick, comfortable wool socks," Lyra answered honestly. "Hand-knitted from the softest fleece. His ankles grow chilly when he rests upon the celestial winds."
A collective gasp swept through the three thousand cultivators.
"Wool socks!" Elder Guan-Zhi muttered, clutching his beard as his eyes bulged. "A metaphor! A profound, unfathomable daoist metaphor! The ankle governs the grounding of the root chakra! By protecting the divine ankles from celestial frost, he anchors the entire solar system’s thermal circulation!"
"Send for the Grand Fleece of the Northern Cloud Rams!" Emperor Aurelius’s chief minister screamed into a jade transmission talisman. "Gather seven hundred master weavers! Every stitch must be infused with silk-weaving mantras of supreme softness! The Sovereign's ankles must never know the chill of void space!"
"Draft the imperial charter!" Valen bellowed to twenty scribes who had already whipped out golden brushes and silk parchment. "The Imperial Wool Sock Procurement Edict of Year One! Any weaver whose wool prickles the skin shall be executed for treason against universal comfort!"
Nether-Bane leaned on his rake, chuckling quietly into his neck bones.
"Well," the old skeleton murmured to Lyra, "at least the boy won't have cold feet this winter."
"The Senior Brother's comfort is the foundation of cosmic peace," Lyra replied with complete sincerity.
Up in the orbital sphere, Grand Marshal Vane-Talon's 108 dreadnought moonlets intercepted the first batch of incoming flying sword couriers.
Instead of blowing them to stardust with macro-plasma cannons, Vane-Talon formed an honor guard corridor.
"Gently, you fools!" Vane-Talon barked over the tactical radio net. "Those are the Sovereign's ceremonial plums! Any gunner who bumps a fruit crate will be swabbed across the vacuum radiator!"
Meanwhile, thirty miles above them in the silent geostationary void, Felix Vance was sitting comfortably in his wicker recliner.
A soft chime pinged from the AetherDeck.
Felix tapped [3. SLEEP] with a lazy thumb.
He brought up his personal status screen.
An Inspector HUD tooltip floated in comfortable amber letters before his eyes:
【Item: Geostationary Wicker Recliner】 【Location: Low Orbital Geosynchronous Anchor [Solitude Sector]】 【Comfort Rating: 99.8%】 【Inspector Note: While three thousand mortal sages organize a worldwide agricultural mobilization to deliver dried plums and fleece socks to your porch, you are enjoying a zero-lag gaming session thirty miles above their heads. The macro script is harvesting billions of points without lifting a finger. Truly, peak gaming consists of not playing the game at all.】
Felix smiled faintly, reaching into his pocket and finding a lone dried plum left over from yesterday.
He popped it into his mouth, savoring the tart sweetness as he rested his head against the linen cushion.
"Zero input lag," Felix whispered happily to himself. "The macro runs itself. The Wi-Fi is rock solid. This is how games were meant to be played."
Beside the recliner, Barnaby the clockwork owl sat with his rubber stopper firmly lodged in his beak, his little brass eyes glowing warmly.
Outside the invisible atmospheric bubble surrounding the recliner, the three Abyssal Star-Whales glided through the void, their gentle twenty-two hertz songs sending soothing vibrations through Felix's bones.
Below him, the planet Aethelgard rotated slowly, bathed in the eternal golden radiance of the Dyson Ring.
Felix closed his eyes, pulled his straw hat down, and surrendered himself to another magnificent, undisturbed afternoon nap.