High above the Central Plaza, the High Cloud Pagoda floated among the morning mists like an island of carved jade.
Inside the grand observation chamber, the air was scented with burning sandalwood and aged spirit tea.
Grand Chancellor Alistair sat upon a raised dais of white sandalwood. He wore golden robes embroidered with nine soaring cranes, his long silver beard tucked neatly beneath a jade ring.
Across from him, Head Diviner Moros of the Astral Observatory stared into the central scrying pool—a shallow basin of dark dragon-glass that mirrored every detail of the plaza below.
Alistair raised a delicate celadon teacup to his lips, taking a slow, contented sip.
"A fine morning for the academy, Moros," Alistair said in a calm, majestic tone. "Young Julian showed great promise. Tier-Six True Yang Aura. The Golden Griffin Clan will be pleased with his progress."
"Indeed, Chancellor," Moros murmured, stroking a bronze astrological astrolabe. "His foundation is solid. But now... Solitude Spire has taken the stage."
Alistair smiled faintly, shaking his head.
"Vivienne's eccentric disciple," Alistair chuckled softly. "Valen reported the boy finally accepted the summons. Let him touch the stone, log his attendance, and receive his passing mark. So long as he remains peaceful on his mountain, the academy need not agitate a sleeping dragon."
Down in the scrying pool, the image showed Felix Vance shuffling up the terrace steps in frayed straw slippers.
Alistair watched with mild amusement as the boy stopped before the fifty-foot star-jade monument.
"He does not even adopt a horse stance," Alistair remarked with a quiet smile. "He simply... leans his elbow against the stone."
Then the scrying pool flickered.
A sound reached the high pagoda—not through the enchanted water, but traveling physically through two miles of open sky.
*GROOOOOOOOOOOOAN.*
Alistair’s hand froze.
The sound was a low, subterranean grinding that vibrated through the pagoda’s foundation timbers.
Down in the scrying basin, the fifty-foot Measuring Stele of Nine Dragons turned black with sudden cracks.
Then, before Alistair could blink, the ancient monument of the Founding Patriarch imploded into a smoking cone of fine purple powder.
*Smash.*
The celadon cup slipped from Alistair’s fingers.
Priceless cloud-mist tea splashed across his golden silk slippers as the porcelain shattered on the jade floor.
The Grand Chancellor of the Radiant Dawn Academy rose to his feet so violently that his heavy sandalwood chair tipped backward, crashing against the screen.
"The... the stele..." Alistair gasped, clutching his chest with both hands. "The Measuring Stele of Nine Dragons! It... it turned into sand?!"
Diviner Moros leaped from his stool, his astrological astrolabe clattering against the floor.
"The formation arrays!" Moros screamed, scrambling over to the grand astrological compass in the corner of the pavilion. "What spell did he cast?! Did he detonate a heaven-tier annihilation seal?!"
The grand compass was an intricate brass apparatus, housing twelve concentric rings designed to detect every known school of elemental magic.
Moros frantically pumped the silver bellows, feeding spiritual stones into the machine.
"Tell me the elemental alignment!" Alistair shouted, his voice cracking with pure terror as he gripped Moros’s shoulder. "Was it Nine-Hells Nether Fire?! Was it Void Frost?! Did he invoke Vivienne's Absolute Zero?!"
Moros stared at the spinning brass needles, his eyes widening until the whites were completely bloodshot.
"No fire..." Moros whispered, his voice trembling so hard his teeth clicked together. "No frost. No lightning. No spiritual Qi. Zero mana flow recorded across the entire terrace!"
Alistair stared at him in wild disbelief.
"Zero mana?!" Alistair roared. "The star-jade was quarried from the abyssal mantle! It is immune to mortal physical force! Even an Eighth-Tier Sovereign striking with an enchanted war-hammer could only chip the surface! How can there be zero mana?!"
*Whirrrrrrrrrrr!*
A terrifying, high-pitched mechanical shriek erupted from the center of the brass compass.
The inner brass needle—the mass calibration gauge—began spinning with unnatural, blinding speed.
Ten revolutions per second.
A hundred revolutions per second.
*BANG!*
The heavy quartz lens covering the dial shattered into glittering shards. The brass gears inside the casing glowed red-hot, grinding themselves into iron filings before bursting into thick, acrid black smoke.
Moros fell to his knees in front of the smoking machine, coughing violently.
"Diviner!" Alistair yelled, grabbing the old scholar by the collar. "What did the gauge read before it melted?!"
Moros looked up at the Chancellor, his face pale as chalk, his pupils dilated in existential horror.
"Mass..." Moros choked out, tears of terror leaking down his wrinkled cheeks. "Cosmic mass density. Five point nine seven... times ten to the twenty-fourth power... kilograms."
Alistair blinked, his aristocratic mind struggling to comprehend the astronomical figure.
"Five... septillion kilograms?" Alistair whispered. "What does that number mean?!"
Moros grabbed Alistair’s embroidered sleeve with trembling hands.
"It means an entire planetary body, Chancellor!" Moros wept hysterically. "A living terrestrial world! Compressed into the volume of a human teenager! He did not cast a spell! He did not invoke a curse! He simply rested his elbow on the pillar and let a microscopic fraction of his planetary weight settle upon the stone!"
Alistair’s breath caught in his throat. His knees buckled, and he had to lean heavily against the wooden railing of the pagoda.
"He... he carries a world in his chest?" Alistair rasped, his vision swimming. "On his mountain... he walks around with five septillion kilograms of solid mass?!"
"Chancellor," Moros whispered, pointing a shaking finger out the pagoda window toward the Central Spire below. "You must understand the physics of what just happened. If that boy had sneezed... if his concentration had slipped by one tenth of one percent... the gravitational shear would have ripped the Central Spire from its suspension chains and plunged fifty thousand students into the Void Sea!"
Alistair leaned over the railing, staring down at the tiny figure in gray pajamas standing beside the purple gravel.
A cold, greasy sweat drenched the back of the Grand Chancellor's neck.
"Send no guards," Alistair ordered in a strangled, desperate whisper. "Sound no alarms. If anyone upsets that boy, we will not have an academy to rebuild."
***
Down on the Central Plaza, the silence finally fractured into chaotic shouting.
"The stele! The stele is destroyed!"
"Call the Peak Masters! Sound the formation wards!"
"Was it an earthquake?! Did an abyssal demon tunnel beneath the stage?!"
Thousands of disciples scrambled backward in panic, while several junior proctors surrounded the terrace with drawn blades, unsure of what they were guarding.
In the center of the commotion, Young Lord Julian remained frozen on his knees.
He stared at the smoking mound of purple sand.
His mind was short-circuiting. Ten years of elite training, millions of spirit stones poured into his meridians, the pride of the Golden Griffin Clan—all meant to illuminate six dragons on an ancient pillar.
And this ragged, slipper-wearing vagrant had walked up, leaned his elbow against the stone, and reduced the sacred relic to gravel.
Julian’s pride could not accept it.
His ego refused to bend to reality.
If this squatter truly possessed such incomprehensible power, it meant Julian was less than an ant. It meant his Golden Griffin bloodline was a pathetic joke.
*No!* Julian’s mind screamed in desperate, frantic denial. *It is impossible! He has no mana aura! He has zero academic credits! Master Vivienne was a fraud, and her disciple is a mortal beggar! This is a trick!*
A spark of madness ignited in Julian’s eyes.
He scrambled to his feet, drawing his solar rapier with a metallic screech.
"Silence!" Julian roared, channeling his True Yang voice to pierce through the plaza’s panic. "All of you, open your eyes! You are being deceived!"
The crowd paused, dozens of elders turning their heads toward the shouting youth.
Julian pointed his blade directly at Felix Vance’s chest, his face contorted in vicious, triumphant fury.
"Look at him!" Julian shouted, pacing across the terrace steps. "Does he possess spiritual radiance? Does he carry an imperial core? No! He is an untalented mortal squatter! The stele did not collapse from spiritual power! He used a forbidden weapon!"
Murmurs rippled through the gathering crowd.
"A forbidden weapon?" a disciple muttered.
"Yes!" Julian yelled, feeling the tide of attention turn back toward him. "He used an Abyssal Shattering Talisman! A cursed, illegal artifact from the black markets of the Void Rim! He concealed the demonic talisman beneath his elbow, detonating the resonance matrix of the star-jade to humiliate the academy and mock our sacred traditions!"
Julian sneered, his chest heaving as he looked around at the listening proctors.
"He is a saboteur!" Julian proclaimed with righteous arrogance. "A demonic agent sent to defile our ancestral heritage! Proctors, arrest this criminal at once!"
On the stage, Felix took a sip from his chipped mug.
He blinked at the shouting blond teenager, then tilted his chin slightly.
A translucent HUD tooltip snapped into place:
【Target: Young Lord Julian】 【Mental State: Severe Stage-1 Denial / Narrative Boss Meltdown】 【Threat Level: Minor Cutscene Distraction】 【Inspector Note: Unable to process simple game mechanics. Will resort to repetitive dialogue barks to preserve his scripted pride. Approaching dialogue branch limit.】
Felix let out a tired sigh, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.
"Man, tutorial NPCs really love to talk," Felix muttered to himself.
He looked at Julian, his expression flat and thoroughly unimpressed.
"Look, buddy," Felix said, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet terrace. "I don't know what an Abyssal Talisman is. Does it give bonus daily exp? If not, I don't care. I'm just waiting for my attendance stamp so I can go catch the gondola."
"You dare play dumb?!" Julian shrieked, his face turning an apoplectic shade of purple. "You defiled the Founding Patriarch's monument, and now you pretend to be an innocent fool?! If you are not a demonic cheat, prove it!"
Julian swung his rapier around, pointing the tip toward the massive stone colosseum looming across the plaza.
"The martial tournament brackets are being drawn right now in the Grand Arena!" Julian bellowed. "Face me on the combat sands! An official exhibition match before the entire student body! If you have true cultivation, show it with a blade! Or admit before the heavens that you are a fraudulent squatter!"
The crowd gasped.
An exhibition challenge before the annual tournament was a rare, high-stakes spectacle. Hundreds of junior disciples began chanting Julian's name, eager for blood and drama.
Beside the terrace, Lyra Ashford stepped forward, her hand tightening around the silver hilt of her rapier.
"Senior Brother," Lyra whispered, her golden eyes blazing with lethal coldness. "Allow me to remove this noisy insect's head. His blasphemy has exceeded the patience of the heavens."
Felix looked at Julian, then looked down at his chipped mug.
The tea was almost empty.
He reached into his pocket and tapped his cracked obsidian slate to check the quest log.
"An exhibition match?" Felix murmured, staring at the screen. "Is that another sub-quest? Does it have crystal rewards?"
Up in the High Cloud Pagoda, Grand Chancellor Alistair watched the scene unfold with cold sweat running down his spine.
"That suicidal idiot Julian," Alistair wheezed, his knuckles white against the balustrade. "He is inviting the wrath of a falling star."