The sky above the eastern pavilion turned the color of bruised steel.
A thirty-foot apex predator dropped through the clouds at terminal velocity. Trailing fifty yards of shrieking blue plasma, the Azure-Crested Thunder Gryphon aimed its razor talons straight at the jacaranda tree.
The air pressure dropped like a stone. Granite flagstones around the VIP pavilion began to vibrate, their polished surfaces webbed with jumping static sparks.
"Senior Brother!" Lyra cried, her hand snapping to the silver pommel of her rapier.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. An eighth-tier spiritual beast was equivalent to an outer sect grand elder in full combat frenzy. At this dive speed, its kinetic impact alone could level a three-story pagoda!
Beside her, Felix Vance did not move an inch.
He lay stretched out on the wicker daybed, one leg crossed lazily over the other. His eyes were glued to the amber screen of the AetherDeck.
On the cracked obsidian surface, a tiny pixelated treasure chest was bouncing up and down, accompanied by cheerful eight-bit flute music.
"Come on," Felix muttered under his breath, completely ignoring the hurricane descending from the heavens. "Give me the golden SSR mining pick. I’ve done seventy pulls on this standard banner. If this rolls another rusty iron dagger, I'm writing a furious forum post about rigged drop rates."
Right next to his elbow, perched on the wicker armrest, was Barnaby the Clockwork Owl.
Barnaby had not moved since breakfast.
The heavy black rubber stopper was wedged flush into his brass beak, sealing his voice box with an airtight, unyielding grip.
His three polished brass talons remained clamped with mechanical rigidity around the cold copper coin.
When the Thunder Gryphon’s deafening war screech tore through the sky, Barnaby did not cringe. Barnaby did not run.
Instead, the clockwork bird rotated his brass head ninety degrees on a silent ball bearing.
His two polished amber crystal eyes locked directly onto the incoming monster.
They did not blink. They did not flicker. They held only a flat, vacant, bottomless mechanical glare of pure, unadulterated disgust.
*Filthy, uncultured poultry,* Barnaby raged behind his sealed throat. His internal escapement wheel spun with enough friction to melt lard. *How dare an unwashed, flea-bitten sky-lizard cast its shadow across my polished brass chassis? If a single speck of your ionized soot lands on my plumage, I shall instruct the heavens to pluck your feathers one by one!*
Behind the black rubber stopper, a tiny, pressurized puff of steam escaped Barnaby's beak:
*"Mmmph."*
To a mortal ear, it sounded like a dying kettle.
To the eighth-tier Thunder Gryphon plunging from the sky, it sounded like the turning of an ancient celestial gear that dictated the lifespan of entire galaxies.
The beast was less than forty paces away when its apex sensory organs crossed the invisible perimeter of the pavilion.
In an ordinary cultivator, the dantian held a pool of spiritual mist or a condensed liquid lake.
Inside Felix Vance’s chest sat a condensed star with the exact mass of planet Earth.
Even though ninety-nine percent of that terrifying gravitational mass was suppressed by the AetherDeck’s background idle thread, a fraction of a percent still leaked into his immediate personal space.
It was the passive aura of a collapsed star resting comfortably on a wicker couch.
The Thunder Gryphon’s predatory brain slammed into that aura like a speeding carriage hitting a solid cliff of adamantine.
Its spiritual meridians instantly froze. The lightning circulating through its iron feathers suffocated in mid-air, sputtering out into pathetic wisps of gray ash.
The beast looked down through the jacaranda leaves.
It saw the young man in the frayed gray pajamas. The young man radiated the calm, terrifying gravity of a primordial black hole that swallowed solar systems for a mid-morning snack.
And sitting right beside this cosmic terror was an enigmatic, silent brass entity.
The brass entity possessed eyes of ancient amber crystal that stared through its soul without fear, without anger, without any mortal emotion whatsoever.
In its claw, the brass sovereign casually weighed an ancient, circular bronze relic. The beast’s primal instincts immediately recognized the disc as a divine coin of karmic balance.
The message was clear: *Bow, or your lineage ends before this coin touches the earth.*
The Thunder Gryphon’s survival instincts took the wheel and ripped the emergency brake.
*SKRRRRK?!*
The beast flared its eighty-foot wings backward with violent, desperate terror.
It beat its iron feathers against the air so hard that its own wing tendons creaked under the strain. It tried to stop. It tried to reverse. It tried to apologize to the sky itself for having the audacity to fly.
Gravity, however, does not care about apologies.
Its massive sixty-ton body had too much downward momentum. Unable to pull up in time, the glorious, eighth-tier apex predator lost all aerodynamic lift.
*THWUMP!*
The Thunder Gryphon crashed belly-first into the manicured grass thirty feet outside the pavilion.
It didn't attack. It didn't roar. It didn't deploy its storm claws.
Instead, the magnificent terror of the Azure Ridge folded its wings flat against its sides, pulled its head into its chest feathers, and slid across the turf like a bowling ball on wet grease.
*Skiiiiiiid-crunch.*
The bird plowed a two-foot-deep furrow through Grand Chancellor Zhao’s prize-winning orchid bed, showering the perimeter stanchions with loose dirt.
It finally came to a complete halt three inches before Barnaby’s wicker armrest.
The colossal beast did not stand up. It did not raise its crest.
It flattened its entire thirty-foot frame into the dirt, spreading its iron wings out like two doormats. Its sharp, curved beak pressed flush against the grass, trembling so hard that its feathers rattled like dry bamboo.
It let out a tiny, high-pitched squeak:
*"Coo... coo-coo..."*
It sounded like a terrified, half-drowned pigeon begging an alley cat not to bite off its head.
***
The entire Grand Coliseum fell into a silence so profound you could hear the wind rustling through the jacaranda blossoms.
Fifty paces away, Grand Chancellor Zhao stood frozen in the dirt, his jaw hanging so slack it nearly touched his emerald collar.
Behind him, Elder Guan scrambled out of the drainage ditch, his singed beard bristling with soot. The senior beast-handlers dropped their silver chains, staring across the grass with eyes the size of soup bowls.
"It... it yielded?" Elder Guan stammered, clutching his bruised chest. "An eighth-tier Azure-Crested Thunder Gryphon... a beast with the ancestral bloodline of the Primordial Sky Dragon... surrendered without a single exchange of blows?!"
Chancellor Zhao slowly raised a trembling hand, pointing toward the wicker chair.
"Look at the sovereign's familiar," Zhao whispered, his voice trembling with sheer religious dread. "The Grand Herald! The Clockwork Sovereign of Solitude Peak!"
Elder Guan looked.
There stood Barnaby.
The clockwork owl had not flinched. He had not stepped back. He remained perched on the wicker armrest, his amber crystal eyes glaring down at the prostrate gryphon with cold, unyielding disdain.
Between his brass talons, the copper coin remained securely pinned, gleaming in the morning sun.
"Heavenly ancestors above..." Elder Guan gasped, his knees buckling under the weight of his realization. "The Owl Sovereign did not even deign to speak! He subdued a calamity-grade apex beast using solely the **Dao of Absolute Silence**!"
"A silence heavier than the Nine Heavens," Zhao agreed, cold sweat dripping from his chin onto his silk tunic. "Did you see the sacred talisman locked in its talons? A disc of primordial bronze! The Owl Sovereign held the beast's spiritual lifespan between its claws! If it had dropped that talisman, the gryphon's soul would have shattered into dust!"
Elder Guan wiped a tear of profound awe from his soot-stained cheek.
"To command an eighth-tier calamity without uttering a word... to force a dragon-blooded raptor to prostrate like a common barnyard fowl... such is the unfathomable depth of Solitude Spire's inner court!"
Behind them, thousands of disciples in the bleachers began to drop to their knees, bowing toward the jacaranda tree with frantic murmurs of reverence:
"Praise the Owl Sovereign!"
"Glory to the Silent Herald of the Seventh Spire!"
***
Inside the pavilion, Lyra Ashford stood frozen beside the daybed.
Her silver rapier slid back into its sheath with a crisp, trembling click. Her golden eyes were brimming with unshed tears of divine realization.
*I was foolish,* Lyra chastised herself, her heart overflowing with devotion. *I drew steel against an eighth-tier beast, fearing for Senior Brother's safety! How shallow is my vision! How narrow is my comprehension of the Great Way!*
She looked at Felix Vance.
Felix had not even lifted his gaze from the obsidian slate. He had known, from the very beginning, that the beast posed less threat than a summer breeze.
*Senior Brother did not even need to wave his hand,* Lyra thought, her chest tight with awe. *He simply allowed his trusted familiar, the Clockwork Sovereign, to test the beast's karmic humility! And Barnaby... Barnaby bears the burden of the Divine Plug! He sealed his own celestial voice with the sacred Dark Stopper so that his mortal words would not shatter the fragile spatial fabric of this realm!*
Lyra dropped to one knee on the wicker rug, bowing her head toward Felix with pure, undiluted worship.
"Senior Brother's foresight encompasses the ten thousand realms," Lyra whispered reverently. "The beast is thoroughly tamed. Your sacred owl familiar has demonstrated the supreme majesty of Solitude Spire."
Right at that moment, a harsh, buzzing chime sounded from the cracked obsidian slate:
*BZZZZT!*
Felix stared down at the screen. The pixelated chest had burst open to reveal a pair of crude iron boots with a gray border.
【 Target: 8th-Tier Thunder Gryphon | Status: Terrified Chicken Mode | Threat: 0% | Note: Prostrated flat on the dirt because Barnaby stared at it without blinking. 】
Felix Vance let out a heavy, bone-deep sigh.
He leaned his head back against the linen pillow, staring up at the jacaranda leaves with the world-weary despair of an unlucky mobile gamer.
"Unbelievable," Felix grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Seventy-one pulls on rate-up, and the game hands me work boots that smell like cabbage. The drop rates on this server are completely unhinged."
He finally lowered his screen and glanced over the side of the wicker daybed.
Sitting on the grass, right next to his straw slipper, was a massive mound of blue iron feathers.
The Thunder Gryphon had tucked its giant beak beneath Felix's toes, shivering softly and letting out pathetic, submissive pigeon noises: *"Coo... coo..."*
Felix stared at the overgrown bird for three long seconds.
He reached down, grabbed his frosted glass of winterberry tea, and looked back at Lyra with mild annoyance.
"Lyra," Felix said, pointing his straw slipper at the shivering monster. "Who let this giant stray chicken into the VIP lounge? It's kicking dirt all over my iced tea, and it's shedding feathers on the rug."
Lyra’s breath caught in her throat.
*A stray chicken!* she thought, her soul vibrating with profound enlightenment. *To Senior Brother, an eighth-tier calamity that terrifies the empire is merely poultry! His standard for true celestial beasts is so high that dragon-blooded gryphons do not even register as livestock!*
"Senior Brother," Lyra replied with solemn grace, bowing low. "This humble servant shall ensure the stray fowl does not disturb your tea further."
Up on the armrest, Barnaby gave another furious, muffled twitch behind his rubber stopper:
*"Mmm-grrr-ph!"*
Felix reached over and tapped the top of the clockwork owl's head twice.
"Hang in there, Barnaby," Felix said, closing his eyes to resume his afternoon nap. "Keep holding that coin. Five more minutes, and we're heading home to eat cold noodles."