The final round of the Provincial Martial Test brought fifty carriage-loads of noblewomen and patricians who paid ten silver coins each for ringside cushions to watch Xie Lingfeng’s coronation.
The Grand Imperial Martial Arena was transformed.
Around the central ring, the mud had been scraped away and replaced by fresh cedar sawdust that released a sharp, pine-scented perfume into the freezing air. Stitched silk wind-curtains in the royal azure and gold of Azure Province hung between the stone pillars, shielding the noble gallery from the sleet. Retainers carried silver tea urns, offering steaming jasmine infusions and candied lotus seeds to the judges, academy masters, and merchant grandees who filled the reserved seats.
At the center of the northern staging platform, surrounded by sixteen armed retainers wearing the crested silver liveries of the Marquis House, stood Xie Lingfeng.
He was twenty years old, with skin as fair as mutton-fat jade and features sculpted with cold, even perfection.
His pedigree was without equal in Azure Province. From the age of four, his bones and tendons had been steeped in decoctions of hundred-year mountain ginseng, deer antler marrow, and pearl powder. At fourteen, he had been accepted as a personal lay student by an outer elder of the Azure Cloud Sect, spending three seasons atop the Mist-Veiled Crags learning the traditional breathing cycles of the cloud fighters.
