The brick courtyard behind Deacon Vane’s silk stall smelled of damp tea crates and donkey harnesses.
Three old men in high-collared satin robes stood beneath a sagging tiled awning, their arms tucked deep into their sleeves.
Each wore the twin-flame crest of the Second Spire, and each radiated the heavy, pressurized spiritual aura of the Nascent Soul Early realm.
The eldest was Grandmaster Bai, flanked by his two senior peers, Grandmaster Liao and Grandmaster Qi. For seventy years, these three men had never stepped outside without a retinue of fifty disciples, never poured their own wine, and never tolerated a single speck of dust on their embroidered slippers.
Yet today, their faces were pale and their eyes were bloodshot from sleepless anxiety.
Deacon Vane stood beside a weathered stone table, bowing repeatedly as he poured lukewarm jasmine tea into cracked clay bowls.
“Patience, venerable masters,” Vane pleaded, wiping sweat from his double chin with a silk handkerchief. “Master Ash’s messenger is a very busy man. He will be here any moment.”
“You have kept three Second Tower grandmasters waiting behind a stable for forty minutes, merchant,” Grandmaster Bai snarled, his spiritual pressure cracking the stone table with a sharp hairline fracture. “If this Master Ash is an imposter, I will personally turn your silk stall into a pile of melted glass.”
