Within six hours of Kaelen’s broadcast, a strange and unprecedented silence smothered the cosmos.
In thirty-three thousand worlds, ninety-four percent of all living cultivators had completely stopped circulating their Qi.
On the southern continent of the Azure Cloud Realm, ten thousand swordsmen lay sprawled across the courtyard pavers. Their drawn blades rested peacefully in the clover. Nobody practiced stances. Nobody polished flying swords. Every eye was locked onto the sky, where Lord Obsidian was dramatically confronting Maiden Xue’s treacherous uncle.
“He shouldn’t trust that uncle,” whispered an elder, leaning against a stone lion with a cup of warm pear tea. “The uncle has shifty eyebrows.”
“Be quiet, Master,” his senior disciple muttered from a woven hammock slung between two pill-furnaces. “The Sovereign ordered complete mental stillness. If you get agitated over the plot, the sky will start sucking our souls again.”
The elder grunted, took another sip of tea, and closed his eyes.
Down by the Green River, disciples of the Iron-Bone Sect had abandoned their heavy iron weights. They sat along the riverbank with bamboo fishing poles, eating cold sweet buns.
“Do you think Maiden Xue will accept the jade hairpin?” a brawny youth asked, dipping his bare toes into the cool water.
