The Grand Coliseum of Nine Dragons didn’t merely seat people. It contained an entire metropolitan population.
Built during the Third Epoch from fiery dark rock and heavy with linked iron-hard metal iron rods, the circular stadium rose four hundred feet into the capital sky. Five hundred thousand tiered stone seats encircled a one-thousand-yard circular combat pitch paved with ten-foot-thick massive flat stone slabs, all humming with the ancient power of 5-Star Earth-Binding Formations.
Above the arena, three tiers of floating jade balconies hovered on anti-gravity leylines, reserved for the royal family, the High Court judges. The deans of the one hundred participating noble academies.
At eight o’clock in the morning, the grand processional trumpets roared.
BWAAAAAAAAAH!
Across the massive parade tunnel marched the elite academies of the Thirty Principalities.
They arrived in breathtaking, blinding majesty.
The Royal Dragon Academy led the vanguard, fifty prodigies clad in shimmering gold-threaded silk robes, their azure capes stitched with soaring five-clawed dragons. Behind them came the Cloud-Severing Sword Sect, their students floating on timed together flying swords that trailed rainbow-bright clouds of white zhenqi. Then came the Mountain-Moving Sect, eight-foot-tall behemoths in polished bronze plate armor dragging three-ton stone anchors. Their rhythmic stomps shook the stadium gates.
