The second-tier floating balconies of the Grand Coliseum didn’t look like a gathering of refined scholars. They looked like an unhinged, armed mob in silk brocade.
Two thousand noble elders, clan patriarchs, and royal academy deans were currently shrieking at the top of their lungs, their faces purple with humiliated, apoplectic rage. Gold-trimmed tea tables had been kicked over. Hundred-year-old vintage wine was sloshing across the white jade floor, and dozens of heirloom spirit swords had been drawn from their sword sheaths, glinting murderously beneath the midday sun.
“DISQUALIFICATION! EXECUTION! DEATH TO THE RUSTIC VERMIN!”
“They used common manure shovels to desecrate the old family face of the Mountain-Moving Sect!”
“A steam kettle! A common tea-kettle pipe cut the Glacial Jade Aegis! This is vile, deep-sea witchcraft!”
“My clan wagered three million high-grade spirit stones on Young Master Chen! A sword saint can’t be buried like a fence post! It violates the natural hierarchy of Heaven!”
In the high bleachers four hundred feet above them, the mood was entirely reversed.
Five hundred thousand commoners, tributary merchants, and rural fighters were roaring with wild, uncontrollable jubilation! Having spent decades being trampled beneath the boots of the capital’s aristocracy. It watched the proud noble prodigies get pancaked, steamed, hammered. Then it grounded by a crew in denim overalls was the greatest emotional catharsis in mortal history!
