The Grand Bell Plaza hung suspended between two five-hundred-foot giant pillars of dark, polished granite.
A cold mountain wind blew through the canyon between the two stone towers. That created a natural sound wind tunnel that carried the faintest whisper across open air.
Suspended from bronze crossbeams forty feet above the plaza floor were the Thirty-Six Bronze Bells of Clarity.
Each bell was cast from astral bronze during the First Epoch, stood twelve feet tall. Then it weighed over six tons. Their curved surfaces were covered in sharp-angled relief patterns and sky scripts that had resisted rusting for three thousand years.
These were not ordinary musical instruments. They were sound resonators designed to measure the deep ring and ringing penetration of a fighter’s soul.
Grandmaster Yue Feng stood atop the central stone dais, his azure robes flapping in the wind. She held a golden tuning rod in his right hand.
“Testers of the Occupational Gauntlet!” Yue Feng’s voice rang out, crisp as winter ice. “You stand before the sacred Bells of Clarity. In this trial, brute physical force is entirely useless. You can’t strike these bells with fists or weapons! They respond only to the Sage Voice Projection and pure musical Dao!”
