The procession toward the southern cliff edge of Granite Platform One looked less like an academic check and more like a royal military trial.
Leading the march were sixty armored paladins of the Great Da-Qi Sovereign Guard. Their heavy axe-spears shone in the cold mountain sun.
Behind them, floating on disks of condensed spatial mist, were the elders of the three ancient Sage Clans: the Zhang Clan, the Luo Clan, and the Jiang Clan.
Tens of thousands of fighters, royal ministers, and sect masters followed along the wide stone walkway, their voices hushed in tense whispers.
“The Challenge of Lineage Purity...” an old sect master muttered. “In four hundred years, it has only been invoked twice. Both testers were broken when their minds touched the Primordial Stele!”
“A mortal can’t bear the weight of First Epoch truth,” a royal scholar agreed. “The stele was carved by the divine founders of our world! To look upon it without sky blood is to invite collapse!”
And walking right in the center of the procession, pushing an eight-foot oak carpenter’s workbench on rubber wheels, was Class 404.
SQUEAK-RATTLE.
