Inside the sealed sanctum of the Nine-Fold Continental Iron Vault, the mood had raised from panic to relief.
Twelve golden wine cups, filled to the brim with glowing sky pear nectar, clinked together above the center of the eight-hundred-year-old polished rosewood conference table.
“A toast,” Chief Arbiter Yan Baichuan said, his voice echoing off the fifty-foot-thick walls of star-iron. “To the balance of the Nine Arbiter Clans. To the preservation of the land-wide order.”
“To the order,” the eleven Domain Saint elders chorused.
Elder Ouyang took a swallow of wine and set his cup down. “Deploying the First Epoch Iron Vault was decisive. The mortal outside must realize by now that simple levers are powerless against the ancient heritage of the realm.”
“He can’t penetrate this threshold,” Yan Baichuan said, swirling his goblet. “Nine nested layers of tightly packed non-Euclidean reality lie between us and that hall. Even if an immortal dropped from the Upper Realm, he couldn’t cross without fracturing the land-wide shelf.”
Yan Baichuan placed his cup on the dark, mirror-polished surface of the table.
“We shall draft the official records. We’ll note that Tester Lu was unable to conclude the final proceedings. The conclave will proceed according to established protocol.”
