The mountain wind at ninety thousand feet didn’t merely bite. It performed a high-speed crushing weight test on mortal skin. Clouds of spun silver drifted past the peaks of the Heaven-Reaching Range. It showed the gateway of the Jiuzhou Continent’s supreme power: the Primordial Sacred Lands.
Before the entrance stood a jade archway towering ten thousand feet into the vault. Carved from Nine-Vein Dragon-Marrow Jade, the archway hummed with the dormant power of ancient sages, wisps of purple vapor coiling around its lintels like sleeping serpents.
Beneath the soaring top door beam, Frank stood chewing on a dry sprig of wild mint. He wore his customary faded denim overalls, secured with heavy brass buckles that had survived three sect destructions. Across his chest ran a bright neon orange nylon sash, rated for low-light heavy-duty conditions. Hanging from his thick leather tool belt was a tiny crescent wrench, a brass measuring tongs, a steel tape measure, and a battered tin canteen.
Behind him, Construction Crew Class 404 stood in disciplined formation. Every student wore a gleaming yellow spun-glass hard hat with an adjustable ratchet mid-air. Shen Shitou, whose Star-Forged Iron Body radiated the crushing weight of an asteroid, carried a twenty-four-foot folding light metal step-ladder across his massive shoulders. Princess Jiang Ling’er stood beside him, adjusting her chin strap while checking the heat valves of her portable spirit-tea kettle. Niu Mang leaned on the handle of his five-foot hard dark metal-iron trench shovel, squinting at the foundation grade of the road…
