The circle of two hundred 7-Star and 8-Star Grand Elders tightened around the base of the Central Primordial Stele like a noose of cold iron and flashing jade. Every elder drew their old family Saint Relic. Ancient flying swords forged from star-marrow hummed in midair, heavy dragon-scale axe-spears crackled with spatial fissures, and golden battle mirrors cast beams of domain fire across the white dragon-bone marble.
At the head of this grand inquisition stood Grand Elder Yan Gu, his robes stained with dust. His singed goatee shook with desperate venom. In his right hand, Yan Gu raised the supreme punishment relic of the Gu Clan: the Ancestral Sage Ruler. Forged from nine-thousand-year sky bronze and etched with thirty-six thousand execution runes, the ruler radiated a heavy pressure capable of pulverizing a Tier 7 Saint’s dantian into fine sand.
“Desist, lunatic!” Yan Gu roared, his voice trembling between high-born fury and unmasked existential dread. “You stand upon the sacred altar of the First Epoch Sages! You have defiled the Holy Turnstile, desecrated the Holy Forest. Now you stand upon a silver stilt holding a stick of blue mud! Step down from that ladder this instant, or be carried out under the Sages’ Blood Code!”
