The sixty-foot bronze double-doors of the Hall of Ten Thousand Sages were built to withstand the physical blast of an asteroid. Yet Grand Elder Yan Gu and seventy reactionary elders slammed their collective palm strikes against the outside release latch. Then, the ancient starry-sea bronze rattled like an empty biscuit tin.
“Break it down!” Yan Gu roared through his soot-caked beard, his eyes wild with desperate, bloodthirsty excitement. “The old family statues have awakened! The ancient souls have smelled the mortal stench of the blasphemer! Move before the demon’s blood dries upon the sacred floor!”
The reactionary elders threw their full weight against the release bar.
CLANG-CRASH—!
The massive bronze deadbolts snapped back, and the sixty-foot doors swung wildly inward, rebounding off their granite stops with an echoing boom.
Grand Elder Yan Gu was the first to storm across the threshold. In his right hand, he clutched the melted stump of his old family judgment staff, his teeth bared in a feral sneer, fully expecting to see a scene of world-ending carnage. He expected to see Frank’s limbs torn asunder by the holy wrath of ten thousand First Epoch masters. He expected to see the five insolent apprentices kneeling in pools of their own blood. He wept for mercy as ancient phantoms tore their souls from their mortal husks.
