The Grand Hall of Inquisitorial Judgment didn’t possess windows. It possessed twelve thousand tons of polished black dark rock, suspended four hundred feet above the deep pit by twelve massive black glass pillars known throughout the Jiuzhou Plane as the Pillars of Eternal Law. Each pillar was sixty feet in width, etched from base to capital with ancient punitive runes that hummed with the cold, merciless deep ring of Tier 8 crushing weight formations.
Under ordinary circumstances, the Hall of Inquisitorial Judgment remained sealed for hundreds of years at a time, unsealed only. Just then, a grand sect committed land-wide treason or when a Tier 9 Saint Sovereign fell to demonic corruption. Today, the bronze warning bells tolled thirty-six times in rapid row. It shook through the teeth of every fighter within a fifty-mile radius.
High above the central judgment pit, seated upon twelve huge thrones carved from stone-hard dragon-bone, sat the Tribunal of the Twelve Pillars. Twelve 8-Star Grand Elders, ancient living fossils who had not spoken to mortals in three hundred years, watched with hair like spun frost and eyes shining with the ruthless amber soft glow of high-realm Saint Domains.
Between them sat Grand Elder Yan Gu, his scorched crimson robes replaced by the formal black-and-gold mantle of the High Judge. To his right sat Elder Mo Cheng. He leaned on a black glass staff, his blistered scalp smeared with bitter pine-resin healing balm. To his left stood Chief Proctor Zhong Shan. It trembled slightly as he…
