The scrying mirror suspended in the center of the hall flared with blinding azure radiance. On the polished surface of the floating glass, the three-hundred-foot Primordial Stele of the Founding Sages rotated slowly in full three-space-folding detail.
At the very bottom of the ancient verse—right after the final carved stroke declaring the eternal harmony of the sky spheres—sat the blue mark. A single circular dot, hovering exactly four tiny fractions of an inch above a gracefully curved tail.
Grand Elder Yan Gu stood trembling atop the black glass trial platform, both hands raised toward the vaulted ceiling as if invoking the wrath of the heavens. “Look upon this monster!” Yan Gu’s shriek echoed off the twelve massive dark rock pillars. “A mark never before recorded in the three hundred thousand volumes of old family scripture! It possesses neither radical nor stroke order! It resembles a dead serpent curled beneath an unblinking eye!”
He pointed his quivering finger straight down into the judgment pit. “It’s a cut seal! A demonic parasite! The accused has placed a hex upon the foundational leylines of the Jiuzhou Plane! By severing the final glyph of the ancestors, he intends to choke off the spiritual qi of our students and collapse our sky dome into the Void!”
