The sky above the Sacred Lands didn’t fall. It crumbled.
Three miles of ancient mountain peaks—crowned by fifty-two immortal pavilions, six old family pagodas, and three thousand hectares of spiritual bamboo—were erased from existence in a single pulse of total energy. Eight 8-Star Grand Saint Domains, locked in offering deep ring and fueled by the burning lifespans of the reactionary elders, crashed together like colliding earth-shaking plates.
Below, the ground was no longer stone. It was a churning, white-hot ocean of melted dark rock, bubbling at twelve thousand degrees and spewing geysers of molten rock eighty feet into the howling storm. Above, the sky was a lattice of black space-folding fissures where millions of spatial guillotines sliced through the air at thirty times the speed of sound, slicing air molecules into glowing ionic star-fire. Between heaven and earth, a vortex of black hurricane frost and acid-burning blood-acid rain roared with ear-splitting fury.
In the spectator galleries—protected only by the desperate, flickering barrier raised by Hall Master Xuan Ji—eight hundred sect masters, patriarchs, and prodigies fell to their knees. Many cried openly, while others gripped their spirit swords in white-knuckled despair, reciting their funeral chants.
“The mountain is gone...” an ancient pavilion master whimpered, blood streaming from his nose as the surrounding pressure cracked his ribs. “The entire Sacred Mountain... Ground into dust!”
