The dying curse of the Scribe Lord didn’t merely shatter the grand hall of the Sages’ Sanctum. It violated every known town digging city law across seven world-size quadrants.
Deep within the granite foundations of the sacred plateau, something ancient and load-bearing gave way with a sound like a splitting mountain.
A jagged five-hundred-mile fissure tore through the polished jade courtyard. It spat plumes of sub-zero black foul fog into the sky.
Across the Jiuzhou Continent, nine thousand bronze warning bells rang in clashing terror. Boundary arrays flickered crimson as earth-shaking tremors registered Size 9 on every royal seismograph.
In the center of the courtyard, seventy-two Great Sages knelt in the dust, coughing blood as the realm’s spiritual pressure plummeted.
“The seal is broken,” Elder Qing Xuan gasped, his white beard trembling. “The Ancient Sin has opened the Ninefold Nether Springs. The world-bearing turtle has collapsed. We’ll sink into the void.”
Ten feet away, Lu Zhen sat on a light metal lawn chair, blowing across the rim of a padded stainless-steel thermos.
A tremor jolted the earth. A single drop of lukewarm tea sloshed over the rim and splashed onto his denim overalls.
