Hardwood Peak had never known such stillness.
The mountain air was sweet with the fragrance of blooming spirit pine and wild thyme. Below, the terraced valleys of the Jiuzhou Continent stretched out like an endless mix of jade, emerald, and gold, their newly patched leylines humming with the calm perfection of an engineered world.
Yet Lu Zhen stood on the wooden porch of Classroom 404. Then, the sky above refused to let him rest.
The clouds were not grey.
They were a deep, bruised, pulsating violet-gold.
Fifty thousand miles of spiraling sky-trial clouds had came together over the northern hemisphere. It formed a huge sky vortex whose eye hung directly above the roof of Classroom 404.
Within that titanic vortex, arcs of world-size lightning—each bolt as thick as a royal highway—snaked across the sky with terrifying, ear-splitting power. The air smelled intensely of scorched ozone and spark-charged cold air.
The live spark charge building in the upper air was so vast, so packed, that even the birds in the trees remained frozen to their perches. Their feathers stood on end.
