Outside the wooden picket fence of Hongwu Academy, five hundred thousand fighters knelt in total, stone-hard silence.
Across three billion square miles of the Jiuzhou Continent, hundreds of millions of mortals watched through the golden spatial scrying mirrors, barely daring to draw breath.
Above them, the eighteen-mile Golden Stairs gleamed in the clean afternoon sky, its ninety thousand polished steps waiting for the Sovereign’s ascent.
The two twenty-foot Immortal Envoys remained standing respectfully on Step 12, their eighty-foot axe-spears resting upright, their silver visors turned patiently toward the humble schoolhouse below.
Heaven was waiting.
The cosmos was holding its breath.
Yet on the weathered cedar porch of Classroom 404, the only sound was the rhythmic, gentle creak of an old wooden rocking chair.
Creak. Clack. Creak. Clack.
