SHING—WHOOOOSH!
With a sharp metallic roar that shook the white clouds overhead, three thousand streaks of silver sword-light came to a sudden halt three hundred feet above the eastern plain of Great Yan.
The wind kicked up by three thousand flying swords flattened the tall wild grass outside the border town and sent dust swirling across the empty fields.
Standing at the very front of the formation on his five-foot Purple-Frost Spirit Sword, First Elder Jian Wuchen held his hands behind his back, his silver beard fluttering like the mane of a snow lion. Behind him, the three thousand Inner Disciples of the Azure-Sword Sect stood in neat, gleaming rows, their white silk robes flapping and their chins tilted forty-five degrees toward the sky.
Even though half of them had rumbling stomachs from skipping breakfast and several were wearing mismatched socks, from three hundred feet up, they still looked like an army of untouchable Sword Immortals descending upon the mortal world.
“Hmph. Look at this place,” Young Master Zhao Feng sneered from the front row, shading his eyes as he looked down at the five hundred red-brick apartment buildings and the wide paved roads of the border town. “No golden palace roofs, no spirit-jade pavilions, just rows of square red brick boxes like pigpens! And Xiao Wu actually ran away from my Third Peak courtyard to live in a brick box?!”
