On the wide concrete plaza outside the eastern gate of Dry-Well Town, the wind fell silent.
Five thousand blue-uniformed workers hovered in a neat semi-circle on their purple-gold flying shovels. To their left, two thousand four hundred Azure-Sword junior disciples stuck their heads out of the dirt like rows of white turnips. Above them, six hundred senior elders and core disciples hung glued to the hundred-foot black Magnet Tower by their chest armor and belt buckles.
Every single pair of eyes was fixed on the center of the plaza.
There, bare-chested and wild-haired, First Elder Jian Wuchen crouched low like a starving snow leopard. Even without his Purple-Frost Spirit Sword, he was still a Rank 5 Peak Foundation Establishment grandmaster who had stood at the summit of the Central Continent’s sword world for forty years.
As he poured his liquid dantian Qi into the foot-long White-Jade Spirit Dagger in his right hand, a dazzling ten-foot phantom blade of freezing silver frost extended from the tip of the jade! At the same time, his left hand glowed with the deadly Azure-Cloud Splitting Palm, cold enough to freeze a river solid in one slap.
Across from him, thirty feet away, Ye Guhan stepped calmly off his floating golden shovel onto the gray concrete pavement.
