On the sunny white flagstones of Heavenly-Lock Mountain’s Inner Peak Plaza, four hundred white-robed Array Elders and Senior Deacons stood in a circle around Grandmaster Zhen, clutching their brass compasses, wooden slide-rules, and jade astrolabes like frightened geese.
For a thousand years, the elders of the Heavenly-Lock Array Sect had prided themselves on being “gentleman scholars of the Dao.” Whenever they fought an enemy, they stood three miles behind a twenty-foot stone barrier, sipped hot tea, and pressed buttons on an array plate to drop lightning on people’s heads.
None of them had ever done a single push-up, swung a heavy blade, or practiced body-tempering martial arts in their lives!
“D-Don’t come any closer!” First Elder Kun shouted in a high, reedy voice as he held up a delicate, gold-inlaid Rank 5 Eight-Trigram Brass Compass in front of his chest. “We are still Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Immortals! Even without the mountain Kill Array, we have ten thousand pocket array flags in our sleeves! Everybody, throw your Five-Thunder Pocket Flags on my count! One... two...”
Before First Elder Kun could count to three, General Tie Zhan and Old Wei stepped onto the plaza at the head of five hundred burly Furnace-Blood Scripture guards.
