Deep inside the quiet inner courtyard of Dry-Well Palace, the silver moonlight shone down on the stone rim of the original Sweet-Spring Spirit Well—which Pei Xuan had carefully dug up brick by brick from the Red-Sand Wastes and transplanted right into the heart of his imperial garden.
Sitting on a flat jade meditation cushion beside the well, Pei Xuan laid out six priceless items on the low stone table in front of him.
On the left sat four ancient, gold-trimmed jade slips confiscated from the ancestral rings of the Four Golden Core Sovereigns: 1. The Myriad-Pill Pavilion’s Rank 6 Nine-Turn Samadhi Alchemy Scripture; 2. The Azure-Sword Sect’s Rank 6 Heaven-Splitting Sword-Heart Manual; 3. The Heavenly-Lock Array Sect’s Rank 6 Eight-Trigram Heaven-Earth Matrix; 4. And the Joyous-Gold Sect’s Rank 6 Indestructible Geng-Gold Sovereign Art.
In the middle sat Pei Xuan’s own current cultivation art, the zero-flaw [Golden-Spring Foundation Manual].
And on the right, floating inside a sealed crystal box, pulsed a fist-sized orb of pure, crystallized golden earth-marrow that had condensed at the intersection point when all four continental Spirit Veins linked together beneath the capital: a genuine [Rank 6 Continental Spirit-Vein Heart].
Down inside the well, Ao Ming poked his massive horned dragon head above the water level, resting his scaly chin on the stone rim while chewing on a late-night snack of roasted spirit-lamb ribs.
