By 6:15 PM on Friday evening, as the fiery crimson sun dipped behind the jagged western peaks outside Sky-Crown City, the mountain slopes of Red-Leaf Valley blazed like an ocean of scarlet maple fire.
Fifteen miles east inside the heavily guarded Eastern Palace, Second Prince Qian Ye was still kneeling on an ice-jade prayer mat in his dark study. Starving himself and chanting ancient blood-incantations as he dripped his own royal essence onto a 10,000-Silver Crimson Blood-Key Talisman. Designed to unlock the front stone gate of Secret Realm #1: The Hidden Flame-Marquis Tomb at dawn on Saturday.
Here in Red-Leaf Valley itself, however, the [Rank 3 Spring-Shock Luxury Caravan] had already rolled to a silent, velvety stop on the grassy hillside directly above the ancient buried tomb!
Stepping down from the driver’s footboard in his Pink Chore Apron, former Eastern Palace enforcer Envoy Zhao [Warmth: 66/100] tied the two Spirit-Oxen to a shady maple tree. Looked down the steep southern slope toward the valley floor, and shivered involuntarily.
At the bottom of the valley stood a towering, thirty-foot stone archway carved with ferocious crimson fire-dragons—the main front entrance of the five-hundred-year-old Flame-Marquis Tomb.
Even from a hundred yards up the hill, Envoy Zhao could see the air around that front stone archway rippling like molten glass. Every three breaths, a stray autumn maple leaf drifted within a hundred yards of the archway and instantly burst into white-hot ash in midair!
