At a quarter to midnight on Friday night, the avenues around the Outer Imperial Palace Wall were shrouded in a freezing silver mist.
Rising nine hundred feet from the highest limestone terrace of the Eastern Palace precinct stood the Imperial Astral Tower—an octagonal pagoda of black star-stone. Dark bronze built three centuries ago to observe the northern constellations. Tonight, every single window of the nine-story tower blazed with eerie crimson-violet blood-fire runes.
Around the base of the tower’s outer courtyard gate stood an elite cordon of fifty fully armored Rank. 4 Early (Qi Gathering Stage 1–3) Royal Astral Guards—the secret hidden blade of the Great Qian Royal Clan. Personally mobilized by Second Prince Qian Ye using his stolen ancestral tally.
Above their black iron helmets shimmered a sixty-foot dome of interlocking golden-red laser lines: the Rank 4 Mid Twelve-Star Slaughtering Barrier.
Standing just inside the barrier’s central gatehouse, seventy-year-old Tower Keeper Elder Xing , at Rank 4 Mid. Held a spinning brass astrolabe in his wrinkled hands and frowned up at the ninth-floor balcony. Second Prince Qian Ye was preparing a sacrificial blood-altar around the stolen Thousand-Year Frost-Star Crystal.
“Hold your spears steady!” Elder Xing barked to the fifty Rank 4 Early Astral Guards. “His Highness the Second Prince has warned us that the man coming tonight—Gu Changsheng of the South Ward—is a ruthless Rank 4 Mid body-refining tyrant who commands demonic beasts!
