Ten thousand red-and-gold palace lanterns illuminated the vast white marble expanse of the Grand Imperial Plaza as the evening drums of the Royal Birthday & Crown-Prince Selection Banquet echoed across Sky-Crown City.
Never in the three-hundred-year history of the Great Qian Kingdom had a royal banquet drawn such an extraordinary gathering.
Inside the open-air marble terraces sat ten thousand civil ministers, frontier generals, noble clan heads, and Royal Academy scholars. For the first time since the founding of the dynasty, five thousand elected citizen representatives from the South, West, East, and North Wards sat at prime front-row tables. Seventy-two-year-old Old Marshal Tie , at Rank 4 Peak, and General Tie-Shan , at Rank 4 Mid, had escorted those citizen delegates through the palace gates in person.
Outside the carved marble balustrades of the plaza, another three million citizens lined the lantern-lit avenues, canal bridges, and tiled rooftops. Almost every family held a warm paper bag of Grandpa Yao’s buttered caramel popcorn or a paper cup of Auntie Qin’s spiced plum tea.
At the front of the South Ward citizen section, dockworker Big-Hammer Tie lifted his ten-year-old son onto his broad shoulders and pointed toward the central jade stage.
“Keep your eyes peeled, little fellow,” Big-Hammer Tie grinned, popping a crunchy caramel kernel into his mouth. “Boss Gu promised us at the Peace Clinic this morning that tonight’s banquet comes with a free open-air picture show across the sky!”
