“Saintess! Stop! For the love of our ancestors, do not open that jade box!”
Second Elder Lin Shan threw himself across the white jade steps of the signing altar, his blood-stained hands catching the hem of Saintess Lin Qing’s ice-blue battle robe. His white beard was matted with red dust where Chu Tian’s guards had dragged him across the stones, and fresh blood dripped from a deep gash above his left eyebrow.
Ten thousand cultivators packed into the central plaza of Sky-Border Pass watched the old man weep. Under the thick pink haze of Chu Tian’s [99% Simp-Brainwash Halo], not a single spectator stepped forward to help him. Instead, the brainwashed crowd murmured in annoyance that the bleeding old elder was spoiling the “romantic atmosphere.”
“Let go of my hem, Second Uncle,” Saintess Lin Qing said.
Her voice was flat, dreamy, and hollow. Behind her long eyelashes, her pupils glowed with a sticky rose-pink light. She held the two-foot jade cylinder containing the Frost-Moon Clan Ancestral Spirit Vein Deed high against her chest so her uncle’s bloody fingers wouldn’t smudge the silver ribbons.
“Lin Qing! Listen to yourself!” Second Elder Lin Shan beat his bleeding forehead against the cold stone step at her boots.
