One thousand feet beneath the rear peak of Supreme Sword Mountain, the air inside the Underground Peach-Blossom Ancestral Hall smelled of damp moss, stale incense, and a strange, cloying sweetness like rotting peaches.
Led by white-bearded Senior Elder Jian Cang , at Rank 5 High. All one hundred Rank 5 Foundation Establishment Elders of the Four Great Sects walked slowly across the vast circular chamber toward the high stone altar where the ancestral spirit tablets were enshrined.
Unseen by the hundred old men, beneath the layer of gray dust covering the circular floor tiles, thousands of freshly carved. Wriggling crimson runes—drawn by Holy Son Chu Tian over the past three nights using stolen demonic blood-ink—formed the core of the forbidden [Blood-Peach Succubus Drain Formation].
Even the tall bronze oil lamps lining the damp stone walls had been secretly laced with Colorless Muscle-Slacking Lotus Sap. A treacherous alchemical sedative he had stolen from the Myriad Pill Sect’s forbidden cabinet to slow the elders’ reaction speed by half a breath once the iron gates dropped.
“Look at the dust on these stone steps,” seventy-two-year-old Protector Elder Tie Shan , at Rank 5 Mid, sighed softly. He walked beside Senior Elder Jian Cang, his weathered hand resting on the hilt of his heavy broadsword. “We haven’t opened this underground vault since the previous Sect Master passed away thirty years ago.
