The smell of bitter wolfsbane and charred bone-powder filled the high council chamber of the Azure Cloud Sect.
Lin Ke leaned heavily against the edge of the circular sandstone table. His torso was bound so tightly in bamboo splints that every spreading of his lungs felt like an iron band snapping shut against his bruised ribs.
Beside his left hand lay sixty thousand jade watching slips, stacked in towering, precarious columns.
For seventy-two sleepless hours, Lin Ke had sequestered himself in the archive vault, funneling tracking data streams from every surviving sect bright light, void array, and astral telescope across the Middle Heavens into his Sea of Mind.
The resulting numbers were carved into a flat slate of grey flaky rock before him.
Around the table sat seventy-two leaders of the mortal and immortal worlds. Venerable sect masters with thousand-year-old white beards, sword saints whose gazes could split iron, clan matriarchs in flowing brocade. Elder Wu DeZheng, who was nervously clutching a bundle of freshly stamped Form 32-Omega indemnities.
“Senior Lin,” Patriarch Song began, his voice wavering with forced optimism. “The Eastern Sun is in motion once more. The Crimson Roc Clan has ceased their mining. Surely the wrath of Heaven has begun to subside?”
