The thirty-foot golden double doors of Floor Ninety-Nine swung open with a slow, majestic groan of star-iron balance weights.
Beyond the threshold lay the ultimate pinnacle of the Hundred-Floor Demon Trial Pagoda. The Summit Arena of Floor One Hundred.
It was a huge circular tiered arena, one hundred paces in width, floored with mirror-polished black glass that reflected the dark heavens above. The ceiling was not a stone roof. It was a soaring dome of see-through Precursor force-glass through which the stars of the southern hemisphere shone with cold, crystal-clear bright glare. Surrounding the outer edge were thirty-six fluted pillars of white green jade, each wrapped in spiraling channels of glowing star-gold that pulsed with deep, oceanic currents of pure spiritual power.
In the exact center of the black glass tiered arena lay a resting giant statue.
It was the legendary Ashen Chimera. The Grade-Four man-made war iron-puppet built by the Primordial Precursors to guard the master compute core of the southern continent.
The beast was forty feet in length from its armored snout to the barbed whip of its tail. Its massive chassis was forged of blackened glowing-bronze and layered black glass scales. It was built with the terrifying musculature of a royal mountain tiger, the curved black glass horns of a deep-sea ram. A segmented tail that ended in the poisonous iron head of a star-steel serpent.
