From the center of the black glass arena, a circular section of flat stone slabs six paces wide dropped three inches into the floor with a smooth, high-pressure hiss.
A low, ringing chime—sweet, pure, and shaking with ten thousand years of undisturbed ringing perfection—echoed through the soaring force-glass dome. The thirty-six green jade pillars around the outer edge flared with blazing bright star-gold light, their circuit channels pulsing in rapid, rhythmic exact timing as power from the mountain’s fiery root was routed to the summit platform.
With a deep, air-powered sigh, a tube-shaped stone stand forged of solid sky green jade slowly rose from the floor sky-slit.
Resting atop that stone stand, nestled within a velvet cushion of woven star-silver silk, was the legendary Grand Ancestor’s Core Box.
It was an eight-sided chest, two feet wide and eighteen inches deep, crafted from alternating plates of semi-clear mutton-fat white jade and polished star-gold alloy. The eight corners of the chest were bound with star-iron brackets etched with tiny Precursor circuit diagrams that flowed like rivers of condensed starlight.
No mortal hand had touched this chest in eight hundred years.
In the sacred scriptures of the Azure Cloud Sect, the Core Box was revered as the ultimate holy grail of training. The ancient reliquary containing the old family core of the Founding Patriarch, said to grant immortal ascension, limitless spiritual understanding, and total dominion over the leylines of the southern continent.
