The self-running loudspeaker array of the Hundred-Floor Demon Trial Pagoda—a network of twelve huge bronze bells suspended beneath the summit roof edges—began to toll with earth-shaking, majestic deep ring.
DONG! DONG! DONG!
The chimes echoed down the flanks of the Demon Cloud Mountains, rolling across the alpine plateau and crashing into the fiery volcano bowl nine hundred feet below like waves of solid bronze.
Then, from the summit dome, a blended Precursor voice rang across the entire mountain range, amplified by the pagoda’s sound leylines until it drowned out the howling alpine wind:
TRIAL COMPLETE. SUMMIT REACHED. ALL HUNDRED TIERS RESOLVED. TRIAL PARTICIPANTS: SUBJECT NULL AND PHYSICAL ANCHOR. ELAPSED TIME: FOURTEEN MINUTES, TWENTY-TWO SECONDS. A NEW ALL-TIME BENCHMARK HAS BEEN RECORDED IN THE MASTER REGISTERS.
Fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds.
On the southern face of Floor One Hundred, the massive sixty-foot star-iron terrace gates unlocked with a thunderous high-pressure hiss. He swung outward into the thin, sunlit alpine air.
Lin Tao and Tie Shan stepped out onto the wide marble watching terrace.
