Its main hall was a structure of controlled grandeur, built from mountain stone quarried from the peak itself, its pillars carved with generations of sect history, its ceiling painted with scenes from cultivation mythology in pigments that had been mixed with spiritual powder so that they shifted faintly in the presence of strong cultivation auras. The sect master's throne — a deliberately understated seat of pale granite — sat at the hall's center on a raised dais, facing the entrance across a floor of polished black stone.
Outer disciples were not permitted within the inner pavilion gate.
This rule had been unbroken for four hundred years.
Everyone knew something was happening.
