His dark hair lay loose over bare, carved shoulders. The impossible architecture of his torso caught the hall's light — each abdominal muscle casting its own small shadow, the V of his lower body disappearing below the chair edge, his thick cock resting against the polished stone of the seat with the same serene, gravity-anchored frankness it had maintained all morning.
The remaining female elders stood in a semicircle before him.
They were looking at various points in the middle distance with the universal discipline of women who were absolutely not going to let their cultivation-enhanced perception embarrass them.
The sect master Yaolan stood at the center. Her hands were clasped in front of her. Her silver hair lay perfectly still. Her face had its authority back, assembled over the course of the half-hour flight back from the border territory with the kind of effort that did not show.
"The sect has declined," Tianlong said.
It was not a question.
