Chapter 13: Inner Sect Shock – The Elders Panic (Volume 1 – Chapter 13 of 44)
Word count: 1,967
Azure Sky Inner Sect – Celestial Harmony Peak
Day 92 – 3 hours after the obelisk incident
The Inner Sect is in chaos.
Floating jade pavilions tremble. Protective formations flicker like dying lights. Ten thousand inner disciples (supposedly the elite of the elite) stand frozen in courtyards, staring at the three new names that just burned themselves onto the highest floor of the Celestial Ranking Stele:
Liàn Xing – Unknown Aptitude – Direct Promotion
Lan Shuyin – Supreme Yin-Frost Body – Direct Promotion
Zhao Shentian – Perfect Sword Dao Body – Direct Promotion
No one has ever been directly promoted to inner disciple without passing the outer sect trials.
No one has ever made the stele explode with starlight instead of normal qi.
And no one (absolutely no one) has ever carried a one-trillion-credit bounty into the sect and been allowed to walk free.
The Sect Leader's palace is a storm of panicked voices.
Twenty-three Core Elders and seven Nascent Soul Ancestors crowd the grand hall, shouting over each other.
"He is the Void-Nine anomaly! We must detain him immediately!"
"That spear shaft drank three half-step Soul Transformation attacks like water! We cannot detain him!"
"He walked in with the Moonlit Ice heiress and Heavenly Sword's golden child! This is an act of war!"
"War? The gutters are already calling him a god! If we touch him, the lower rings will burn!"
The Sect Leader (an old man with a beard of living cloud and eyes like dying stars) slams his staff into the jade floor.
Silence falls.
He speaks with the weight of eight thousand years.
"We invited this storm when we put the first bounty on a six-year-old orphan because a scanner flagged something forbidden in his spine."
He looks at each elder in turn.
"Now the storm has come home.
And it brought friends."
A side door opens.
Matriarch Lán Xuě Huā of Moonlit Ice Palace walks in uninvited, white robes still frost-burned from the radiation belt. One sleeve is missing. Her aura is locked down, but the air temperature drops twenty degrees anyway.
Every elder bows instinctively.
She ignores them.
Walks straight to the Sect Leader.
Places a single ice-crystal message jade on the table.
"My granddaughter sent this," she says, voice soft as falling snow and sharp as absolute zero.
The jade activates.
Lan Shuyin's voice fills the hall, calm and beautiful and utterly without fear.
"Grandmother.
The boy you tried to harvest for eighteen years just walked into Azure Sky and registered legally.
He did it to give you a message:
He is not your enemy.
But if you raise a hand against him again, he will burn every palace that ever looked down on the gutters.
Choose wisely.
I have."
The message ends.
The jade shatters into frost that refuses to melt.
Matriarch Lán looks at the Sect Leader.
"I am here as an observer. Moonlit Ice will not interfere… for now."
She sits.
No one dares tell her to leave.
A second door explodes inward.
Sword Saint Tiān Jiàn Wú Xié of Heavenly Sword Court strides in, laughing like a madman, golden sword intent carving the air into ribbons.
"Finally!" he roars. "My grand-nephew found worthy rivals! The sect will celebrate!"
He tosses a golden message jade onto the table.
Zhao Shentian's voice, lazy and amused:
"Old men.
Your golden child is now inner disciple of Azure Sky.
He did it to piss you off.
If you try to drag him home, he'll cut your beards off and mail them to the gutters.
Love,
Your favourite traitor."
The jade explodes into golden fireworks.
The Sword Saint laughs harder.
The Sect Leader pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Does anyone else want to declare war today?"
Silence.
He exhales.
"Then we do nothing.
We watch.
We wait.
And we pray the boy is merciful."
He looks at the ceiling where the Celestial Ranking Stele is still glowing with three impossible names.
Because for the first time in eight thousand years, Azure Sky Pavilion is no longer in control of its own future.
A boy from Ring 8 is.
And he just walked in the front door with a spear that hungers for heaven.
Meanwhile – Inner Disciple Dormitory, Cloud-Water Courtyard
Liàn Xing stands in the doorway of his new residence (a floating jade pavilion the size of a small palace, complete with private training ground and spirit spring).
He looks at the luxury and feels nothing.
Lan Shuyin drops her pack on a jade table.
"They gave us the best courtyard," she says, voice soft. "They're terrified."
Zhao kicks the door shut behind them.
"Terrified is good. Terrified keeps them honest."
Zhenxing materialises on the table, tiny again, eating stolen spirit peaches.
"Current sect panic level: ancestors hiding in closed-door cultivation. Outer disciples forming fan clubs. Inner disciples placing bets on who dies first if they try to test you."
Liàn Xing walks to the balcony.
Looks out over the floating peaks of Azure Sky.
Feels the spear shaft on his back hum, eager.
"Three months," he says quietly.
"Three months until the inner sect tournament.
Then we remind them why they should have left the gutters alone."
Lan Shuyin joins him, hand resting on his arm.
Zhao leans against the doorframe, grinning.
Zhenxing raises a peach in toast.
"To the monsters who came home."
The spear hums in agreement.
In the distance, the Celestial Ranking Stele flares once (bright silver).
Every elder in the sect feels it in their dao-heart.
The countdown has begun.
And Azure Sky Pavilion just invited its own reckoning to live in the best room.