The Hall of Clan Decrees was the Tiger Clan's highest authority.
Unlike the Council of Elders, which merely handled the Tiger Clan's daily operations, personnel management, and other miscellaneous affairs, only the thirteen Clan Decrees truly wielded the Tiger Clan's supreme power. More precisely, over any clansman—apart from those ancient ancestors in secluded cultivation whose seniority surpassed even the Clan Decrees—they held the power of life and death, honor and disgrace.
The ancient, solemn Hall of Clan Decrees was encircled by three towering, majestic peaks. Between the three mountains, each nearly ten thousand meters high, stood a circular stone platform rising several thousand meters into the air. At the center of that platform, over ten thousand meters in diameter, crouched a grand hall cast wholly from gray-black metal.
The square hall was entirely gray-black. Though it had weathered countless years of wind and rain, its surface still gleamed brightly. It stood no more than twenty meters tall, yet stretched over a thousand meters in both length and width. Covered from end to end in ancient totemic carvings, it seemed especially oppressive and stifling.
Nearly a thousand burly men, even more powerfully built than barbarians, stood in a straight line outside the hall without moving. Their huge heads were shaved smooth, heavy armor draped their bodies, and great sabers and battle-axes rested on their backs. With eyes like bronze bells wide open, they stood motionless. Their auras were blazing and violent; every breath they took was like a dragon exhaling. Less than a thousand men breathing together had actually stirred up a dull gale across the plaza before the hall.
Just as Lin Qi and the others stepped onto the plaza before the Hall of Clan Decrees, those burly men neatly expelled a breath through their nostrils in perfect unison. Lin