The young man sprinted wildly through the corridors, his feet pounding the stone steps with hurried, muffled thuds.
He ran past one courtyard after another, passed through archway after archway. The Sun-Moon Palace disciples he encountered along the way all turned to look at him, but no one stepped forward to stop him, because everyone recognized him.
Elder Kong's three-thousandth disciple—Guan Wen, an outstanding figure among the Sun-Moon Palace's True Disciples—was ordinarily calm and self-possessed, rarely losing control.
For him to look like this now, something earth-shaking must have happened.
He charged all the way to the grand hall at the very center of the Sun-Moon Palace.
The hall was built entirely from dark-gray boulders, its doors towering high.
Above the lintel was a relief of a sun and moon overlapping each other, reflecting the surrounding light crystals in a gentle golden-silver sheen.
This was the core of the Sun-Moon Palace, normally opened only for major ceremonies.
The young man abruptly stopped before the hall doors. He raised a hand and roughly wiped away the traces of bloody tears still on his face with his sleeve. Then he took a deep breath and strode into the hall.
He walked to the center of the hall and swiftly formed a hand seal before his chest.
As his seal was completed, the enormous Sun-Moon Radiance Jewel embedded in the domed ceiling suddenly lit up. Gentle radiance poured down from above, illuminating the entire hall as brightly as day.
Standing at the center of that light, he gathered every ounce of his True Essence.
"Sun-Moon Palace brothers and sisters, heed my command!" His voice, bolstered by True Essence, echoed through the air like a great bell, every word clear and weighty. "Our Sun-Moon Palace has reached the brink of life and death!"
Guan