"Tu Hu!"
An old man in a felt cap, his white beard braided into little plaits, stood amid the howling wind and snow in a woolen coat. Like a majestic white lion, he blocked the grand and solemn gates of Minhe Temple.
His usually slightly stooped figure was now ramrod straight, seeming all the taller for it. His ordinarily clouded eyes were frighteningly cold and bright. His broad lion's nose flared as his voice pressed out from his throat... like the roar of an old lion.
The howling wind in the distance seemed to answer that cry. It was as though, with a single utterance, he had awakened the grasslands.
The north wind wailed; frost and snow were knives.
As the chief elder of the Joint Council of Elders of the Great Mu Empire, Borjigin Ekelie had wielded authority for half his life. He had been a powerful figure during the reign of Mu's Fierce Emperor, Helian Wenghong, entering Mu Kingdom's political stage precisely during the era when the Joint Council of Elders was being suppressed by imperial power and royal authority stood alongside Divine Authority on the grasslands.
When the previous chief elder of the Joint Council of Elders died, he had accepted the charge in a time of crisis, propping up the collapsing heavens. Representing the interests of the various tribes, he had held fast to the Joint Council of Elders' powers and responsibilities.
Through his painstaking stewardship, the Joint Council of Elders—which Mu's Fierce Emperor had said "should be cleared away with the cow dung"—had never been swept out of the Supreme Royal Court. Though it no longer shared the splendor of imperial authority, over the years it had not declined much either, always retaining a measure of power. Across the vast grasslands, it remained a symbol