Lin Xiaosu and Qing Ying strode through the air and landed outside the Heaven-Subduing Pavilion.
The Heaven-Subduing Pavilion had already been profoundly awe-inspiring from a distance. Up close, it felt even more like standing before an immortal's divine palace.
Its buildings towered into the clouds, their grandeur shaking the earth and startling the heavens.
Perhaps this was the mark of its mission, forged through thousands of years of rise and fall, embodied in the words "Heaven-Subduing."
Just as Lin Xiaosu arrived, a party strode toward him. At their head was a white-haired elder who walked with the stride of a dragon and a tiger, looking like a white-haired general on an inspection tour. Yet when he drew near, he offered a scholar's salute. "Lei Tianlun, master of the Heaven-Subduing Pavilion, greets Lord Li!"
Lin Xiaosu hastily returned the salute of a subordinate official. "Lord Lei is a First Rank official. How could this humble official trouble you to welcome me in person?"
Lei Tianlun reached out, gripped his shoulder, and laughed heartily. "To be frank, Lord Li, on any other day, I really wouldn't have come out to welcome you myself. But today is different. Just now, outside the Heaven-Subduing Pavilion, you drove those three eminent monks out of Capital City and proclaimed our dynasty's might. Whatever else, I had to come welcome you in person!"
This was the dividend Lin Xiaosu earned from debating Buddhism outside the Heaven-Subduing Pavilion.
The three eminent monks had chosen to erect their Buddhist altar outside the pavilion partly to put pressure on it.
Although the Heaven-Subduing Pavilion fell far short of the million-strong Dragon Cavalry of the founding emperor's reign, its function remained the same.
Its duty was to suppress every force opposed to the dynasty.
Thus, it was regarded as the pillar