What Was Authority?

Dragon Palace

Moisture gathered in the clouds. Black clouds came howling together, and the wind did not let up. The clouds coalesced and began to whirl above the high platform, leaving the sky almost entirely black, as though the sun had vanished.

"It's almost as if the heavens are tipping over."

Su Ziji stood on the high platform. These were no ordinary clouds or moisture, but black clouds formed from the rain the Dragon Lord had petitioned Heaven to grant!

"By ordinary reckoning, that single cloud must weigh a hundred million tons."

"It isn't that the formation and Dragon Palace can bear such weight. Authority has leveraged Heaven's Will, leaving them to bear only a ten-thousandth, perhaps even a hundred-thousandth, of it. But even a hundred-thousandth is more than the Dragon Lord can bear alone. The formation and Dragon Palace must share the burden."

"Presiding over a rainfall myself would be worth ten years of arduous cultivation."

As Su Ziji pondered this, Green Hill Lord raised her head. She looked past the dark clouds to the sky above Dragon Palace, where layer upon layer of Cloud Aura hung like a canopy, descending onto the formation before suddenly spreading outward in rippling rings.

At the center of the vortex stood the Dragon Lord herself. A straight pillar rose from her to the heavens, grand and upright, bright and resplendent. It spread across the sky, stirring Heaven's Will ever so slightly and setting wind and cloud in motion.

And that was not all. As the ruler of Green Hill, Green Hill Lord possessed senses that ranked among the keenest of the Great Demons. She could feel strange phenomena not only within Dragon Palace but also outside it, high in the nine heavens, where wind and clouds shifted and the very sky changed