A little farther beyond the main building stood the Clan Assembly Hall.
Every meeting of the Mu Clan Assembly was a solemn affair. All its members had to observe every rule of etiquette and ceremony.
Even clan members who did not qualify to attend had to wait outside the doors if they had no other business.
Once the assembly began, its members were completely cut off. They could not contact the outside world, and no one else was allowed to interfere or enter.
The monthly assembly began at one in the afternoon and did not end until five.
Only when the doors opened would those whose lives were tied to the clan surge forward to ask their representatives whether they had secured more resources, obtained positions they had sought for years, or been punished for mistakes made the previous month...
There was a reason the Mu Clan was called the nation's Ice Element Dynasty. Its assemblies resembled imperial morning court: members bathed and changed, prepared what they would say, and fought carefully for their interests.
The meeting hall was spacious, bright, and magnificent. Ice-blue patterns marked its walls, making the whole place look like a dazzling world of ice crystals!
After the assembly ended and everyone had finished talking and left the building, a few people remained seated in the hall.
They were elders of exceptional standing in the Mu Clan. Seated along both sides of the hall, they watched the old man at its head.
His hair and beard were white, though his face did not look particularly old. He wore a white Chinese tunic suit embroidered with a lifelike Ice Dragon.
He sat in a chair made of golden silk nanmu. A coiling, five-clawed Ice Dragon was carved into its back, so lifelike it seemed ready to move.