Three days later, Chen Capital Prefecture of Great Xia opened its Imperial Examination.
Before dawn had fully broken, bells rang from the depths of the former Purple Dusk imperial palace, peal after peal passing through layers of palace walls, rolling over Vermilion Bird Avenue, sweeping across the city's soaring eaves and interlocking brackets, and reaching the ears of Great Xia's people.
Within and beyond Chen Capital Prefecture, the people stopped in their tracks.
Before the imperial city's white Jade Steps, ninety-nine Black-Gold Dragon Pillars rose from the ground. Red-Gold Blood Runes coiled around their shafts, and as the dragon patterns breathed in and out, the National Fortune of the land flowed through them. Between each pair of pillars hung a translucent curtain of light, with mountains and rivers faintly visible within, as though small worlds had been folded into each one.
The square before the hall had plainly measured less than a hundred zhang across, yet today, layers of formations folded over one another within it, countless spaces arrayed side by side, so vast that it seemed boundless.
Candidates from every direction gathered here. Some wore plain cloth robes and blue gowns, humble scholars of modest birth; others wore the brocade robes of great clans, tassels hanging from their jade belts. Cultivators also arrived on flying swords, their bearing elegant and unworldly.
There were even several beggars in ragged clothes, trembling as they approached to register beneath the scornful, mocking gazes of those around them.
"Enter." The Great Xia soldiers swept them with their divine senses, verified that all was in order, and waved them through.
Great Xia's Imperial Examination asked neither birth nor pedigree. Every subject of Great Xia could register.
Outside the Chancellor's Residence.
Xie Wenheng, the former Purple Dusk Chancellor, had risen exceptionally early that day. He