May, the summer solstice.
Thunderstorms came fast and fierce, bringing abundant rain. With the approach of summer, the summer floods of Yuyang's Pearl River also came thundering in.
On the fifth day of May, fierce winds raged, rain poured in torrents, and surging waters raised towering waves.
White Cloud Mountain, on the eastern bank of the North River.
This famed Daoist mountain in Yuyang had changed hands several times amid the fighting. Its Daoist temples had been built and destroyed, destroyed and rebuilt. Across the rocks and ruined walls lay splashes of blood from Demon Fiends, evil jiao, and Daoist heroes, vividly red and striking, like clumps of azaleas blooming amid the ruins. Even rain this heavy could not wash them away.
At the mountain's western foot, a sprawling new temple complex had risen on a relatively intact stretch of level ground. It had been built after the Daoist Sect wrested White Cloud Mountain back from the Demon Cult last winter, and was now one of the frontline command centers where the Haoran Alliance resisted the Southern School's eastward advance.
At the center of the temple complex stood a thirty-three-story tower. Inside, people streamed to and fro, rushing about and calling out amid a deafening clamor. Every face was grave; everyone seemed busy and tense.
On the azure-dragon flying eaves of the twenty-first floor, a Daoist sat cross-legged in the rain. A transparent, spherical membrane of light shone around him, impervious to rain and wind. Like the phoenix-riding immortal on a roof ridge, he remained as still as a mountain.
He wore robes white as snow, with a tasseled longsword slung diagonally across his back and a snow-white horsetail whisk laid across his knees.
Members of the Righteous Path in Yuyang would have been familiar with this attire. He was