After Altai led the Persian delegation out of the hall, the gentle smile on Qing Chen's face faded as well.
Outside the hall, the delegations from Loulan and the other nations had already waited a full four hours.
Several envoys had sent people to inquire repeatedly, but Xu Jiuling had turned them all away on the grounds that "the Governor-General is discussing affairs of state with Persia's second prince."
Qing Chen felt no apology whatsoever. He merely issued an offhand order. "Tell the Loulan delegation that I am tired today. Have them return tomorrow."
Standing outside the hall, Xu Jiuling wore a subtle expression.
Clearly, his Governor-General had just clinched a billion-spirit-stone deal with Persia and was now deliberately leaving Loulan hanging to make them even more uneasy.
Once everyone had withdrawn, Qing Chen swept his sleeve, and several layers of formation restrictions immediately sealed the entire hall.
With that done, he walked straight into the secluded cultivation chamber behind the main hall.
The chamber was not large. At its center stood only a high-grade fourth-tier cold jade cultivation bed, while nearly a thousand high-grade spirit stones and one supreme-grade spirit stone were embedded in the four walls to stabilize the spiritual energy.
Qing Chen sat cross-legged on the jade bed. The Mystic Womb Demon Lotus supported his nascent soul as his immense divine sense sank into the depths of his sea of qi.
A nine-story glazed pagoda slowly emerged.
Compared with before he undertook the trials, the surface of the Nine-Luminaries Glazed Vidyaraja Pagoda had visibly changed.
The glazed tower, which had originally shone with only five halos, now bore two additional layers of dense Buddha light. Seven wheels of light in different colors revolved slowly around the pagoda.
The barriers between them had clearly thinned considerably.
This was