Chang'an City in the year 1518 of the Sea Circle Calendar had never been so clamorous. Dawn had barely broken, yet Vermilion Bird Street was already packed with a seething, deafening crowd. The capital of this newborn kingdom was welcoming its first grand occasion since its founding: the Imperial Examination and Military Examination held together. People from the Four Blues and every far-flung region streamed in like rivers flowing into the sea, packing the broad Imperial Way so tightly that nothing could pass. The air smelled of sweat and dust, charged with an almost boiling excitement.
Scholars carrying heavy book trunks on their shoulders, some solemn and others expectant, carefully threaded through the crowd in blue robes and cloth shoes, afraid of crushing their lapels. The warriors with sabers and swords at their waists were entirely different. They strode with heads held high, their eyes sharp as hawks, exuding either fierce or deep, steady presences. The occasional crisp clink of their scabbards rang out distinctly amid the uproar. More conspicuous still were those in outlandish attire: burly men draped in animal skins and tattooed with totems, enormous bone clubs on their backs; mysterious figures wrapped in broad cloaks, revealing only eyes that glimmered with strange light; even elusive figures whose feet never touched the ground, making those nearby instinctively step aside. These ability users were like drops of water cast into boiling oil, adding a measure of strangeness and unease to the grand gathering.
Inside Zichen Hall, however, the atmosphere was entirely different. Beneath the soaring dome lay solemn grandeur. Upon the Nine-Dragon Golden Throne, the young emperor Chen Yu sat as still and unfathomable as an abyss. Dressed in a black dragon robe, he swept his calm gaze over the assembled ministers below the steps. Beneath that calm seemed