The ancestral peaks of the White Dragon Sect stood shrouded in perennial frost, their jagged spires piercing through thick blankets of crystalline cloud like the slumbering horns of primeval beasts.
For hundreds of years, these grand mountains had represented an insurmountable sanctuary of orthodoxy and sacred pride of the Ancient Heaven Star.
Vast spirit springs burbled beneath carved jade courtyards, ancient guardian formations hummed with quiet vigilance, and the legacy of ancient cultivators cast a long, protective shadow over the lands below.
Yet today, inside the grand hall of the main peak, the air was neither serene nor proud.
It was suffocating, stale, and steeped in an ominous gloom that seemed to seep straight out of the ancient stone walls.
At this moment, the Grand Elder, Zhao Ming, sat motionless upon the grand dais, perched atop a throne sculpted from whole-block spirit jade.
