While Flame King Feng Xiao, Elder Yao Cang, Long Chen, Qin Wu, and Corbin fought tooth and nail through the toxic mud of the Thousand-Venom Dragon Swamp to rebuild their strength, the atmosphere inside the warm, glowing subterranean cavern five hundred feet beneath Azure Fall City was one of calm, sovereign mastery.
Two days after placing the Sixth-Tier Soul-Puppet Seal onto Marquis General Bao at Iron-Blood Pass—and ordering the puppet general to station his two hundred thousand Imperial Vanguard troops in a defensive screen across the central mountain passes under the pretext of clearing winter rockslides—Alaric had received an encrypted Phone Artifact message from Lady Bai Suyin and Saintess Ceanna Paxton's priestesses inside the Imperial Capital.
