CHAPTER 34 — The Law of the Fallen
The air in the hall didn't just grow cold; it became thin, as if the oxygen itself were being rationed by the object on the stage.
Lirien's hands did not touch the container. She stood a full step back, her expression stripped of its professional warmth. She looked like a priestess standing before a sleeping god.
"The Tenth Item," she began, her voice devoid of its earlier melody. "The Ascension Edict: A Fragment of the Ninth Covenant."
The silence that followed was heavy, physical.
"This is not a weapon," Lirien continued, her eyes scanning the highest tiers where the Arbiter-level presences sat like stone statues. "It is a Law Imprint. A remnant of a Sovereign who once stood at the threshold of the Great Boundary. It contains the authority to bypass the Realm Lock."
A ripple of movement—not sound—passed through the hall. In the upper boxes, seats creaked as figures leaned forward.
"The Edict allows a Peak Arbiter to force open a false Ascension Gate," Lirien said, her voice clinical and cold. "It does not guarantee success. It offers a gamble against Heaven. The Tribunal has verified its authenticity. The Tribunal has also declared: the consequences of its use rest solely upon the holder. No appeals will be heard."
She looked at the crowd.
"Starting bid: Fifty thousand mid-grade spirit stones."
The number was a death sentence for smaller sects. It was an entry fee for the gods.
"Sixty thousand," a voice rasped from a shadowed booth. The pressure from that booth was like a mountain—an Arbiter who had been stagnating for a century.
"Seventy-five thousand," another voice cut in, sharp and imperial. A Major Sect representative. They didn't want the Edict to use it; they wanted it so no one else could.
Ren watched the screen, but his focus was internal.
The bidding war ignited like a powder keg. Arbiters who had remained silent for hours were now snarling numbers that could buy provinces. The air grew volatile—qi from different factions began to grind against each other in the rafters, sparks of raw intent flickering in the dim light.
Beside him, Kael's jaw was locked. The energy in the room was becoming volatile. Every person in this room was suddenly a predator, and the Edict was the only meat.
Ren looked down at the storage slip for his own "unclassified" purchase—the dark crystal. Compared to the Edict, his item was silent. The Edict screamed of power, of shortcuts, of forcing the world to acknowledge you.
Ren's intuition, sharpened by Aetherion's Second Path, felt a deep, instinctive revulsion toward the Edict. It felt like a trap—a gilded cage for those too impatient to build their own foundation.
Power taken prematurely, Ren thought, always demands payment.
"Ninety thousand," the first Arbiter growled, the air around his booth beginning to crackle with frost.
The battle for the Ninth Covenant had begun. And in the shadows of that monumental clash, Ren's small, dark secret felt infinitely more valuable.
The bidding didn't just climb; it mutated.
By the time the price hit one hundred and twenty thousand mid-grade spirit stones, the currency had stopped feeling like money. It felt like the weight of entire territories, the lifeblood of thousands of disciples, all being poured into a single, jagged fragment of law.
"This is madness," Kane whispered, his face pale. Even for a Peak Inner Realm cultivator, the sheer concentrated greed in the hall was suffocating.
"It's not madness," Serik corrected, his eyes fixed on the stage. "It's a countdown. They aren't bidding for an item. They're bidding for the right to be the next Sovereign."
Ren watched the Arbiters. From his seat, he could see the way their auras lashed out—uncontrolled, desperate. These were the masters of the world, yet here they were, begging for a fragment of a dead man's rules.
He felt the dark crystal in his own storage space pulse.
It was a low, rhythmic thrum, completely different from the jagged, violent pressure of the Edict. While the Edict was a scream, his item was a breath.
The Edict offered a False Gate.
Aetherion offered a True Path.
Then, Suddenly the world stopped.
It wasn't a sound. It was a displacement.
The roof of the Auction Hall didn't open, yet suddenly, the sky felt closer. A vague, colorless pressure descended, settling over every shoulder in the room. It wasn't the weight of a mountain; it was the weight of an owner.
The snarling Arbiters went silent. The qi sparks vanished.
In the highest, most central balcony, a figure appeared. He didn't sit; he simply existed there, draped in robes of slate-grey that seemed to absorb the light.
The Sovereign Tribunal Master.
He did not bid. He did not speak. He simply looked down at the hall. His presence was a reminder: You are guests in my house. You may fight for the scrap I have thrown on the floor, but you will do so quietly.
Under that suffocating gaze, the bidding resumed, but the voices were now hushed, terrified, and desperate.
The battle for the Ninth Covenant reached its grim conclusion under the watchful, bored eyes of the Sovereign.
"One hundred thousand mid-grade stones," a voice announced, trembling with the weight of the sum.
"And twenty high-grade spirit stones," a new voice countered.
The hall turned. The speaker was an elder from the Obsidian Vale, a Grand Sect from the southern reaches. High-grade stones were not just currency; they were condensed essence, rare enough that even kings hoarded them.
Lirien looked up at the Sovereign's balcony. No movement. No objection.
"Sold," she whispered. "To the Obsidian Vale."
The elder didn't look triumphant. He looked hunted. He took the sealed container and vanished into a swarm of his own sect's elite guards, their movements frantic and tight.
Kael stood up abruptly, his face pale in the blue formation-light. "We're leaving. Now."
"The auction formally ends with the closing remarks," Serik noted, though he was already checking the seals on his formation kit.
"The auction ended the moment that Edict was sold," Kael said, his voice a low hiss. "Look at the exits."
Ren followed Kael's gaze. The Arbiters who had lost weren't watching the stage. They were watching the Obsidian Vale's departure. Their eyes were narrowed, their hands resting on hilts.
"The Tribunal Master only guarantees peace within the city walls," Kael whispered as they moved toward the secondary transport hub. "The moment the Obsidian Vale crosses the Frostmere boundary, those Arbiters will fall on them like starving wolves. And they won't care who they trample in the crossfire."
They moved through the corridors, bypassing the main celebratory halls. Ren felt the dark crystal—his own "insignificant" prize—pulsing against his consciousness.
Compared to the Edict, his item was a ghost. No one was looking for it. No one would die for it today.
"We aren't taking the main road," Kael commanded as they reached their flying beast. "We head east, through the Jagged Flats. It's longer, but it's away from the Obsidian Vale's flight path."
As their beast took to the sky, Ren looked back at Frostmere City. From this height, it looked beautiful and still, but he could see the streaks of light—cultivators leaving in every direction, like sparks flying from a forge.
The Edict was a shortcut to heaven, but for many in that city, it was about to become a direct path to the grave.
Ren gripped the saddle, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
He didn't want a gate. He wanted the path. And as the cold wind of the Jagged Flats bit into his face, he knew the real test of his Inner Realm foundation was about to begin.
He touched the storage ring where his dark crystal lay.
The world was fighting for the Edict—a law that forced a gate.
But Ren was walking away with something the world didn't even have a name for.
And for the first time, he realized that in a world of shortcuts, the longest path was the only one that didn't end in a cliff.
Chapter End