The Tribunal Venerable’s secluded chamber lay deep beneath the great hall, sealed behind seven layers of ancient wards.

The walls were forged from meteoric iron, and every surface was engraved with the Celestials’ highest-order sigils.

At the center of the chamber stood a stone dais.

A complex ritual array had been carved into its surface. It was the Celestials’ oldest summoning art, capable of calling a phantom projection of a powerhouse from the Upper Realm into the Lower Realm.

The Tribunal Venerable had never used this summoning art before.

The price was simply too great.

A single summoning would consume a full hundred years of his cultivation.