Book 3: Chapter 35: Where Patriarchs Should Not Be

The patriarchs filed out one by one.

Guo gathered his ledgers with the reverence of a man handling sacred texts, tucking them under his arm and bowing three times before clearing the doorway. Liang's beard-stroking continued uninterrupted as he shuffled past, already murmuring to himself about recruitment projections and the logistics of a three-hour endurance test that would hospitalise half his remaining students. Fen cracked one final knuckle at the threshold, a parting shot that echoed off the stone walls, and then vanished into the corridor. Sho's shovel-hands found the doorframe and gripped it for a moment as though he wanted to say something, thought better of it, and released the wood with a sigh that carried the weight of a man who had just been told his entire understanding of the world was insufficient.

Patriarch Duan had been the first out.

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