Jiang Chen stepped onto the central platform with an unhurried pace. The surrounding pavilions fell into a brief hush as hundreds of gazes gathered upon him, each measuring and weighing him.
He withdrew a suit of heavy armor that seemed to be forged from the essence of the earth. The breastplate was formed from overlapping plates of deep ochre iron and bronze scales, each layer interlocked with precision like the strata of ancient mountains. Mystical runes resembling the jagged veins of a mountain range flowed across the armor in dense, continuous patterns.
