Boiling animal fat and hot sulfur stung the damp air beneath the hull of the dry-docked grain barge.
Lu Chen sat cross-legged upon a dry stack of split cedar planks, hidden in the deep shadows beneath the barge’s flat keel.
Behind him, through the gaps in the timber wooden support posts, the noise of the Gu Ning wharf was slowly returning to life.
Shouts of frightened river court guards, the clatter of guard post spearmen forming battle lines on the stone docks. The hollow thump of patrol gongs echoed across the water.
None of them dared approach the floating raft where the headless carcass of the Patriarch lay pinned beneath six tons of soul-iron.
To the royal guards, that blood-soaked patch of river timber was a cursed execution ground.
To Lu Chen, it was merely an audit completed.
Now came the reconciliation of accounts.
