At the bottom of the mountain road, Austin set up his office beneath a faded green canvas umbrella.
His desk was a gray steel card table with a cedar shingle under one short leg. A sheet of cardboard hung from the rough wooden shelter behind him.
SUNSET PEAK CONSTRUCTION SERVICES
GENERAL CONTRACTOR INTERVIEWS
POSITION: TRENCHING AND PIPE-BEDDING LABORER
REQUIREMENTS: 0.1 MM TOLERANCE / FULL SAFETY COMPLIANCE / NO HORSEPLAY
Austin sat in a folding chair with his Sovereign Hard Hat tipped against the morning sun. He squared his clipboards with a framing square, then lined up three sharpened grease pencils beside his thermos.
Tie Kuang sat to his left with a crate of orange safety vests. Jiang Taixu stood to his right, guarding stacks of yellow hard hats and clear safety glasses.
A single line of fifty thousand cultivators wound across three ridges and vanished into the valley mist.
The road smelled of dust, horse sweat, and wet wool. Masters who had meditated for centuries stood beside warlords who had burned provinces. Royal alchemists clutched application forms in hands that had once held priceless pills.
Nobody coughed. Nobody complained.
At the front waited Grand Elder Xuan Xiao of the Grand Void Sect and Patriarch Iron Blood of the Demonic Blood River Sect.
The two old men lifted heavy chests onto Austin’s table. The latches sprang open, spilling colored light over the forms. Inside were thousand-year blood ginseng, flawless spirit stones, ancient manuals, and spatial rings carved from dragon bone.
“Supreme Grandmaster!” Xuan Xiao bowed until his beard swept the gravel. “The Grand Void Sect offers three thousand spirit stones and our ancestral dragon scrolls! Grant us the honor of becoming your first students!”
“Ten thousand blood crystals from the Blood River Sect!” Iron Blood said. “And forty thousand disciples ready to serve as your vanguard! Command us to wash the world in blood!”
Austin picked up his five-foot Stellar-Steel pipe wrench. He used its hooked jaw to push the first chest off the table.
CRASH.
Then he pushed off the second.
CRASH.
Priceless treasures rolled into the ditch.
“Pick that up,” Austin said. “Sunset Peak doesn’t accept gifts or kickbacks during open bidding. That’s basic procurement law.”
The patriarchs stared at their heirlooms in the weeds.
“Kickbacks?” Xuan Xiao whispered.
“You thought dried roots and old lizard bones would get you a contract?” Austin asked. “We’re not recruiting disciples. We’re hiring temporary trenching crews for a cooling system. If you want onto this mountain, show me you can work.”
He pointed his pencil at Xuan Xiao.
“Applicant One. Peak Golden Core. Any commercial trenching experience?”
Xuan Xiao swallowed. “For four hundred years, I have communed with the Nine Astral Stars. With one wave of my sleeve, I can summon the Ancient Void Winds and cut a walled city in half!”
“Void winds don’t cut grade. They make dust, scatter survey stakes, and ruin the bedding. That’s an OSHA dust violation.” Austin made a note on the form. “Here’s your field test.”
He nudged a plain steel spade toward the old man and pointed to an orange string line along the roadside.
“Dig fifty paces along that line. Four feet deep. Straight walls. No loose soil falling in. Two percent slope toward the drain. Wander more than a sixteenth of an inch off the line, and your application goes in the burn barrel.”
Xuan Xiao stared at the scratched blade and weathered ash handle.
To Austin, it was an eight-dollar shovel. Xuan Xiao turned it over, testing the balance with the same care he once gave a new sword.
“I accept the field test.”
He wrapped his pale hands around the handle and suppressed his destructive winds. Instead, he spread his spiritual senses through the soil. He felt each pebble, quartz grain, and pocket of hard clay.
Scritch-thump. Scritch-thump.
Every scoop came out clean. Sweat darkened his silk robes. Blue veins stood out at his temples as he checked the gap between the wall and the string.
Fifty paces. Four feet deep. Perfectly straight.
The crowd watched in silence.
“He actually checked the slope twice,” someone whispered.
Ten minutes later, Xuan Xiao dropped to his knees beside the trench and looked up at Austin like a worker waiting for his first paycheck.
Austin fetched his six-foot level and laid it across the cut. He crouched, checked the bubble, then measured the slope.
“Centered. Plumb walls. Two percent grade.” He stood and nodded. “Not bad for a man who spent four centuries sitting on a rock. You pass.”
He turned to Tie Kuang. “Vest him.”
Tie Kuang lowered an orange vest over Xuan Xiao’s robes and handed him safety glasses.
Xuan Xiao ran shaking fingers over the reflective stripes. Tears fell onto the mesh.
“The Vest of Dawn! The Goggles of True Sight! The Dao of Construction has chosen me!”
Iron Blood shoved forward, red Qi flaring around his shoulders.
“Test me! I can tear mountains apart!”
Austin looked at the patriarch’s long talons. Dark blood Qi dripped from their points.
“Applicant Two. What can you do about sub-base compaction?”
“I have torn apart ten thousand warriors with my Asura Claws! One blow can turn steel to dust!”
“Fine dust makes terrible sub-base. And that blood is an OSHA Class-B biohazard. Get it on my gravel, and I’ll fine your sect two thousand copper for cleanup.”
Austin pointed to a thirty-foot stretch of loose crushed stone beside the road.
“Compact that to ninety-five percent Standard Proctor density. Use your hands, your boots, I don’t care. If my penetrometer finds one soft spot, you’re out.”
Iron Blood dropped onto the pile. He drew a deep breath and pulled the sharp edge from his Blood Qi, changing its destructive surge into a fast, steady vibration.
BZZZZZZZZZT!
His palms blurred.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!
The road shook. Dust rose in gray clouds. Blood River disciples fell to their knees.
“The Patriarch has learned the Divine Vibrating Palm!” they cried. “He is crushing the bones of the earth!”
Eight minutes later, the loose stone had become a hard, level pad.
Austin walked across it, then pressed his soil penetrometer into the center. The needle settled.
“Ninety-six point two percent. Even bearing across the whole run. Good vibration control.”
He jerked his chin at Jiang Taixu. “Hard hat.”
Jiang set a yellow shell on Iron Blood’s head and tightened the ratchet until it clicked.
The terror of the western marches sank into the dust, one talon resting against the plastic brim. His shoulders shook.
“After five hundred years of slaughter,” he sobbed, “I’m finally on the crew.”
Austin tapped the table with his framing square and faced the remaining applicants.
“Listen up! Tie Kuang and Jiang will divide you by trade. Sword sects handle layout and grade cutting. Demonic sects handle compaction, shoring, and slabs. Earth sects move aggregate and spoil.”
He clicked his pencil.
“Next applicant! We have three thousand feet of trench to cut, and nobody leaves until the pipe is bedded!”