Bad news traveled fast. Word that a boy with a broom had thrown three hundred cavalry down a ravine reached the Sect Master’s hall before the dust settled.
By noon, the outer sect was in a panic.
The Bai Clan had controlled mines, silk workshops, and grain barges across four provinces for three hundred years. Now Patriarch Bai Tian sat barricaded in his shrine, staring at a piece of charred sword handle and muttering about cheap metal.
An hour later, three Disciplinary Hall guards climbed Sunset Peak. They wore black robes with silver thunderbolts on their collars and carried an iron scroll wrapped in red silk.
They stopped twenty paces from the copper wire. One look at the Golden Sun-Crows on the roof was enough. They threw the scroll into the dirt, shouted the summons, and ran.
Li Xiaoyao brought it to the porch with shaking hands.
“M-Master! Chief Elder Zhao has charged you with unlawful excavation, keeping unregistered divine beasts, and disturbing public order!”
He dropped to his knees and grabbed Austin’s trousers.
“You can’t go! Elder Zhao hasn’t smiled in two hundred years. He pins people’s dantians with soul-sealing spikes and throws them into the Frozen Pit!”
Austin broke the wax seal and unrolled the scroll. A quest screen appeared.
Austin’s interest rose at once.
“Five refined screws? Real machine-cut threads?”
He looked at the old three-legged milking stool beside the cabin wall. It was a crime against carpentry. One joint was split, the brace was held together with dried pitch, and the seat leaned eight degrees to one side. Sitting on it hurt his back.
Austin put down his tea and tucked the stool under his arm.
“All right. Let’s go talk to the zoning board.”
Li Xiaoyao scrambled after him. “Master, why are you taking a broken stool to a trial?”
“Government offices always have a maintenance shop. If I have to sit through a long hearing, I’m borrowing a vise and fixing this leg.”
The boy stared at the stool, then laughed despite his fear. “You really just want to fix the leg.”
“Of course. And watch the loose shale. You’ll break your neck before we reach the trees.”
Austin moved to the rough side of the path and offered Xiaoyao his hand over a washed-out step. The boy took it. Whatever the Disciplinary Hall thought, he knew why he was following this man.
***
The Disciplinary Hall stood in a dark gorge below the central peaks. Its black soul-iron walls had no windows, only narrow vents near the roof. The air smelled of wet stone and old metal.
Sixty guards lined the hall in two ranks. They wore black plate armor and held six-foot staves wrapped in copper wire. Purple lightning crawled over the runes.
Chief Elder Zhao Shen sat on a raised black dais. His silver beard reached his belt, and his gray eyes were cold as slate. In a hundred and twenty years as the sect’s chief judge, no one had dared interrupt him.
THWACK.
He struck the block with his iron gavel.
“Bring in the accused outer disciple, Chu Yuan!”
The nine-ton doors opened.
Sixty guards released their Foundation Establishment auras. The combined pressure rolled toward the entrance, meant to force any prisoner to the floor.
Austin strolled in wearing straw sandals and faded hemp. The crooked milking stool rested under one arm.
He looked up at the smoking torches.
“Terrible lighting. You couldn’t find dry rot in here with a searchlight. This place is a safety violation.”
He stopped five paces from the dais, directly beneath the court’s crushing formation. He did not kneel or bow. Instead, he set down the stool, wiped the seat, and sat with one ankle crossed over the other knee.
The guards stared.
He brought his own chair?
Elder Zhao’s knuckles whitened around his gavel.
“CHU YUAN! You are charged with destroying the western road, keeping unregistered divine birds, attacking three hundred Bai Clan retainers, and trading Nine-Yang Sun-Gold like common gravel! What do you say?”
The guards struck the floor with their staves.
“ANSWER THE COURT!”
Another wave of spiritual pressure rushed at Austin.
He did not move.
The star in his dantian simply absorbed the incoming energy. A moment later, a warm breeze drifted through the cold hall. It smelled faintly of roasted radishes.
Austin took a thin cedar wedge and a bent nail from his sleeve. He leaned over, fitted the wedge into the stool’s loose joint, and tapped it into place.
Tink. Tink. Tink.
The small sounds echoed through the silent hall.
He looked up at Elder Zhao.
“Can we skip the rest of the speech, chief? I came because the quest offered five screws. If you have a rasp and a small hammer in that desk, hand them over. This leg is digging into my hip, and my tea’s getting cold.”
Nobody spoke.
Several guards slowly lowered their staves.
Elder Zhao looked at the stool, then into Austin’s eyes. His spiritual sense brushed against the white-hot star in the young man’s dantian. Cold sweat soaked his collar.
He is no outer disciple. He is an Ancient Sovereign in mortal skin.
Zhao’s gaze returned to the crooked furniture.
The tilted seat. The split brace. He isn’t talking about a stool. He’s telling me my court is out of line with heaven. If I judge him with crooked laws, he’ll burn this valley to glass.
The gavel slipped from Zhao’s hand.
He rose, gathered his black robes, and walked down from the dais one careful step at a time. Then he knelt before Austin and pressed his forehead to the floor.
“This foolish junior begs Senior’s pardon. Our measures are crooked. Your lesson has shown me the error of my ways.”
He pulled a rosewood box from his storage ring and opened it. Inside lay five six-inch screws made of ancient spirit-gold.
“These are the Nine-Dragon Heaven-Screws from the inner vault. May they help Senior set his foundation straight.”
Austin picked one up and examined the threads.
“Machine-cut threads. Phillips head, too. Not bad for government work.”
He put the box in his sleeve, picked up his stool, and headed for the doors.
“Thanks, Zhao. And fix the draft over your entrance. You’re losing twenty percent of your heat through that gap.”