The valley floor beneath Sunset Peak groaned under the grinding weight of an imperial iron army.
Five hundred armored battle-miners of the Iron Pavilion, encased in riveted plates of blackened boiler-iron and clutching pneumatic drill pikes, formed bristling phalanxes across the terraced pine slopes. The damp mountain air choked on the stench of sulfurous coal smoke, burnt mutton tallow, and scorched bearing grease. Fifty heavy supply wagons formed a fortified perimeter, their timber tongues linked with iron chains.
Behind the infantry ranks, twelve **Subterranean Siege Golems** stood like stone executioners.
Each golem was a twelve-foot automaton carved from dark mountain basalt, banded with forged cold-iron straps, and driven by heavy internal gear-trains and pulsing, blood-red spirit cores. Their massive fists—each the size of a beer keg—rested against the gravel, ready to batter stone ramparts into powder at a single mental impulse.
Dominating the line, towering over the pines like a crawling iron citadel, was the pride of the provincial mining cartel: the **Nine-Heavens Earth-Drill Colossus**.
A three-hundred-ton juggernaut of reinforced iron and brass plating. Bolted to its forward prow was a monstrous, six-story conical spiral drill head, bristling with thousands of rotating diamond teeth forged from Void-Breaking Adamantine.
Six two-headed mountain oxen, their iron-shod hooves carving foot-deep trenches into the ancient bedrock, strained against the draft chains. With every heavy breath of the beast team, the Colossus’s boiler stacks coughed thick plumes of greasy black soot that stained the afternoon clouds.
Standing on the Colossus’s forward observation deck, bathed in crimson Asura qi that rippled outward in suffocating waves, was Supreme Grand Elder Tie Kuang.
His eight-foot frame stood rigid, arms folded over his chest, his two-thousand-pound Mountain-Crushing Warhammer propped against the brass railing beside him.
High on the wooden palisades of the Clear Sky Sect outer gate, Sect Master Gu Qing and the six council elders watched the deployment with pale faces.
"Sect Master..." Elder Song whispered, his fingers trembling where they gripped his peach-wood sword. "Five hundred Late Foundation shock troops. Twelve Earth-Rank siege golems. And Tie Kuang himself... his Earth-Splitting Asura Body has reached the Ninth Revolution. Half a step from the Nascent Soul realm! If that Colossus rams its main bore into our foundation, it will chew Sunset Peak into gravel before sundown!"
Gu Qing took a slow, steady pull of mountain air.
Cold sweat beaded his forehead, yet his eyes held that strange, dazed serenity that had settled over him across the past week. A faint, almost pitying smile touched his lips.
"Do not fret, Elder Song," Gu Qing murmured, resting a reassuring hand on his colleague’s shoulder. "The Iron Pavilion believes they are laying siege to an unprotected wildcat gold mine. They think they're strong-arming a destitute sect of mountain monks. In reality..."
Gu Qing glanced up toward the modest timber tool shed perched upon the summit of Sunset Peak:
"...they have just driven their siege machine into the front yard of an Ancient Celestial Venerable. They brought diamond drill bits to a man who uses heavenly lightning to boil tea."
Up on the Colossus's bridge, Tie Kuang signaled his herald with a curt flick of his iron gauntlet.
Four bronze **Thunder-Roar Dharma Horns**—each twenty feet long, with sonic amplification arrays etched into their flared bells—were wheeled forward on iron carriages and aimed squarely at the summit.
Tie Kuang stepped to the primary speaking talisman, channeling his Peak Golden Core cultivation. His amplified voice rolled across the canyon like concussive artillery fire, rattling loose boulders from the cliff faces:
*"HEAR YE, HERETICS AND CULTIVATORS OF THE CLEAR SKY SECT!"*
*"BY MANDATE OF THE GREAT YAN MINISTRY OF WORKS AND THE CHARTER OF THE IRON PAVILION, ALL DEEP-EARTH VEINS, DRAGON MARROW DEPOSITS, AND SUBTERRANEAN SPIRITUAL ASSETS WITHIN THE CROWNING PEAKS ARE THE EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY OF THE IMPERIAL DOMAIN!"*
*"YOU HAVE TRESPASSED UPON CROWN MINERALS! YOU HAVE KIDNAPPED DIRECTOR TIE FENG AND THIRTY-ONE IMPERIAL MINERS! YOU HAVE SMELTED ILLICIT, HEAVEN-DEFYING CELESTIAL METALS WITHOUT PAYING TRIBUTE TO THE EMPEROR!"*
*"WE GRANT YOU ONE INCENSE STICK OF TIME!"*
*"SURRENDER THE SUBTERRANEAN VAULT! HAND OVER THE UNREGISTERED MASTER SMITH! SURRENDER ALL STAR-STEEL INGOTS! IF YOU RESIST, THE NINE-HEAVENS COLOSSUS WILL BORE SUNSET PEAK INTO A PILE OF RUBBLE, AND YOUR ENTIRE BLOODLINE WILL BE CRUSHED UNDER OUR TREADS!"*
The sonic blast crashed over the slopes. Pine needles rained down like green hail, and loose scree rattled down the gullies in minor avalanches.
***
Fifty meters below the surface, on Subterranean Floor 1.
Austin stood at his smooth maple drafting table under the violet work lamps. He held a brass slide rule in his left hand, checking the tooth spacing on a fresh bronze spur gear.
"Zero point one millimeter clearance," Austin muttered, making a neat pencil tick on his parchment sheet. "Proper backlash geometry. If the mesh is too tight, you get acoustic whine and thermal binding. Too loose, and shock loads chip the tooth tips..."
The vertical ventilation shaft began to shudder.
*BZZZZZZ... KRRRRR-BOOM!*
A series of distorted, ear-splitting sonic blasts tumbled down the vertical bucket elevator chase!
By the time the amplified voice traveled down fifty meters of solid rock, bounced off the metal elevator casing, and echoed into the workshop, it sounded like a blown-out fast-food drive-thru speaker at two in the morning:
*“...KZZZT... UNAUTHORIZED... TICKET... WORKS... NOISE COMPLAINT... CODE VIOLATION... SURRENDER FOR INSPECTION... PENALTY DEMOLITION... KRRR-CRACKLE...”*
Austin lowered his brass slide rule.
He set the precision tool down on the clean parchment. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, staring up at the rock ceiling in flat, weary disbelief.
"Are you kidding me right now?" Austin muttered.
Over by the blast furnace taphole, Pug—who was happily gnawing a polished chunk of basalt—cocked his six pointed ears and let out a soft, inquiring *whuff*.
Austin summoned his developer HUD, pulling up the environmental audio sensors:
Austin’s left eyelid began to twitch. The classic, unmistakable contractor tic.
"A municipal zoning inspector," Austin hissed through his teeth. "I knew it. The very second you get a functional production line running and start pulling in pocket money from scrap recycling, some corrupt county bureaucrat rolls up with a bullhorn to audit your permits and shake you down for unpermitted square footage!"
He turned on his heel, glaring across the layout of Floor 1.
The basalt walls were vitrified and dressed to within zero point one millimeter planar tolerance. The obsidian floor was swept clean of all grit. The bucket elevator was enclosed in heavy sheet-metal guards and greased with clean mineral oil. Dry sand fire buckets hung every twenty paces, and green exit signs marked every doorway.
"Unpermitted?!" Austin’s voice rose in cold, tradesman outrage. "My load-bearing basalt arches have a calculated safety factor of four point five! I have emergency fire exits! Positive-pressure mechanical ventilation! This subterranean shop meets every building code and OSHA regulation on the books! I even painted yellow safety stripes along the conveyor bed!"
He snatched his wooden clipboard from the drafting table. He clamped a thick stack of hand-drawn floor plans onto it with a bronze spring clip.
He fished a yellow grease pencil from his bib pocket and tucked it firmly behind his right ear.
Then, letting out a long, ragged sigh, Austin reached for the tool rack above his bench. He unhooked his **Five-Foot Stellar-Steel Pipe Wrench**, resting the twenty-pound, glowing blue-gold tool casually across his right shoulder.
"Come on, Pug," Austin grunted, heading toward the spiral staircase. "Let's go talk to this bureaucrat. If he thinks he can shake me down for unpermitted foundation work and shut down my automated production line with an illegal megaphone, he’s got another thing coming."
Pug scrambled to his feet, all three tails wagging in excited sync as he trotted after his master.
***
Up on the surface.
The incense stick burning on the Colossus’s command deck had dwindled to a nub of white ash.
Tie Kuang sneered, amber eyes flaring with crimson Asura qi as he raised his iron gauntlet:
"Time is up! The Clear Sky cowards have chosen death! Engineers, spin the Void-Breaking Adamantine Drill! Grind Sunset Peak into dust!"
*Squeak.*
A quiet, distinctly ordinary hinge squeak echoed from the summit.
The weathered cedar door of the tool shed behind the cabin swung open.
Every spyglass, scrying mirror, and battle-miner’s visor snapped instantly toward the ridge.
A solitary figure strolled out onto the terrace.
He wore blue denim dungarees over a rough work shirt, work boots kicking up small puffs of dust on the path. A yellow grease pencil sat tucked behind his ear. Tucked under his left arm was a flat wooden clipboard clamped with paper blueprints and architectural schematics.
And casually slung over his right shoulder, resting against his collarbone like a casual bat, was an iridescent sapphire weapon.
A five-foot-long, double-jawed bar of pure **Cosmic Star-Steel**, radiating the dense, quiet heat of a caged furnace. Hairline arcs of blue lightning flickered along its alligator-tooth jaws, warping the morning air in visible mirages.
Trotting contentedly at his heel was an eight-hundred-pound, three-headed black hound. The beast’s six ruby eyes lazily sized up the five hundred battle-miners below, three tongues lolling as if reviewing a buffet line.
Austin stopped at the edge of the stone terrace overlooking the valley.
He adjusted his work spectacles with his thumb, looked down at the three-hundred-ton crawling iron Colossus and the five hundred armored miners, and let out an extraordinarily loud, exasperated sigh.
"Alright!" Austin’s voice rang down the mountainside.
It was quiet, completely deadpan, carrying zero spiritual qi, yet through some bizarre acoustic clarity, it sounded as if he were standing two feet from every man's ear:
"Who’s the site supervisor who brought the illegal megaphone? I've got my blueprints and structural calculations right here. Let’s talk permits."