The Great Northern Imperial Highway cut through the red sandstone gorges of the Canglan Borderlands like a neglected concrete road.
Red grit coated everything. It got between Austin’s teeth, slipped into his boots, and turned mule sweat into yellow paste. High above the road, scrub pines clung to the dry cliffs.
Austin walked down the center of the highway at a steady pace.
Clomp, clomp, clomp.
His steel-toed boots struck the stone pavers. Twelve gray pebbles and thirty dried pine needles circled his ankles in silence. A faint hum kept them locked in a six-inch ring.
He pushed his safety glasses up his nose. His dented midnight-blue hard hat shaded his face, but the heat rising from the road still felt like an open asphalt kettle.
A few paces behind him, Li Xiaoyao led two mountain mules. Four cedar crates hung from their pack saddles. Each held eighty pounds of mirror-polished Tier 4 Stellar-Steel bars, balanced so well that the loads never shifted.
Cerberus Pug came last.
All eight hundred pounds of him.
The three-headed hound ambled along in a leather harness loaded with the tent, water jugs, and a tin pail of hard-boiled solar eggs. His left head sniffed a dead lizard. His right head watched a buzzard with lazy contempt. His middle head chewed an old black rubber ring.
Snort. Snerk. Chomp.
Austin stopped and knelt between two pavers. He pulled a measuring tool from his belt and checked the slope of the road.
“Cheap government job,” he muttered. “The roadbed ain’t bad, but look at this slope. Xiaoyao, check it.”
Xiaoyao hurried over with his pocket ledger. “Is there an ancient array hidden beneath the road, Patriarch?”
“Worse. Bad drainage. The cross-fall is one point two percent. You need two percent to shed water. Rain will sit in the wheel ruts instead of running off. Water gets under the stones, then the first hard freeze lifts the whole surface. That’s why wagons keep breaking axles out here.”
Xiaoyao wrote fast. “Incredible! Caravan masters have blamed an Earth-Devouring Fiend for hundreds of years. The true monster was poor roadwork!”
“Ain’t no fiend. Just a lazy contractor who pocketed the grading budget and faked the inspection sheet.”
Austin drank some lukewarm jasmine tea from his dented thermos and checked the two goals in his trip ledger. First, he needed machine blueprints. Second, Sunset Peak needed a steady way to sell its scrap. Right now, every buyer offered a different price, argued over metal grades, and disappeared when a load went bad.
“At the expo, we find plans and set up fair scrap trading,” he told Xiaoyao. “Standard weights, clear grades, and buyers who show up every month. One lucky sale won’t keep a workshop running.”
Xiaoyao added both goals to his list. “Blueprints and a trade agreement. Not just a pile of spirit stones.”
Before Austin could take another step, a sharp whistle cut through the heat.
THWACK!
A five-foot crossbow bolt slammed into the road three feet ahead of him. Stone chips flew. The pebbles around his ankles knocked them aside and ground them to dust.
Austin didn’t flinch. He stared at the broken paver like a foreman watching a backhoe tear into a gas line.
“Damaging public works,” he said. “Class-three misdemeanor.”
Horns sounded above the gorge. Thirty bandits in leather scrambled down the rocks with sabers drawn. Eight of them dragged a barricade across the road. It was made from sharpened oak logs, rusty wire, and bent wagon rims.
Their chief stepped forward and planted a huge chopper on the barricade. Scar-Face Zhang had yellow teeth and the cocky walk of an Early Foundation thug.
“Well, well,” Zhang sneered. “A carpenter in a cooking pot, a servant boy, two mules, and some kind of bloated pig-dog.”
Pug stopped chewing.
Zhang pointed his rusty blade at the crates.
“This pass belongs to the Scarlet-Bone Trade Ring! The toll is fifty high-grade gold coins. Pay now, or we strip your hides, boil your mules, and feed your toad to the vultures!”
Austin didn’t reach for his pipe wrench. He didn’t even draw qi. A screen appeared in his vision instead.
Austin’s left eyebrow twitched.
“Fifty gold?” he said. “For a gravel pass with no guardrails and nowhere to pull off the road?”
Zhang blinked. “What?”
Austin unclipped his birchwood clipboard and clicked his yellow grease pencil.
“Where’s your posted toll schedule? Where’s your road permit? A legal tollgate needs a sign with your business number, weight limits, and cargo rules. Show me the paperwork.”
Thirty bandits looked at one another. Their grins faded.
“And this barricade is a death trap,” Austin went on. “No warning flags. Bare rusty metal. Sharp edges at hoof height. There’s also an eight-inch pothole back there that nearly crippled my mule. Where does the toll money go? Because it sure as hell ain’t going into road repairs.”
Zhang’s face turned purple.
Toll schedule? Warning flags? What is this lunatic talking about?
“I’M SCAR-FACE ZHANG!” he roared. “I butcher Foundation masters for pocket change! I don’t need paperwork—I HAVE A CHOPPER! BROTHERS, KILL THEM!”
The bandits charged.
Pug sighed. The noise had already annoyed him, but now Zhang was heading toward the mules. If the crates shook, Austin’s eggs might break.
That crossed a line.
All six of Pug’s ruby eyes narrowed. His middle head opened its jaws and released a long, bored yawn.
HAAAAAAAH.
A tiny bit of Nether-Solar fire escaped with it. Not an attack. Just waste heat.
Sapphire-white light flashed through the gorge.
WHOOOOOOOSH.
The iron spearheads melted. Glowing metal ran down the shafts and spattered the road. Wolf pelts vanished in puffs of soot. Hair, eyebrows, and beards disappeared with a single pop, leaving thirty bald bandits blinking in the sun.
Zhang’s chopper turned white-hot. He dropped it with a shriek. The blade melted through the stone pavers and sank into the roadbed.
The charge stopped.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Pug licked one paw. Violet lightning crackled around his three necks. Then he lay back down in the dust and wagged his stubby tail twice.
Zhang’s legs gave way. He fell face-first onto the hot stone.
“S-Sovereign,” he sobbed. “An Ancient Nine Nether Hellhound... carrying camping gear...”
Austin stepped around him and pointed at the ruined barricade.
“Blocking a public lane without a permit is a class-two violation. You’ve got sixty seconds to clear the road. Stack that timber neatly by the cliff. If it ain’t done before my mules take ten steps, I’m keeping the scrap metal and charging you for cleanup.”
“YES, SIR! CLEAR THE ROAD!”
The bald bandits tore the barricade apart with their bare hands. They dragged the logs aside, rolled the glowing wagon rims into the ditch, and even wiped soot off the pavers with their sleeves.
By the time Austin walked past, the whole gang was kneeling against the rock wall with their foreheads in the gravel.
Austin checked the open lane and nodded.
“See, Xiaoyao? Clear rules and firm enforcement. You don’t need flashy sword light when the building code is on your side.”
“The Patriarch’s Dao encompasses all heavens!” Xiaoyao declared.
Pug picked up his rubber ring and trotted after them.
The convoy continued toward the Grand Citadel of Canglan, leaving thirty bald men trembling in the dust.